Ah the bass player of the band!
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The who?
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Curious about this to everyone actually. Curious whether it’s actually more difficult to find a pad to carry/bind the rest afterwords then starting with one and building the rest fittingly on top of it.
Just thought of a musical example that might work for you. The sound that comes in around 1:30 is what I would call a pad
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If its purpose is to fill in frequency gaps, to make a section nice and full, I’d assume you program it in later, unless you start with the full section. It depends on the way you go about making a tune. I always start writing down the chord progression and melody. I use the “pad” as a “filler”. But often use the electric guitar for pad stuff these days (as a freq filler)
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This is a key point often not considered, but once known can pay off, here I did a loop of 3 harmonically swept monotribe notes which in isolation don’t read as melodic at all, but combine them and they do, a simple example but shows the point.
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Normally I add them right after writing the bassline, I tend to use basslines for melodies quite often, then the pad can add a bit of movement to even a fairly unsophisticated bassline. It is an old deep/house techno technique that I have used for years, I kind of like it, most of my stuff has pads and I mostly use analog style polysynth types or occasionally strings or choir mostly, but sometimes I’ll use a drone synth or make them from mono synths stacked up usually sampled.
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I wouldn’t call this a melody tbh. This has nothing to do with melody. Unless to you every type of pitch variation is melody. But that’s not melody to me
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Fair enough, but the example was just a simple way of showing that in isolation there was no perceived pitch variation until combined.
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It’s nice to see that both examples (of @darenager and @GovernorSilver) seem to work well because they’re moving and drifting, in relation to eachother and other lead elements in their context. I’m not that accustomed / experienced yet in lots of movement (what’s the production word for writing/sequencing (midi) movements again?), but it looks like this really fits pads?
Not sure I understand your question. In the track I posted, the first 1:30 is nothing but percussive sounds (mostly voice). At 1:30 you hear a new sound come in - it is the first sound in the whole track that is not percussion. It sound really stand out to your ears because it’s so different.
That’s a pad. That one sound that is not percussion.
The most basic definition would be a slow attack, med high sustain and long release. Generally softer sounding either by use of filters or verb type fx.
Why are they called Pads though?
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I was intrigued by how the rest of the song changed when it came in, and thought that in the end the pad slowly drifted away again, changing my perception of the track again. But perhaps I was trying to hear things into it preconceivedly too much (again: not fully comprehending then pád yet, trying to learn though:))
Appreciate you sharing it though, it’s a good example of a pad entering otherwise very transient stuff
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I always assumed pad as in padding, but might not be, and if so does that mean tracks without pads are “all killer, no filler” 
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It’s hard to explain what a pad sound is because it’s one of those “you know it when you hear it” elements of music production. It isn’t something that has to be explained too deeply with technical or overly intellectual verbiage.
Check out this classic track. Up to about 1:17 we hear drum machine and synth bass.
At 1:17 we hear a baritone guitar
At 1:36 we hear our first pad - it’s sampled voice being played as a chord
At about 1:39 we hear our 2nd pad - it’s a synth
Then more pad sounds come in and stack up.
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I always though of pads as something like the layer(s) the rest of the track rests/lies on, like a mattress… honestly i had no idea why people called them pads so I’m glad to learn the slightly pedestrian definition.
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A 5th is 7 steps
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Oh and “how do I use them” - one thing I love is when they interact with the melody so that the melody starts emphasizing certain notes while others start blending in… when in the same frequency range, of course trying not to become “soupy”
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A 5th is 7 semitones which is 3 1/2 steps.
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Ah 
yes! Doh
Yesyes 7 halfsteps raised (or 5 half steps lowered) and the fifth interval in the scale
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