Cubase: Ambient Texture Sound Design

Looking for some new pad sounds for your ambient-style productions in Cubase? We've got you covered! In this Cubase video tutorial series, sound design guru Gary Hiebner shows you how to design your own lush, ambient pads using what you already have in Cubase, including VIs like Retrologue and Padshop, along with sampling/resampling techniques and other tips. By the end of this Cubase sound design course, not only will you know enough to start designing your own unique pads and ambient textures for your very next track, you'll also be much more familiar with these instruments in general, making sound design quicker and easier overall. These Cubase production videos are designed for Cubase users familiar with Cubase and looking to learn how to create new pad sounds.

Videos
• Using Pads in Ambient Soundscapes & Productions (04:41) - We start off the video series by explaining what synth pad instruments and sounds are and how they're typically used. Then we show which instruments in Cubase you can use for ambient pad soundscape sounds.
• Pads Used as an Intro (07:33) - In this video, we explore how we can use some synth pads as an atmospheric introduction to a song. You'll learn how to layer different synth pads together to create a complex sound.
• Pads Used as a Background Texture (10:00) - Discover how you can use sustained synth pads to create a background texture. First, Gary shows how it can more depth to a song, followed by a look at how you can use it as a sound design element under some sound effects.
• Designing Your Own Pad Sound in Retrologue (07:56) - Watch how you can create your own pad sound in Retrologue by choosing the oscillators, editing the cutoff and resonance, changing the attack and release, and adding some modulation effects.
• Padshop (04:11) - Here, we explore the Padshop instrument, which is, as the name implies, perfect for creating pads. You'll see how it uses granular and spectral synthesis to generate sounds and how you can enhance the sounds with the envelopes, modulation, and effects.
• Evolving Atmospheric Pad with Single Sample & Padshop (09:28) - Discover how you can take a single sample, import it into Padshop, and then use the envelopes, looping, LFOs, and effects to create an evolving atmospheric pad synth sound.
• Build a Resampled Synth Pad Sound (12:07) - Finally, you can use resampling to create your own unique synth pad sound. We start off with a simple sound and add processing, render that to audio, and then add more processing. We then import this resampled sound into a sampler instrument to create the new unique synth pad sound.