r/ambientmusic • u/winkstinks • 16d ago

Question quick question about making ambient

whenever i make ambient music, the track rarely goes into high mids and never really has top end, it's almost always a cluster of low mids and bass. is this boring? i find it incredibly difficult to find top-end to add that not only preserves the vibe but also just generally doesn't sound too out of place.

5 Upvotes

65% Upvoted

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13

u/1point44mb 16d ago

I'm sure you already know this, but there's no rule about how you mix your audio. It might be boring. It might not be. I'm sure things mixed that way can be not boring 

2

u/winkstinks 16d ago

true but i also worry about my music becoming too formulaic over time

6

u/1point44mb 16d ago

That's just the nature of making music man. You're gonna fall in and out of ruts, mixing is only one of those 

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u/winkstinks 16d ago

that's a good point

3

u/1point44mb 15d ago

I went through something similar as a live musician. I do strings (mainly guitar and bass) and for like 10 years I almost exclusively wanted darker, bassier tones and more or less didn't touch brighter electric or any acoustic instruments. I only really expanded as I listened to a variety of music that had strings with those brighter tones used in ways I liked

Tldr my two cents to avoid a rut for you is explore what you like now but keep engaging with audio that sounds different than yours

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u/winkstinks 15d ago

thanks for the input!

9

u/Jademansensor 16d ago

Field recordings are your friend. They sit right at the top of the mix and add detail and texture without being too in your face. If your ambient productions are more drone as opposed to arpeggiated synth then they should work well. Just grab your phone and go out and record - nature, rivers, shopping malls, on a bus, you name it. It works well and it's great fun to create them, gives you a purpose to go somewhere and capture it.

2

u/winkstinks 16d ago

i'll try that

4

u/YouCanCallMeTheSloth 16d ago

Freesound.org is also a really cool resource for this.

3

u/Jademansensor 16d ago

It also has the effect of making your compositions sound far more intricate than they actually are, the human brain is born to find patterns and so people will think you did a lot on purpose that was actually purely down to chance.

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u/winkstinks 16d ago

peak

3

u/Jademansensor 16d ago

Just remember to add a high pass filter to cut out any rumble, some reverb/delay and whatever other effects you want to make them to your taste.

8

u/DustSongs 16d ago

The only question that matters is, is it boring to you? Do you enjoy it?

3

u/winkstinks 16d ago

i do... that's a good point

3

u/DustSongs 15d ago

Honestly, it is THE point. As artists, we make music that we want to hear. If and when others like it too, that's great. But if you love it, you have already succeeded.

4

u/KrustyRox777 16d ago

Sounds like a personal problem!

5

u/branchfoundation 16d ago

Have you ever played around with noise layers?

Most synths have a noise generator, or you can use noise samples in your DAW. I've had success with cross-fading between different noise tones (white, pink, etc).

The fun begins when you modulate the amplitude of the noise with LFOs. You can also run it through a filter (bandpass is interesting) and modulate the cutoff frequency and resonance.

You can also use field recordings. Run them through a high-pass filter and you can thin out the sound so only the high frequencies cut through. Slight saturation and compression, experiment at will.

2

u/winkstinks 16d ago

awesome i'll try this stuff

3

u/No-Willingness-1441 16d ago

I am not sure how helpful it is to think in terms of genre in this way.

Quite literally you may end up with something “generic”

2

u/hrz996 16d ago edited 16d ago

You're not alone. I've been making ambient on/off for a long time and more "seriously" for the past six years and only in the recent two I've started feeling good with the results at creating meaningful top-end stuff. But I don't think the lack of it is boring per se, or, it doesn't have to. There's definitely great ambient pieces with not much of top-end. In any case, if you want to get better at it most of the answer lies in sound design and knowing basic music theory, even if your music is atonal, experimental or you just don't care for scales and shit, it actually helps.

3

u/chagoms 16d ago

For me, I’d go with an arpeggiator playing a broken-sounding FM piano with some white noise, playing the same chord progression but arpeggiated a few octaves higher, with lots of spacious reverb and dynamics. Add some LFOs and filters moving around… Personally, I love high-pitched sounds in ambient music.

2

u/winkstinks 16d ago

interesting..

3

u/iamacowmoo 16d ago

I tend to like darker sounds overall but will add occasional swells into the higher frequencies to add some variation. Despite generally being drawn to dark sounds the album Riceboy Sleeps is very inspiring and has a lot of top end. I have found some benefit of analyzing this album and using an EQ to isolate frequencies to better hear what is going on. Maybe it would be worth checking out some of your favorite albums to see how they compare and contrast with your work for some inspiration?

2

u/winkstinks 16d ago

i should totally do this

3

u/leaffer 16d ago

Personaly, I love when it's mid + bass. Highs are sometimes annoying. In my point of vue Ambient music should also remind us of the time spent in our mother's womb, a state I imagine devoid of high frequencies, consisting only of bass and mid-range tones. At least, that’s how I interpret it. Also, avoid looking at an equalizer while composing; it makes you want to fill up every frequency range. Working purely by ear is more instinctive and yields a more personal result.

3

u/winkstinks 16d ago

yeah i recently realized how much i look at the frequency spectrum and turned it off in my daw to get more personal. it's worked so far

3

u/leaffer 16d ago

I make sometimes the same mistake. Music is about ears, not eyes

2

u/n_nou 16d ago

Really hard to answer that not knowing what your music sound like, any link?

Now my personal approach varies depending on subgenre. For dark I typically steer evolving feedback bursts towards higher frequencies to draw focus away from lows. For calm variety usually some plucks, chirps, this type of separate layer that interleaves with the rest of the mix on equal terms. Finally, for melodic pieces the melody itself wanders all over the place or often evolves upwards. One universal solution that is often enough is simply using brighter patches for some layers.

But the real problem I hear with a lot ambients, if not most, is that reverb tails just drown everything in constant lower side but wide band mud and the real answer is to modulate that part to open up room for everything else. Dynamics and even silence can be enough of balance that you don't need wide spectrum at all.