Where To Start Producing Psybient Music

[sounds]

Hello,

 

This is my first post here,

I decided to search for some psybient forums and maybe learn about production.

I'm currently in a one year sound engineering and music technology course,

But i don't think they are teaching us enough about music production.

I can use ableton and cubase but i prefer ableton much more.

 

I was hoping to find some good leads to psybient sounds for production.

 

I recently rediscovered some old school psybient artists and i have to say

if i was making any style of electronic music, it would be psybient.

 

Aes Dana, HUVA Network, Kick Bing, Carbon Based Lifeforms, Sync24 to name a few,

I absolutely love their music and hope i can work on something like this myself.

I don't know where to start, i know making any decent tunes requires a lot of time

but i think it;s a lot harder to produce psybient, it's a cut above the rest.

 

 

Any info would be great

 

Thank you

[acid-brain]

I agree, psybient is a difficult genre to produce. Ultimately the music is so diverse that there really aren't any obvious tips or guides that will help you, other than listening to lots of psybient music and playing round with a good synth like Sylenth1 until you get something that sounds like your favourite artists. Still, I'll share what I can:

 

Just set your sequencer to 80bpm or something, write notes in Phyrgian dominant, get hold of a pack of world/ethnic samples for inspiration, play around with a 303 and soft pads and pay a lot of attention to spacial effects and soundscapes. Psybient usually relies on quite an intricate bassline, so that might be a place to start. Another thing is that you want to heavily EQ and cut most of your sounds, so that nothing sounds too 'big' and so that you can layer more of them together. In psybient you usually have a lot of incidental, short sounds, so work on these and write melodies that fit into the groove last.

 

I think if you start off trying to mimic Carbon Based Lifeforms or HUVA Network you're not going to have much luck. I'd listen repeatedly to a great free album like Turlitava, where it will be easier to mentally deconstruct the sounds so that you can recreate the layers on your computer. The Ultimae artists are so many years ahead of us, and often use analogue synths, and it's not clear how to copy their techniques. Sounding better than an artist like Aes Dana could be your end goal, but it will take many years to get there.