Seeking tips on creating atmospherics

Elektron Gear Octatrack
#1

I’m reworking some old material for a new set with the dark trinity after some time. I am finding that these old compositions are very very dry as they have no atmospherics as such, just drums and synth. I was using the octa but more as an effector, so it’s clear I’m missing out on a significant slice of it’s capabilities here.

Does anyone have some tips on how they layer some nice atmospherics over the top of their own livesets using the octatrack? I know I can just use long one shots that I have made in ableton and import them, but perhaps people have some unique methods.

Also, if you know of any tutorials that’d be great!

Many thanks! :slight_smile:

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#2

There are quite a few ways. If you do a search for Octatrack drones or Octatrack ambient then you’ll find some tips. One tip is to apply the combfilter to a slowed down sample and modify it’s pitch with an LFO. Also dial up the reverb and delay settings all the way and then lower the mix amount.

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#3

… + 1 for Dark Reverb with long decay, infinite decay, comb filters.
I’d use several tracks for the same sample, pan them, slight pitch, filter…resample it.

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#4

Sometimes I’ll take an atmospheric sort of sample and put down one or two trigs, and then apply a random LFO to the start point. You might have to turn slices on to get it to work, I can’t recall right now, but it will play back the sample at random points in time. With the right sample, this can be great. You might need to raise the attack a touch to keep it from clicking and popping at the transition.

Also you can turn the stereo setting on for the delay, but it only works right (ping-pong) if the sample itself has stereo content. If your sample is in mono, you can apply an LFO to the panning parameter. This way, the sample pans on it’s own, and the delay then pans the repeats independently. You can also use the stereo imaging of the chorus and flanger effects before the delay to get a similar effect.

Obviously, the Dark Reverb with lots of decay can make anything sound enormous. With a neighbor track you can use both the delay and the reverb. If you can’t eat up that many tracks, sample the track with one chain of effects and then put that new, effected sample on a track with more effects and LFO’s. Then do it again :sunglasses:

Hope this helps!

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#5

Thanks for the tips guys:) I’ll give them all a whirl and report back if I discover anything new myself!

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#6

Report back anyway :wink:

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