Perhaps the ultimate pursuit of the sound designer, soundscapes can be anything you want them to be. Whatever genre you’re working in – from soundtrack to ambient, through house and DnB – there’s always a place for an evolving, atmospheric bed of sound to set the mood and fill out the mix.
And the best thing about cooking up one of these atmospheric sounds is that you’re never quite sure what you’re going to get. Throw a few ingredients in, and a slight tweak of the recipe can give you radically different results – there’s always something new to try.
But this infinite possibility can get too much – sometimes you need ready-made building blocks for when you’re in a hurry, or a few well-designed set-pieces to take you in a completely new direction. Well, cm’s got your back as usual, with this epic collection of varied soundscape elements.
Groove Criminals
Sound-sculpting super-soldier Oli Bell hasn’t just thrown together a bunch of delay-soaked pads – he’s meticulously crafted a collection of melodic chimes and atmospheric minimal beats that are ripe for layering into a custom soundscape. And as a little bonus to get the juices flowing, he’s included eight multisampled Kontakt instruments in this pack. Here’s what Oli had to say about Groove Criminals’ contribution:
“To begin, we headed for our Dementia DM-1 Noise Synth, connecting it up to a Barge Concepts VFB-X Feedback Looper, adding a Line 6 Echo Park into the circuit and letting all heck break loose. This messy output signal was then sent to an 80s Peavey Uni Verb. We found that by just making some small tweaks on the DM-1 or Echo Park, we could entirely shift the character of the feedback loop and start off new bursts of texture. We recorded the whole sonic experiment and chopped out the best bits.