Has anyone tried to create dark ambient sounds like Ulver with the SD?

Ziltoid

Hi everyone,
I come from a metal music background, loving the sheer power that can be created in that genre. I have, however, in more recent times, discovered the power of ambient and synth based music, such as the newer Ulver, and adore the same power and atmosphere.
From that, my question is, has anyone tried to create a darker, atmospheric sound similar to music the latest Ulver material? I've recently invested in a Deluge and would love to try and make some music with that flavour.
Here's a link to Ulver's latest work for reference - https://ulver.bandcamp.com/album/hexahedron-live-at-henie-onstad-kunstsenter

Cheers,
DC

Bugah

oh shoot I do stuff like this all the time. Uhhh I don't know if I've got any recorded, but yeah I've done plenty of things like this kind of genre. I also come from a metal background, just did a cover of meshuggah on the deluge. For this kind of thing it helps to have a long chord progression as the underlying base to build everything on top. I skipped to the middle of The Long Way Home and I can hear a constant bassline thing, a consistent drum beat with some variation, a mid range synth pad with some delay, some semi-randomly injected samples with tons of reverb, a combination of like 4-5 different synth tracks that make the main melody.

With the Deluge I'd usually start with some sort of melody or drum beat and start messing around with the rhythms to see where I can take it. You can get a consistent drum pattern but add in fills using probability on the notes and add more specific variations using the 1 every 4 things to vary when notes are triggered. This helps the pattern not grow stale after droning on for awhile.

Usually there's some chord progression that lays under everything and the bass follows the root notes of the chord progression. I usually don't make it too prominent, often just some basic chords laying a foundation or a low pass filtered arp to provide a different flavor.

Then add up different synth tracks, like I'll make a new track, it'd play one note or chord at the start with a long release or a lot of reverb to fill in the upper range. Or it'd be a sort of quick melody and then it'd fade away to give space for the rest of the things. Then I'd add another synth track, a different preset or sound with a similar short melody and then fade out. Then I'd just keep adding more and more synth tracks and layers filling up the frequency spectrum and spacing each of these complimentary synth tracks at different parts in the loop progression. I don't like it when you have like 10 tracks all triggered at once, but if you have 10 different tracks coming in and fading out at different times it works out well.

Lastly to add more variation, these upper spice tracks that you add to the soup I'll add probability to some of the notes to change the melodies or to generate counterpoints that make the soup a bit more interesting. For big reverby chord stabs I usually leave those alone and let them ring out when they need to because it feels jarring when you're expecting that big background wash to come in and it doesn't, but that's just a matter of taste. If it's a big 4/4 loop that repeats every 16 beats or something, I'll add variation to this repeating loop by varying the lengths of each of the upper register synth sections, so maybe one has a length of 12 steps, another has a length of 8 steps, another has a length of 24 steps, so the foundational drum track / chords keep repeating, but then the upper accenting spice synth tracks will come in and out at different points in the melody which add to the variation and prevent listening fatigue.

Then you can add modulation, like maybe the LFO is set to repeat at a rate that is slower than when the synth track itself repeats. This means that there will be a continued variation in the synth tracks that come in and out a different times. You can vary the arp speed I believe too so that the arp melodies will vary in different ways as the soup keeps looping. Then you can add probability to the notes in the chord that the arp is sequencing over to add variation in the arp melodies that are being generated.

What else.... be conservative with the reverb. If you drown all 10 tracks in reverb it gets really muddy. Similary with delay. I try to keep the delay tempo synced when doing this. Try to do basic mixing as you go and add more and more synths. Listen to Ulver, notice how the drum beat repeats and when they add variation. Notice how many drum patterns repeat before the big melody chords come back in again to get an idea for how long to make the general loop. Try to count all the different types of sounds being played and note when they repeat or when they change from one section to another.

When I covered Meshuggah I did a similar note taking strategy, just counting when things repeated, how long a certain pattern would go for and when it changes over. If you listen to Swans they're also great to analyze in this way. They'll have a very short pattern drum / bass pattern repeating over and over and over again while the upper register vocals take a very long time to repeat, and when it does, it's different lyrics or a different chord or sound when it finally does comeback to counterpoint while the drum pattern keeps going. This is what gives it a hypnotizing feeling. Similar to how old 90s drum and bass does it, stable drum pattern stable bass pattern, then big reverb washed chord progression to vary it up.

This kind of thing is done a lot in liquid drum and bass mixes, grateful dead 20 minute jam sessions, big 15 minute psychedelic jam sessions, live modular house music, Swans, long jazz sessions like Miles Davis Big Fun, King Gizzard's Head On / Pill, live looping artists

I've made an album of dark ambient music using this same methodology but not with the deluge, I got the deluge after I made this stuff. This all comes from a background of "trying to make guitar live looping less boring"
https://postsolarpunk.bandcamp.com/album/ecosystems

(Edit: ayyy username all hail ziltoid the omniscient)

Ziltoid

@Bugah said:
oh shoot I do stuff like this all the time. Uhhh I don't know if I've got any recorded, but yeah I've done plenty of things like this kind of genre. I also come from a metal background, just did a cover of meshuggah on the deluge. For this kind of thing it helps to have a long chord progression as the underlying base to build everything on top. I skipped to the middle of The Long Way Home and I can hear a constant bassline thing, a consistent drum beat with some variation, a mid range synth pad with some delay, some semi-randomly injected samples with tons of reverb, a combination of like 4-5 different synth tracks that make the main melody.

With the Deluge I'd usually start with some sort of melody or drum beat and start messing around with the rhythms to see where I can take it. You can get a consistent drum pattern but add in fills using probability on the notes and add more specific variations using the 1 every 4 things to vary when notes are triggered. This helps the pattern not grow stale after droning on for awhile.

Usually there's some chord progression that lays under everything and the bass follows the root notes of the chord progression. I usually don't make it too prominent, often just some basic chords laying a foundation or a low pass filtered arp to provide a different flavor.

Then add up different synth tracks, like I'll make a new track, it'd play one note or chord at the start with a long release or a lot of reverb to fill in the upper range. Or it'd be a sort of quick melody and then it'd fade away to give space for the rest of the things. Then I'd add another synth track, a different preset or sound with a similar short melody and then fade out. Then I'd just keep adding more and more synth tracks and layers filling up the frequency spectrum and spacing each of these complimentary synth tracks at different parts in the loop progression. I don't like it when you have like 10 tracks all triggered at once, but if you have 10 different tracks coming in and fading out at different times it works out well.

Lastly to add more variation, these upper spice tracks that you add to the soup I'll add probability to some of the notes to change the melodies or to generate counterpoints that make the soup a bit more interesting. For big reverby chord stabs I usually leave those alone and let them ring out when they need to because it feels jarring when you're expecting that big background wash to come in and it doesn't, but that's just a matter of taste. If it's a big 4/4 loop that repeats every 16 beats or something, I'll add variation to this repeating loop by varying the lengths of each of the upper register synth sections, so maybe one has a length of 12 steps, another has a length of 8 steps, another has a length of 24 steps, so the foundational drum track / chords keep repeating, but then the upper accenting spice synth tracks will come in and out at different points in the melody which add to the variation and prevent listening fatigue.

Then you can add modulation, like maybe the LFO is set to repeat at a rate that is slower than when the synth track itself repeats. This means that there will be a continued variation in the synth tracks that come in and out a different times. You can vary the arp speed I believe too so that the arp melodies will vary in different ways as the soup keeps looping. Then you can add probability to the notes in the chord that the arp is sequencing over to add variation in the arp melodies that are being generated.

What else.... be conservative with the reverb. If you drown all 10 tracks in reverb it gets really muddy. Similary with delay. I try to keep the delay tempo synced when doing this. Try to do basic mixing as you go and add more and more synths. Listen to Ulver, notice how the drum beat repeats and when they add variation. Notice how many drum patterns repeat before the big melody chords come back in again to get an idea for how long to make the general loop. Try to count all the different types of sounds being played and note when they repeat or when they change from one section to another.

When I covered Meshuggah I did a similar note taking strategy, just counting when things repeated, how long a certain pattern would go for and when it changes over. If you listen to Swans they're also great to analyze in this way. They'll have a very short pattern drum / bass pattern repeating over and over and over again while the upper register vocals take a very long time to repeat, and when it does, it's different lyrics or a different chord or sound when it finally does comeback to counterpoint while the drum pattern keeps going. This is what gives it a hypnotizing feeling. Similar to how old 90s drum and bass does it, stable drum pattern stable bass pattern, then big reverb washed chord progression to vary it up.

This kind of thing is done a lot in liquid drum and bass mixes, grateful dead 20 minute jam sessions, big 15 minute psychedelic jam sessions, live modular house music, Swans, long jazz sessions like Miles Davis Big Fun, King Gizzard's Head On / Pill, live looping artists

I've made an album of dark ambient music using this same methodology but not with the deluge, I got the deluge after I made this stuff. This all comes from a background of "trying to make guitar live looping less boring"
https://postsolarpunk.bandcamp.com/album/ecosystems

(Edit: ayyy username all hail ziltoid the omniscient)

Thank you, thank you. This is so very helpful!
I'd love to hear your Meshuggah covers. They sound really interesting.

Cheers!

Bugah

https://forums.synthstrom.com/discussion/3781/demiurge-meshuggah-deluge-cover#latest

Hope it works out for you!