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Composing pads
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| DJREMIDI |
Hello everyone!
I'm having a difficult time composing a pad/string section for one of my projects. I don't have a real musical education so I'm just going by ear, but so far I feel like the results have been disappointing at best. Are there any general guidelines that will help me compose a solid pad section to compliment the main melody? I'd really appreciate your help.
I'll post a sample of what I have so far when I get home and a MIDI file of the main melody.
Thanks!
-REMIDI
P.S. By the way, the song is in Cm if that makes any difference.
I tried using various chord combinations (chords in Cm), but still failed in achieving my goal.
EDIT:
-SAMPLES
MAIN LEAD
PADS
SONG BREAK
-MIDI
LEAD MIDI
PAD MIDI
-PADS CHORD PROGRESSION:
Cm - 3rd inversion
EbM - 2nd inversion
G#M - 3rd inversion
BbM - 3rd inversion |
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| RIPassion |
Something I've come to notice...
If there's a melody playing along with the pads, think of the pads as the connection between the melody and bass playing... you can get musical with pads, (duh), but they need to stick with the groove. You can be mislead to think they just kind of float around over everything because that's how they sound, but they really do a lot more when composed correctly... hope this helped. |
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| Zombie0729 |
for the most part i associate my pads w/ the melody as well. What i do personally is attach pad notes to high velocity melody notes. does that make sense?
meaning, when i strike a key harder in my melody it usually signals a pad change as well. but yeah... i'm curious what other TA'as do according to length of pad. it seems to be my downfall, how long to keep them |
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| ZxZDeViLZxZ |
| my problem with pads is i tend to make them entirely too long sometimes when ig et done i have over a minute and they cover wide varitey of chords. what i like to dtho is take my melody and make it into a string section and add variation and changes that the melody doesnt have and then use lfos or a mod matrix to allow them to morph and bend and so on. also what i will do is start a track with pads and then add some basslines and then make a melody and then make an arped melody to go with the pads. |
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| Frase |
the key to pads is making them blend in harmony with your melody
the right pads can often make a melody sound 10000x better than what the melody does on its own
experiment! |
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| DJREMIDI |
Thanks for the replies so far guys! Keep them coming ;)
I included samples in the original post, by the way.
-REMIDI |
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| DJule |
I think there is no rules for that. Actually, I do a loop and then play on the keyboard several time, until I find what I think are the best key changes.
For me, pads should'nt change too fast... because if a pad has a long attack and release it won't be good if you change it too often. |
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| moth |
I did a little mash up of this track using the midi's you provided.
It may be a different style than you prefer, but it does show some things sonically that I will describe.
Right Click, Save Target As
Basically I threw together some drums and percussion for a backbone.
I slowed the BPM down to around 128 to give it a progressive feel. I think took the bottem notes of your melody and used that as a template for my bassline. The bassline is kinda slow, but just there to fill the lows out. So what does this have to do with anything? Well next in comes the melody, nice and soft, almost atmospheric. So then i had to think of what kind of pads would actually work with that? A thick ass supersaw pad? (Haha, first thought for most of the people on here) No, that would sound terrible. Since the melody is really soft and floaty, I chose to have a really morphy atmospheric pad. Wusikstation is GREAT for that stuff, in fact I just used a couple presets. So one pad is very wooshy and has a bit of noise element to it. I layered a second pad in there to fill in the mids, and add some color to the pads.
So I had the sounds I was looking for: A nice pad that compliments the style of the lead. The bass sits well with both, which is good.
But the pad you drew out had alot of changes in it, and would make things sound too rushed. So I did basically what DJule was saying, I slowed the chord changes. I few chords were lost but thats ok. Since the melody drops down every couple bars, i figured the pads should mirror that to an extent.
So there you have it. The only effects used was an Anteres Filter on drum/bass channel, and a single compressor. Pads are all dry (well except for the synths effects) as well as the lead.
Hope this helps in the process of making pads. If you think the sample sucks then, well, disregard this reply, hah. |
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| RIPassion |
| Really cool, Moth. |
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| ronk |
wow..sounds good moth, love it :)
for remidi, I think the pads really are too fast...try to slow em down by connecting notes, or by adding another top layer. |
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| Subtle |
| best pads ever in a track is from Push vs Globe - Tranceformation :cool: |
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| Dickie-T |
| [jealous mode]wow moth, that is excellent stuff[/jealous mode] |
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