Dave Peck is one of the pad masters. He gave great advice on how to make a pad on electro-music.com, unfortunately that's pretty deep down in the archives now. Here it is:
A few pointers for pads:
Gotta use multiple detuned oscs. Try three of them, with different amounts of detuning. Try running each saw osc through a separate waveshaper to fatten them up, or add a hard-sync'd sine osc to boost the fundamental.
For a softer waveform, instead of a saw osc, you can use a sine osc and connect the output to it's own FM input and turn it up part way to create a soft saw osc sound (don't turn it up so much that it goes out of tune). On the G2, try using a shaper osc so you can set the waveshape between a saw & a sine, or between a saw & a triangle.
For a more orchestral type of vibrato, use a separate LFO for each osc, and set each LFO to a slightly different speed. LFOs should be in POLY mode.
The 12dB filter often lets too many high harmonics through for mellow pad sounds. Try 18 or 24 dB filters, or for more flexibility, try a 12 and a 24 filter connected to the inputs of a crossfader, and mix them together.
To get rid of high frequency transient energy, try using one of the various "warmth" filters that folks around here have devised. Actually, Rob H made nearly all of them. Pay attention to him.
And of course, big sloppy gobs of chorus, echo, and reverb. Keep adding it until Jan Punter doesn't like the sound anymore, than add a bit more to get it just right
OK, some NM Classic pads you can find in the archive:
Warm Spectral Pad.pch- uses spectral oscs for a soft saw sound.
Passion Drone.pch - Three stereo pairs of oscs with three vibratos & subtle filter mod.
Five warming tricks.pch - Uses sine oscs with self-FM, random osc detuning, clean & distorted filters in parallel, & a HF notch "warming" filter.
Lush Pad3.pch - one of my favorites, with lots of mellow sweeps.
Subtle Sweep CVA.pch - Two vibratos, PWM, and swept BPFs with panning in the CVA.
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Last Updated ( Monday, 19 June 2006 )
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