Use this 90s sampling technique for ethereal pads 

Nice post. Few notes on technique from someone who was making hardcore, jungle, d&b and then garage & deep house in the 90s. This technique and sound really came from sampling other artists records, whether jazz, or soul or older dance records. Samplers gave us a really cheap way to expand our sound palette. Although it's useful to think of it with a music theory perspective now, not many people were conceptualising it as "parallel harmony". At the time the "grit" that came from downpitching or sampling from vinyl were actually unwanted artefacts. We wanted it to sound loud (noise floor was an issue on old samplers and record players) and clear. But what makes it sound amazing now is all the aliasing and stuff. Once that Good Looking Records ("intelligent" if you want) sound came in with Bukem, Peshay and that crew the sound was a lot more polished and actually more musically sophisticated, but they still hung on to the underground techniques. They started sampling their own synths as well as other records... key ones being the Korg, Emu and Roland romplers of various flavours. It's just about the one thing the Korg Wavestation is good at, lol. In terms of the chords used, as you mentioned the min7/9/11 type chords were by far the most common, and work so well in a parallel harmony scenario, but sus13 is also a good one to mess about with and there were a lot of jazz samples of more dissonant "tension" type chords too 7(#5#9) etc. Major chords were used too, but often harder to make them work without sounding like old hardcore tbh. We DIDNT tend to do what you're doing and play chords with the sampler (reason being that the samples were mostly from other records), normally it was a sampled chord, but one way of thickening up a minor 9th is to play it as a fifth which adds a load of upper structure stuff but keeps the overall min9y vibe. One of the ways I've built up a library of these types of chords is by creating a bunch of regions each playing a minor 9 (or whatever) each with an ascending patch change message, bouncing that with some bit crushing and then outputting each region as an audio file. Running it thru a desk and/or an akai helps too. Pressing it to vinyl is a little more expensive. ;) The final really important part is that adding chorus and delay is the thing that will give it that LTJ Bukem ethereal polish.

I'm OBSESSED with 90's pads. As soon I hear it in a song, it instantly gets favourited

These pads are some of my favorite sounds in music

Also point out that we used to record a higher pitch (C5 or C6 in some cases) to get more movement and play time in the sample when played on lower notes. That's also a huge part of what made the pads sound even more brittle and crunchy.

Beautiful unreleased PlayStation menu music

The Silent Hill soundtracks by Akira Yamaoka make a great case study for sampling techniques to achieve ethereal sounds

Few more memories of 1994-96 as you guys seemed to appreciate the previous post. The club we used to go to to hear this stuff was Bukem's night "Speed" on Charing Cross Road in London. I think it was around 95/96 or so. It was a very specific sound, deep, slightly steppier than the rolling Kool FM jungle dancehall-influenced sound. I think we'd probably started calling it "Drum and Bass" by that stage, but really we used the term interchangeably with Jungle, it was all once scene with different flavours. Thing is Bukem had started down this trancier, ambient road much, much earlier with tracks like Demon's Theme and Music, which were released in 1992 and were astonishingly ahead of their time, released when a lot of producers were still using 4x4 kick based tracks with piano breaks. The other really important night we went to was Goldie's thing in Hoxton Metalheadz on a Sunday night. This was way harder music, really blistering amen shit and dark distorted Dillinja type productions. The scene was amazing. The summer of 1994 I just remember jungle blasting out of every soft top BMW rolling down Mare Street. The whole of London had gone nuts. But for us the scene had a many different sides to it. There was a party side for sure, but also it was also very creative, there was a sense that this was London's music and people were really pushing boundaries trying to develop the music for its own sake... it couldn't have originated anywhere else on earth. A hybrid of hardcore, dancehall, soul and techno.. it was a brilliant few years. Anyway, check out this One2One Show mix from Nov 94. soundcloud.com/ethereal94/mampi-swift-kool-945-fm-12th-november-1994 This is a different vibe from the stuff that Bukem was making. But this is one of the best Kool FM sets we taped off the radio (this was taped by my mate Matt Sully in Hornchurch, we listened to this mix a million times) It combines "intelligent" stuff with the Jamaican vibes, loads of soul samples... but you can still hear the raw hardcore edge to it. This was about a year or two before the Bukem sound came in. Anyway, hope you enjoy this mix. The oversize Mampi Swift absolutely killing it. (BTW One2One was a London-only based analog mobile phone network that's long gone).

The original sound being sampled for this tutorial sounds good because its a filtered pad chord + it has a shimmer reverb on it. If you dont know what a shimmer is, look it up & learn how to make one from scratch because theyre super cool & we've always heard them in film scores, on cinematic pads, & 80s soft rock ballad era music but few know what theyre hearing when they start....shimmering. The Lexicon 224 reverb was the original gangster that gave people the idea how to manually do what it did via certain magical settings based in its algorithm.

1990s Intelligent DnB is just a world of its own. Highly respectable what these folks cranked out of the at the time available gear.

Deep 1990s synths such as Kawai K5000, Roland JD990 Yamaha FS1R, or an e-Mu Morpheus are capable of these sounds on their own. Samplers are great for layering, re-sampling and stretching polyphony limits. eMu Samplers in particular have superbly creative z-plane filters. I'm certain these devices have barely been explored even today. When each sound has 1000 parameters, that's a *lot* of combinatorial permutations. The 1990s was an extremely fertile melting pot of creativity, we were spolit for choice... I miss those highly original experimental rhythms before the two step dominated.

I used to do this with a commodore Amiga 1200 in 1991 using protracker and soundtracker pro 2. No reverbs, no VST back then. Just layering notes, recording the result, and then using the result to start again until i was happy with it. And we only had 4 tracks back then as well as 8bit sampling. Although, i did have plenty of analogue synthesizers to sample from 👌

Resampling and layering really is the key to great sound design. It’s well worth the effort to play around with these ideas to come up with unique patches and sounds of your own.

Glad I'm not the only one that samples single notes instead of chords. I always feel too limited by sampling chords. I have a similar technique that I use to make interesting textures: pick an arpeggio you like, sample it like in the video and then play a chord. Have fun :)

This sounds so good! One cool thing about sampling a single note and then playing chords: If you sample the reverb as part of the note, then when you play back the sample as a chord, each note will effectively have a different reverb time. That, I think, is part of what makes these chords sound so huge and spacious: it's like each note is at a different point in space relative to the listener.

3:50 - 4:08 sounds like an ambient song itself. Brilliant video, thank you

Crazy seeing the sampler with the vertical lines visualizing the speed differentials. That really brings the point home! Also +1 for the 90's selection at the start. :) Thanks for sharing

This was really helpful. I don't know why but I never thought to sample a single note (rather than a chord), loop it, and *then* play a chord. Using that method, you're going to get movement across the chord you wouldn't otherwise get. I'll be trying this next time I fire up my DAW. Thanks!

This is why I associate Late 90s to Early 2000s Jungle and DnB with Y2K Futurism and optimism about the Future as a whole. we were entering The New Millennium it was The Future and music like this solidified that idea into my head as a kid back then

Hearing this really helped with me figuring out how to make the exact sound I'm going for, thank you so much for making this.

Wow man I can't believe I found this video. I've always wondered how these pads sound so organic. Thanks!!!

This has to be one of those aha moments of sampling and 90’s pad design for me. Thank you love the low pitch sounds.

Love your stuff man. Ive been getting into making ambient over the past year and your stuff is great. Love your tips. Keep it up.

Dude this is friggen awesome! I played around and added stuff to this and it creates such a thick and alive atmosphere. Ty!

Dude this is such an amazingly informative video. thank you. Instantly subscribed. Thanks for doing the community around dnb production a huge favor. Very fascinating video! IDnB is my favorite music of all time and I love producing it

I just love sounds like these they take me to places.

Thanks man. Gets me in the creative zone instantly.

thank you for this video. I would've never thought about doing something like this, this is really game changing for me!

glad to hear someone else use the term "parallel harmony" . when I was ding research for my rave video no-one else seemed to use it I was beginning to think it was just me!

I'm glad this is a thing people like. Good luck on your pads my brothers.

This might be one of the most simple, concise yet practical sound design videos I’ve yet to come across. I will definitely have to try this out sometime soon!

After years and years of making and studying music production, i dont come about short form tutorials very often that teach me something new thats so incredibly sweet! thanks

It's nice to see old school techniques used in new ways on modern gear. I'm Inspired - thank you!

Great job explaining man!!

Amazing video really inspiring and insightful, would love to see more videos on breaks ❤️

Dude , you got it. This is how the OG’s did it.

Oh boy .... revisiting this first video I found on your channel 8 months ago as someone who's equally obsessed with those kind of liquid, ethereal pads and who's done a good number of his own patches and tracks in the meantime it sounds better than ever. Keep it up mate!

I can't describe to you how much 90s pads scratch the itch in my brain! I always come back to listening to songs with this sound.

wait, that's exactly what I needed! Thank you! I've been listening to those pads from Sample CD's like Zero-G Cuckooland ones, and I've been trying to recreate that type of sound

Absolutely beautiful, man. Thanks for the advice.

This video appears to be blowing up! I never thought to do pads this way, always did chords from the initial patch and never captured the movement I wanted. This is seriously awesome. Simple things often yield the best results, and often times go unnoticed by myself :) thanks dude

Dude I love the parallel harmony sound so much 🤌

Love this!

Great little video. Thanks for posting it

Lovely video mate! Well made and great trips throughout :) ✌

For FL studio I prefer to use Harmor. Easy drag and drop with a TON of modulation options

excellent video, learnt a lot from this one. For years ive always wondered about those 90s dreamy sounds, they sound amazing, so dreamy yet so easy to do, now i cant stop experimenting lol

Awesome technique and great tutorial!

So simple yet it's not something I've ever tried or thought of before. For some reason I always had the idea that playing one note sample as a chord was not desirable due to the pitch/speed changes. Will experiment with this now!

This is such a creative way to use a classic technique.

OMG I thought I'd never learn how to make something like this! I always adored those luscious, ephemeral, Playstation 2 start-up sound like pads, and I for the life of me couldn't create that sound for anything.

This is just something else man ❤️

Another great video Bobby! Really enjoyed this 🎉

This is a great video, for an American, your voice is easy to listen too. I don't even have Bitwig, I use Cubase and Ableton sometimes. Super awesome.

sick sounds, great work

No way you brought up 1:05 !! I was thinking 4 months ago how artemis does that man! And inner worlds is one of my favorite tracks, but to kind of recreate them pads for me was just difficult. And then couple months later, this vid appears. How things go in life is fascinating sometimes. Thank you man. But now i need to know how to do this using the logic pro sampler, since i dont see any of these fancy build in modulations😅

This video is amazing thank you for this! It's just the answer I was looking for, subscribed!

I've gotta try that thing where you loop a single note including the release phase so when you play a chord you get that slow amplitude modulation at different rates for each note. That's cool! Thanks for the upload.

Wow, so simple but so effective, will definitely be trying it, great video🎉

I love your drum and bass man. I remember hearing it and thinking "damn I wish this guy did tutorials." And here it is haha!

Oh man, this is gold. Thank you so much!

Great demonstration. Thank you 🌻🌻🌻

Super cool technique!

This is beyond awesome.

Those examples of pads at the begging are so gooddd

Absolutely amazing tutorial. Well done.

I wish Live had that same visual representation in Sampler.

Wow this is just so beautiful. Gotta try this out!

Very nice work.

I’ve waited 20 years for this tutorial!

For the last double resample tip, I’ve heard to pitch it up an octave, process it a bit, then resample and pitch down. Old samplers had memory limits, and this gives more character.

Sounds beautiful Please more videos like this one 🫂

I would listen to this for ages

Thank you very much for the content ! Very inspiring !

Oh snap, you spilled the tea here, thank you my dude c:

Wicked tips, tricks are massive 💥

this video was sauced up thank you so much 👍

Very interesting. Thanks for making this video 👍

Thx for the video. Very inspiring

Good stuff, old is gold!

Awesome.. watched a few videos on this subject.. yours is the best ❤.. opening daw now 🙏👍

This is amazing

Great video thanks!

Nice one, very inspiring, thanks for sharing!

ive been looking for a video like this for ages

Damn love these textures...

Such a solid and well done tutorial! Subscribing!

Thanks so much for the great tips, going to go try these now!

Thanks for inspiring me. I am using your techniques and tricks to produce pads in Cube from Lunacy Audio. Getting some amazing sounds, being able to load up to 8 samples for manipulation and processing.

never seen the bitwig sampler in use it, looks so clean and fun to use. Great video!

Very very good stuffs!

in two words "utterly dreamy"

Resampling chords is one thing, and works...but this is a real easy way to get some cool stuff going on in the Renoise sampler. Get some lfos doing some stuff and boom...movement! Thank you!!!

thank you for all of this

Mindblowing!

Great video. Bitwig's sampler looks really cool for these types of pads.

very helpful thanks

Love this ❤

I love this thank you

Been doing this with my analogue monos for a while now but never thought of it with a rompler, of which i have many. Thanks!

GLR! What an incredible label