5 Pro Tips On Ambient Sound Design for NI Massive

One thing NI Massive truly excels at is designing ambient synths, whether they be complex or subtle in nature. This quick round-up of 5 great tutorials will help you elevate your ambient sound design to another level!

There are so many tutorials for NI Massive relating to ambient sound design, but I wanted to take a moment and share with you five amazing pro tips that can forever change not just the way you approach creating these types of sounds, but how you find inspiration in sounds as well.

So why these five tutorials in particular? Simple. They each share a priceless ideas that can easily be applied to your ambient sound design session right now and provide you with noticeable change – for the better! Let’s take a look at each one individually.

1. Using Modulators to Achieve a Sense of Ever-Evolving Sounds

Creating the illusion that a pad, soundscape or atmosphere is actually continually evolving can be a difficult task in many synths. But NI Massive actually makes this quite easy. Many of my ambient sound designs sessions center around imparting a touch to perceived randomness, as this helps transform your audience from passive listeners to active listeners. They cannot help but be drawn into the sounds when they are growing and changing right in front of them.

https://www.massivesynth.com/tutorials/designing-a-long-evolving-ni-massive-pad/

2. Using Randomness to Enhance Long-Form Shifting Drones and Soundscapes

This one plays a bit off of the idea of using randomness to generate a feeling of constant evolution in your sounds. Ambient sound design is often full of very subtle elements, one of which can be change itself. NI Massive makes various modulators available to us, but it is our creativity and imagination that allow them to creates something truly immersive and epic in nature.

https://www.massivesynth.com/tutorials/pro-tips-on-making-shifting-drone-synths-in-ni-massive/

3. Developing Complex Layered Sounds is a Deep Experience You Should Embrace

Brilliant sound designer Mikael Adle shares some incredible ideas and techniques in this epic 30 minute video as he walks us through the creation of one of the sounds included in a very popular preset collection for NI Massive. His approach to ambient sound design is a joy to witness because he takes advantage of so many features and parameters, that are often times overlooked, in very unique ways. The amount of expression and dynamic change his sounds are capable of is simply amazing.

https://www.massivesynth.com/reviews/in-depth-study-of-ni-massive-soundscape-design-with-leap-into-the-void/

4. Use Less Popular Features for Original and Unique Results

Sometimes it is as easy as using a feature in NI Massive that you normally look right past to add the certain something to your sounds. In fact, ambient sound design is one of the few times you can freely experiment with something like the murmer sample in the noise oscillator to impart very subtle textures and characteristics in your atmospheres and pads. I will often times find ways to work in very minimal samples of this kind into all kinds of soundscapes, drones, pads and atmospheres across a wide range of projects. This is a great tip regardless of what genre you typically produce for.

https://www.massivesynth.com/tutorials/quick-easy-tutorial-series-evolving/

 5. Adding Atmosphere and Texture to Your Ambient Sounds Through Creative Programming

One of the most important you can ever do in your ambient sound design sessions is to find ways to incorporate atmosphere, texture and unique character to your sounds. Sometimes it is as simple as allowing a few things to add a sense of airiness  to something like a pad. Other times it may require some fancy programming to achieve what you are after. Either way, keeping in mind the idea that less is more in the world of audio will help you find your way forward. One way to find that dusty and airy quality often found in genres like Deep House is shared in this tutorial.

https://www.massivesynth.com/tutorials/how-to-achieve-a-dusty-and-atmospheric-effect-in-ni-massive-deep-house-sounds/

Hopefully this quick round-up of tutorials helps to open your eyes to new ways of improving or building upon your ambient sound design sessions in NI Massive. It really is one of the most flexible and capable soft synths around and we take great pride in the fact that we help thousands of people every day get more out of it.

As a bonus we recently posted links to all our subscriber-only content – 9 hours of video tutorials. You can watch all of them for free here: https://www.massivesynth.com/members/hours-of-ni-massive-tutorials/

Cheers,
OhmLab