How to make ambient samples like its 1998

[@colonialp9]

Feedback loops were also a large contributor to the spooky sounds of packs like Distorted Reality, which was used in games like Silent Hill and other places

[@SlyHikari03]

Yup. Also, it would be cool if OP could reverse engineer the techniques used to make that sample cd.

[@morgan0]

@@SlyHikari03 recently i went back and worked a bit more on an old wip that uses some distorted reality samples, and i wanted to replace them, one was a pad that i could just replace with one i made easily, and then i spend hours remaking (well, reasonably close but not perfect) the tributary bass sample. the original is def better but i got something that might work ok as a substitute. i also used a break and that's gonna be even harder to remake

[@morgan0]

that one, at some point in the process, was converted to a wavetable with a small number of frames, and then played back without interpolation. which gives it the steppy sound

[@SlyHikari03]

@@morgan0 interesting

[@fortune6676]

do u know any good feedback plugins

[@GOICOBA]

6:19 HOOOOOLY MOTHER, that is that Front Line Assembly sound!

[@etalex7074]

Which song? I don’t recognize it and i’m a fan of their stuff

[@bassboxben]

Paulstretch was a great tool for turning something a few seconds long into an ambient texture that we used bitd.. Great vid btw ;)

[@Thought-Forms]

thanks mate, paulstretch is a fantastic tool! kind of curious, how old is it?

[@mechspace]

​@@Thought-Forms It was released in 2006

[@yoeyostudios]

Does Paulstretch also have a standalone program, or is the one used in audacity good enough?

[@dxwnfvll]

​@@yoeyostudiosThere are some paulstretching vst plugins available online, I use a free one called "PaulXStretch"

[@illford]

@@yoeyostudios there's a VST called PaulXStretch that has a nice interface, comes as VST and Standalone

[@JesseBakerH]

13:42 this sounds like something straight out of silent hill and I mean this in the most complimentary way possible. awesome video.

[@Thought-Forms]

hell yea, definitely what I was going for! cheers mate

[@worksofein6449]

In the late '90's and early '00's we used to make ambient music by sampling stuff like the SH games, and sci fi films etc by recording them from the TV speaker into an old 4 track using a kareoke mic. We used cheap guitar pedals with the mix/wet set from 85-100% and the feedback at 95% to make "evolving" loops. We would record them for 20 mins then chop out the bits we liked and spliced them into a final track.

[@Thought-Forms]

love this idea, and the added grit from an old mic being used for recording down to a 4 track...texture galore. going to have to try some form of this! thanks for sharing the insights

[@faruambient]

this is how I still work :-D

[@svartsjokolade]

A great tool for this is also paul's extreme sound stretch, it's a lot of fun to slow things down massively. Great video!

[@Thought-Forms]

For sure! Was messing around with paul stretch a couple months ago, really solid tool. Thanks mate!

[@synthphilosophy]

I didn't think reliving the 90's was so achievable until I discovered your work. The sounds you create in this one gives me some good ol' perfect dark vibes. Those type of sounds are their own thing and it's such a fun to create those. Thanks to your tutorials I have a much better understanding of how these were created and the different techniques behind it. This is awesome, keep it up please. (Oh and; I love my tr rack, and I bought it because of your videos. And suddenly I now have a rack next to my desk that is filling up with vintage gear. And it's so much fun) Thank you.

[@Thought-Forms]

Cheers mate! I take no responsibility for your accumulation of awesome 90s gear 🙂....(but, if you need more recommendations let me know) Enjoy the TR!!!

[@Hazel1312]

Easily one of my favorite production channels. Incredibly easy to follow even though I'm not a Bitwig user.

[@Thought-Forms]

Thanks Hazel! Do my best to speak to the concept / theory itself so it can be replicated in any DAW

[@Lu_Lap]

I love your videos. You really REALLy need to make a video explaining how to reproduce the famous PS2 intro sound. It definitely was done with wavestation and/or triton, and I have no doubt you are, right now, the person in the world who knows the best how to proceed to do such types of sounds. Seeing the current comeback on PS1-rallye house and nostalgic jungle music booming on soundcloud, you will really realize a public service at that point !

[@Thought-Forms]

I believe I heard it was done on the wavestation! or maybe that was the old apple startup? one of two :)

[@illford]

i believe someone has a video on this

[@Pachinko355]

I don’t even have a professional DAW but these videos are so entertaining

[@levonkeijner1092]

you honestly dont even need a daw for this type of stuff

[@nexusobserve]

audacity

[@XingoMusic]

thats awesome, your knowledge is awesome as always bro

[@Thought-Forms]

💪 cheers bro

[@RJ_Eckie]

This is so freakin cool! I was looking into “the PS1 sound” and already downloaded some of the original sample libraries, but this goes all the way to the source! I like working in hardware and with just the BlackBox, the Torso T-1 sequencer and a reverb I think I can apply all of these techniques. Noice!

[@kenopsian.raccoon]

fuckin love you for this bro, this is exactly what i was lookin for!

[@Fog0st]

I watch your channel like Discovery channel when I was kid. Really interesting stuff for sound geeks

[@Thought-Forms]

Haha thanks mate, i'll take it. Discovery channel for sound geeks

[@VirtualModular]

Top video! I'm always saying sampling is underrated as a creative technique. I constantly sample and resample sounds. One of my favourite workflows is to create weird modular textures in VCV, dump out some audio then edit and load bits into Arturia Pigments. Endless retro ambient pads 😂

[@tx3851]

The best thing about being middle-aged is I lived through the 80s and 90s music scenes....Not saying some modern music isn't great, it is, but nothing like those decades. It also amazing that many young people are discovering music from decades ago...

[@Thought-Forms]

The old stuff just hits differently. The late 80s / 90s "sound" (from an electronic music perspective at least) is just very alluring, and in stark contrast to the pristine productions of today

[@nottucks]

@@Thought-Forms Limitations breed creativity. Not to mention the whole industry split entirely apart. It's hard for a kind of feeling to congregate for a while now like it used to.

[@olympian3]

@@nottucksthe music world is just so big that we can’t even quantify it in our minds anymore. I really do think the good stuff is out there

[@unlimitedcotton]

yup. music peaked with peshay...

[@nottucks]

@@olympian3 In terms of Hip-Hop/Electronic, I’m personally still loving the ambient trap wave shamana and 990x were on back in 2018, and I’m still obsessed with YAYAYI’s self titled album and have been for years. They’re definitely out there if you seek them out.

[@Matthewsavant]

The Octatrack is phenomenal at this, as is the Amiga. Also the Waldorf iridum when using the granular engine can take it to another place.

[@Thought-Forms]

Have heard great things about the Octatrack for mangling!

[@milen8]

the Maschine MK3 also have some MEAN functions for evolving sounds and ambient like the "lock"button+travel setting with a long transitions for a lot of automations for example. never saw this feature on another device

[@AUTOxMATIK]

That’s interesting. Haven’t looked into maschine for a while but I know users swear by it. Almost got a plus but reviews were middling

[@damianhernan86]

My fav you tube channel ❤

[@Thought-Forms]

💪

[@blxnk4105]

you always release a video when i need it, love it as always.

[@Thought-Forms]

🙏

[@Imaninternetuser]

I love these old sample CDs, back in the day you used to have a hard copy!. I actually have quite a few of them incl. Jungle Warfare 1-3 they're awesome.

[@Thought-Forms]

The good ole days! Something about owning a physical sample CD made it more real. Still have my copies of JW 1 - 3 and a crap ton of others in the closet

[@Imaninternetuser]

@@Thought-Forms I miss physical media 😢 I'd not touched my JW cds in a long time and after dusting them off I'm quite surprised at the fidelity of most of the samples on there, I was kinda expecting a lo-fi sound compared to today's HD packs you get but nope most are top notch and still worthy of using in productions.

[@Loagz_Beatz]

people sleepin on the triton and older sounds there are some absolute bangers in there. The drums too! Phew!

[@Thought-Forms]

seriously, cant sleep on the triton. thing has another 20 years in it!

[@davidmcgirr]

Outstanding, always inspiring to spend time making building blocks

[@RandomProductionszsz]

Thanks! This is very inspring for the soundtrack work I'm making using an e6400 E-MU

[@Thought-Forms]

Cheers mate. E6400 is a beast!

[@MonkeyVideoClub]

One of the things like to do is take a sample from any old movie, particularly a bit with a lot of overlapping dialogue (like a party scene or something) and then slow it down and pitch it down a couple octaves till its realll slow, and duplicate that then reverse the duplicate and put it over the original, then add a huge reverb, then do that that process a couple times with varying pitches and octaves till i get a weird cascade of gargly alien sounding voices

[@Thought-Forms]

Solid tip for some alien voices, love this idea!!! Going to give it a go. Thanks for sharing

[@GeorgeL909]

Oi! *Extremely* relevant to my interests!!! Very cool video.

[@profoundofficial4801]

Awesome tutorial

[@SHUTDOWNOfficial]

A great method for tonal ambient stuff is to use convolution reverb, but have the IR be something like a synth, a chord sample, or what have you. I also like to mess with the stretching of the IR afterwards, functioning as something of a pitch knob if you modify it live and record it. I also recently discovered a great (free!) soft synth from 2002 called Green Oak Crystal that has a pretty nifty feature to cross-breed two presets together. That can create some very interesting sounds too. (Fun fact: if you've ever played SMOD, the main menu theme uses the preset "Southern Extreme")

[@justingoers]

Beautiful tutorial.

[@PublicRadioSimulator]

very informative, thank you!

[@YouTuber22235]

Love your channel

[@Thought-Forms]

Thanks mate!

[@monisprabu1174]

yay bitwig

[@suitandtieguy]

You're making great content. Thank you.

[@Thought-Forms]

Much appreciated!

[@audiolego]

I still have my Killer Synth sample cd, Exstatic 1 and Dance Mega Rave cd rom for my emu e6400 ultra. I just like sampling my synth and layering.

[@djshire1984]

Good stuff. I really do need to spend the time learning Bitwig. I'm going to start work on an album and be using Bitwig for it (normally I use Logic).

[@Thought-Forms]

love it - best way to do it is to commit with a project. conversely, i've been toying around with the idea of doing a project in logic or cubase. let me know how you get on with it!

[@Dr-Stu]

Throw any wav file you want into Reason's Grain and you instantly get all the ambient you want with a basic synth underneath to beef it up.

[@effortless4588]

THANK YPOUUIU SM

[@shomm_music]

Hey there! For about 2 months I have had a heavy 90's atmospheric DnB/ambient jungle itch, thanks to your music and channel I can now completely cure it. You should get a big sponsorship from Korg, I bought the Triton and the Wavestation vst just because of your great videos. For all other producers with GAS, Korg has a 50% off sale going on right now... 😄 shout out to all massive junglists !!

[@Thought-Forms]

lets go baby!

[@mrsulcus674]

Thete are some really nice sounds hidden in the MC303/505 once you pitch them down and fiddle with the envelopes.

[@Thought-Forms]

For sure! I think those use the JV engine? mc909 was another beast with great sounds for mangling

[@mrsulcus674]

@@Thought-Forms I think so, yes. The string sounds on them were also quite nice. I got a lot of mileage out of taping the putting all the ADSR settings on full, taping the buttons down, and bringing notes in and out with the filter cutoff. Once you pitched stuff down so all these artefacts appeared and things started beating against each other you could get some lovely textures.

[@Noratekki]

MacPOD/WinPOD is a great granular synthesis tool made in Max which you can do this sorta stuff with.

[@transcend_ctm]

goated

[@beatkitchen]

Great stuff ❤‍🔥

[@Thought-Forms]

Thanks mate!

[@Darkest_matter]

the random modulation really reminds me of 'angel's egg'

[@SlyHikari03]

Would be neat seeing you reverse engineer stuff from Spectrasonics' Distorted Reality. Eric Persing has some pretty cool info about what gear was used to make that sample cd.

[@Thought-Forms]

For sure! He had a great interview on SoS from back in the early 2000s (may be what you're referring to), went through a lot of sound design technique. Some crazy nuggest of info in that

[@SlyHikari03]

@@Thought-Forms that and a part of the credits page for the cd on the spectrasonics website labled "how the sounds were created". Lists everything they used.

[@nvrtheless07]

this channel is national treasure.

[@jdm473]

Nice video

[@Thought-Forms]

thanks jdm!

[@Muldvarp_]

we are getting to the bottom of it with this one boys

[@Bittamin]

YEAH BABY 🎉❤

[@koenignero]

And wie need to bring it back. Ppl are ready for it

[@Thought-Forms]

👨‍🚀

[@johngorgis]

I often use only the wet signal of a reverbs , especially plates

[@enderjed2523]

I do not have access to the sampler that is seemingly included with your DAW from the looks of things, are there any third party sampler VSTs that you would recommend?

[@Thought-Forms]

TAL-Sampler is number 1

[@bexiexz]

yessssss

[@GiorgioBertuccelli]

My favorite single note synth that created a lot of those effects was the Prophet VS. It was a an atmosphere making machine creating Sample goodness.

[@Thought-Forms]

the prophet vs is nuts! precursor to the wavestation. have you used the Arturia VST version? they did a solid job

[@WinUpgrade]

Also fyi the distorted reality and malice in Wonderland used channel one Russia

[@DrStranglelove]

Very noice,

[@mattm3729]

Sounds very Tim Hecker at times

[@Achil4yall]

❤❤

[@shfunky]

Lots of interesting sound design techniques, thank you, learned a lot. Only thing that bugs me is the fact that you used a synth preset that already sounded like it could've came from a sample pack before you even started doing anything to it.

[@Thought-Forms]

Thanks mate! If you want to learn to make sounds like that from scratch, check out some of my other videos on creating sounds from scratch with the Triton

[@shfunky]

@@Thought-Forms Nice, will do! Nevermind then, if you know how to make sounds like that from scratch then i guess theres no point not using them. You clearly know what you're doing mister :)

[@tamalitogirl]

Dark ambient🫡

[@johnoestmannmusic]

Great video, but I will push back on your argument that the sound doesn't need to be complex to be good. It is partially true, but whenever people sample, they are skipping the complexity that went into making that input sample or preset (in your case, skipping all the work that went into making the Korg Solar Surfing preset). If you synthesize your own sounds from scratch and then go through the process of resampling them, it gives you a much deeper appreciation of how these sounds can be created from a fundamental level.

[@telogic1]

still have all my sample CDs from the 90s inc Ambient

[@Thought-Forms]

hold on to those things. a copy of zero-g ambient alone will sell for $100-ish USD these days. mind boggling

[@telogic1]

@@Thought-Forms yes I also have the zero G cds some of those are gold now

[@ListenbourgBall]

Its like my thumb controls my life now. This is concerning. But i like this video.

[@CryptToneMusic]

Is there a way I could do this stuff in reaper? Or is there another free daw I could get? I'm a guitar player but I'm trying to get into making music like this 😂

[@ndf3]

Not quite the same thing, but you could try playing around with the samplers in VCV Rack. Loads of fun

[@denterestrial]

Shpookeh

[@gunnargrubbs3123]

8:40 well we know how the THX sound was made now haha

[@Thought-Forms]

Haha, could be!

[@Lucait]

Remember cooledit? ❤

[@Thought-Forms]

Never used it, but remember seeing some screenshots of it. Super oldschool looking!

[@cleabus]

Is all of this transferrable to the Sampler or Simpler within Ableton?

[@Thought-Forms]

yea it should work in sampler

[@cleabus]

@@Thought-Forms Cheers for the tutorial dude, I found Granulator 3 works the closest to the sampler in the video! This is super fun

[@prodsliq]

Imagine hearing 5:00 when walking alone at night

[@raptorboss6688]

GRAHHHHH NEW THOUGHT FORMS LETS GOOOOOOOOOO!!!1!!!1!!!!111!!

[@Thought-Forms]

LETS GOOOOO 💪💪💪💪💪💪

[@Yngdady]

There are people out there who would discredit all this as "video game sounds", as if the only sounds that should exist should come directly from natural sources

[@axelitodeejay]

what DAW are you using?

[@drinkinouttacups2665]

Hogan's castle

[@koenignero]

It is Bitwig Studio

[@dejavu4210]

Top 5 channels on yt

[@Thought-Forms]

lets go baby 💪

[@billylee8497]

Play Station menu type beat - free for non profit

[@alb_reuel]

where is this accent from?

[@Thought-Forms]

im from atlanta

[@silk.dreemer]

Thank you for this insight, I recently posted a new video with some of these techniques if you all wouldn’t mind checking it out ! Thank you and happy holidays

[@Lucait]

Lol i started in fasttrack

[@Mia1Goth]

the clicks from the random lfo are not good

[@Thought-Forms]

yea little abrupt, random is hard to reel in. tried to apply some smoothing

[@neongravity88]

Why do you use cube base

[@LewisSales]

This is Bitwig

[@morgan0]

that's bitwig

[@neongravity88]

@@morgan0 oh, sorry, i was just wondering what the advantage of the daw he was using. It seems like fl studio and Ableton are always the one in competition of best daw.

[@Thought-Forms]

@@neongravity88 Bitwig, I'm just very comfortable with it & think it combines the best parts of ableton with some more forward thinking things. plus its a joy to use from a "basics" workflow perspective. native middle mouse pan/zoom = god mode

[@neongravity88]

@@Thought-Forms Thanks, i was wondering because i have been using fl studio and its fine but it's actually audio processing and sampling capabilities are quite limited.

[@mp_hmo]

check my attempts and let me know if u fall sleep, it would be great 💤

[@PilzE.]

Dudes throwing out sampling techniques like there's no tomorrow!! Errrrr, there is a tomorrow, right? Another banger of a tutorial! Crazy how we always want new this, new that, when our simple stock sampler and a few tweaks can lead to this level of creativity, originality, and, FUN! Goddamn Bitwig sure is pretty. Ableton is bland by comparison. I admit, I am teetering on the brink of giving Bitwig a go. I am sure a whore, few flashy graphics and I'm ready to jump ship!!! 🙄

[@Thought-Forms]

the world is possible with just a sampler. pretty nuts! bitwig is a better ableton, give it a shot and i think you'll love it

[@PilzE.]

@@Thought-Forms K. Since you insist, lemme go download the puppy. Cheers!

[@djtomoy]

Don’t spend your time re making the past, make the future

[@BellXllebMusic]

Time is a loop anyway, it doesn't matter which direction you go to

[@jgofimusic]

How we gonna make the future without knowing the techniques though

[@GiorgioBertuccelli]

Ha ha this is great. I own most of those and even did some sound design for some of those products. And use them it was very incestuous lol. Good times good times. fuck this is making me feel even older.

[@Thought-Forms]

super cool! do you mind sharing which ones you did work on?? any tips/tricks would be greatly appreciated!!

[@DIYmusicJP]

this is what I need one of the best yt channel🫡

[@Thought-Forms]

lets GOOOOOO!

[@sweetspike]

FYI Foley. ( pho _lee).

[@mattm3729]

Sounds very Tim Hecker at times