Help me figure out the best "Drone" solution for myself...

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Hey all,

I really want to get into making some cool drones with guitars mostly... I really love hearing what Nick McCabe did with his guitar in early verve recordings. I love Talk Talk's later stuff. Lovesliescrushing I find very inspiring, I would love to know how to make these guitar drone sounds! Stars of the Lid also very awesome.

I just really want to start making more soothing albums with heavy use of drones and loops with hypnotic guitar lines/bass on top of it all. I have tons of tracks with the guitar lines and bass, now I really want to create some highly engaging sounds to really make each track differ wildly, but not sure how to get there.

Is my answer "paulstretch"?

Here's my tools:
Ableton Live + m4l (Barely touched m4l, any suggestions?)
GS-201 (and tons of free delays)
Valhalla Shimmer (Perfect, but doesn't really "make drones" in the way I'm thinking)

What do I do???

It seems I can't just make stuff out of piling reverb on top of reverb...

Any solutions that make sense? I could use maybe the looper...? Please guide me!

Any help would be AWESOME.

THANK YOU!

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I'm not a musician, but I've designed sounds that others use to make music. http://soundcloud.com/obsidiananvil

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Interesting. I listened to some of the demos and it may perhaps be a great tool, GREAT price! I fear however that it might be a bit more "obscure" than what I'm looking for. I'll have to try the demo. I am also wondering what other people have to say, any takers?

Thanks

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Yes, I've found Paulstretch is the essential 'magic ingredient' that makes making drones easier. Getting a generic ambient synth patch and playing a 30 second improv. figure and then paulstretching it to death usually results in the kind of raw materials which, when layered and processed together with decent reverbs and other effects, make gorgeous ambience beds.
http://sendy.bandcamp.com/releases < My new album at Bandcamp! Now pay what you like!

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okay. Would there be a "quick" way to do this kind of timestretch in ableton live?

RonC

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Add some phasing/flanging and some subtle filter movements to Shimmer and this can do some good. For drones I think the best tools are granular synths, like psyBox or Granite (Alchemy is really good too but it cost more). Stretching is good. PaulStretch is nice, Photosounder is nice too.

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Okay, so granular synthesis... I'd bet there are m4l plugs for this... I may have to investigate!

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Paulstretch is nice, altought I find sounds made in Paulstretch to have the same kind of stretched timbres/sound. Still, it's a nice little tool to start with for further manipulations afterward.

Granular Synthesis for freezing the sound is an essential method to create synthetic non-acoustic drones. Since you have M4L you should check Granulator: http://www.ableton.com/pages/max_for_live/granulator

Since you mentioned Stars Of The Lid, I really don't think SOTL use granular synthesis though, or at least not live. Their technique is more like using a volume pedal for swells, combined with a freeze/looper pedal and lot of reverb and delay feedback. A classic guitar/string instruments drone technique.

Remember that in drone based & ambient music, reverb is an essential tool. Don't be affraid to drown your sounds into huge lush waves of reverb.

Happy dronage! :P

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Great tips everyone! I will DEFINITELY be checking out the granulator- thank you so much. I have a feeling I'll be really trying out the granulator as well as slowing down some clips of my older material... I don't want this to strictly be ambient or drone music, I just want to take the cool parts and actually make it fit with songs I've been working with...

If anyone else has tips or input about this stuff, feel free to let me know!

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Shabdahbriah wrote:psyBOX
Wasn't that the name of Spock's half brother in Star Trek 5?




Oops. I think I just let my inner geek show.
This space has been unintentionally left blank.

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I remember reading that Audio Damage EOS has a "freeze" the reverb tail with the Infinite function.

http://www.kvraudio.com/product/3813

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rpc9943 wrote: Valhalla Shimmer (Perfect, but doesn't really "make drones" in the way I'm thinking)
A few Shimmer hints:

- Use the BigStereo mode, and run a whole bunch of instances of Shimmer in series. Set Feedback to 0.0 (i.e. no pitch shifting), Diffusion between 0.5 and 0.91, and the Size control at a different setting for each instance, somewhere between 0.5 and 1.0. The result will be a sound that fades in over several seconds, and decays away at a rate determined by the Diffusion setting. With Diffusion set to 0.618, the reverb will fade in and fade out with identical times, and will have the slowest fade in time. Higher Diffusion settings will produce somewhat shorter attack times, and much longer Decay times.

- Set the Pitch Mode to bypass, and turn up Feedback to 1.0, in order to produce an infinite reverb.

- Subtle use of modulation on each instance will produce richer sounds.

It is worth noting that cascading a bunch of Shimmer instances with Feedback at 0.0 and Diffusion at 0.618 will produce an effect that is almost identical to Paulstretch with a VERY large FFT size. Randomizing the phases of a large FFT frame with a Hanning or Gaussian window results in a "smear" of sound that fades in and fades out with equal time constants. The cascaded Shimmer trick does the same thing, just in the time domain, and with lower latency.

You mentioned that you are using Ableton. You should spend some quality time with the Looper, as it is pretty cool. Another trick would be to take your loop, import it as a clip into Live, and then mess with the Warp controls. I have found that using the Texture mode, and playing with the Grain Size and Flux controls in real time, can get some amazing sounds. An example of this on a drum loop (with some ValhallaÜberMod tape echo):

http://soundcloud.com/seancostello/stre ... ituberecho

The echos are ÜberMod, but the cool ripping and stuttering sounds are all from manipulating the Warp controls in Live.

Sean Costello

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Maybe you already know about this older effect that's been around

KTGranulator
http://www.kvraudio.com/product/625

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A few other suggestions, for guitar:

- EBow. You've got one of these, right? If not, GET ONE.
- Big Muff. The real thing, not a plugin. Or pick your flavor of fuzz box. Rat, Fuzz Face, what have you.
- An external analog filter. As a plugin manufacturer, I am obviously prone towards suggesting solutions ITB. However, external analog filters all have their own individual grit, and I'm not sure if any existing plugins simulate this perfectly yet (The Drop is still under development as I write this). I love my Moogerfooger MF-101 filter, and the filter in the Monotrons is a thing of noisy distorted beauty.

Sean Costello

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I really appreciate your input as well as everyone else's. I really look forward to working with this cascade you speak of. I'm completely in the box, and will most likely stay there haha.

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