How to: Composing Ambient Tracks for Dummies

[kyyrma]

Composing Ambient Tracks for Dummies

v. 1.0 or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Make the Ambient

 

This tutorial shows you my method for creating ambient sound without any previous musical talent or experience in using audio editors required. The guide will be fleshed out as I learn more about the process and everyone is welcome to contribute. Feel free to add your own comments and suggestions in the thread.

 

These are type of ambient tracks that have been created with my methods:

 

Haunted Ground

Home Asleep

Creaking

 

What tools do you need?

• Audacity (Free: Win/Mac/Linux)
  
• Freesound.org (Either sign up for a free account or get one here)
  
• A good pair of headphones
  
• 4-6 hours of free time
  

For best results follow the tutorial twice: once following my directions exactly with the samples I provide, and then a second time picking your own samples and making your own choices in how to modify them.

 

With these simple tools and a bit of patience you too can produce your own ambient track with relative ease. Just don't expect to become Eric Brosius overnight. Remember to save your project between between sections, and don't worry about completing everything in day.

 

I. Planning and preparation

 

 

Once you have Audacity set up on your plaftorm of choice, create or choose a directory where you store all the different audio samples we will be using in this guide.

 

To make sure your headphones are set up correctly, change the volume of your operating system to a comfortable level. Next try playing a familiar song at 50% of the max volume in your music player of choice. The sound should not be too loud or quiet, but right in the middle. Otherwise adjust the operating system as necessary and repeat the test.

 

When starting to compose an ambient piece, it helps to have a certain theme or setting already in mind. For the purposes of this tutorial we will be creating a track that plays in an outdoors cemetary area with a horror theme.

 

 

II. Choosing the ambient base

 

 

For our base ambient we want to pick a long recording that also has some melody or variance to it. This means that it is not just one long flat note, but that there is some variance in pitch and progression in the recording. For our tutorial we are creating audio for an outdoors area, so a recording of the wind howling could be a good starting point.

 

1. Go to Freesound.org

2. Use the search on the right hand side to look for "wind howling"

3. Filter the search results by Creative Commons 0 license: this means you are free to use the audio however you please

4. Listen to the different samples available to you

5. Download a sample of your liking into whichever folder you want to store your samples in

 

For our cemetary example I picked the following recording of an electric pole under stress from the wind.

 

6. Add the sample to your Audacity project by simply dragging and dropping the file into your open Audacity window

 

Now is a good time to get comfortable with the basic controls of Audacity. In the top-left of the window you see the playback controls. You can use that at any time to play and preview the audio you are working on. Try playing a part of the sample you just downloaded.

 

 

III. Effects in Audacity

 

 

Before we start applying effects to our base ambient track, let's take a quick look at the tools at our disposal. All the effects are found under the Effects menu in the top bar of Audacity.

• Fade in / Fade out: Used to smooth the transition to and from a sound effect. Use these to avoid clicks or sudden spikes when layering audio samples on top of each other.
  
• Echo: Exactly what it says on the tin - adds an echo effect with your specified delay.
  
• Noise Removal: Used to remove noise from low-quality recordings, but can be used to achieve all sorts of effects. Select an element you would like removed from the track by highlighting it in the track. Now open Noise Removal and choose "Get noise profile." Next highlight the part of the track you want that element to be removed from and execute the effect. Experimenting with this effect can produce interesting changes in your audio tracks.
  
• Repeat: Can be used to loop a highlighted part of the track multiple times.
  
• Change Tempo / Speed / Pitch: These three effects are your main tools in modifying the audio samples. Change Pitch adjusts the frequency of the audio: usually ambients tend to be in the lower frequencies. Change Tempo changes the speed of the audio without affecting the pitch. To adjust the speed and the pitch at the same time, use Change Speed instead.
  
• Paulstretch: Stretches out the highlighted piece of audio. You can produce very cool ambient sound by stretching short pieces of audio. Try stretching something like a piano key strike or a single string of the violin to 10-20 seconds.
  
• Reverb: Produces a similar but much more subtle effect to echo by simulating how sound traverses in a closed space. Gives your audio more oomph and makes it more organic sounding, which is a must for a good ambient track. You might want to apply this effect to specific tracks or after the whole project has been put to together depending on the samples you are using.
  
• Reverse: This flips the audio temporally. Many common everyday sounds produce interesting results when played in reverse. Try things like creaking doors, musical instruments and even spoken word.
  
• Amplify: Used to make a sound louder or more quiet.

 

IV. Applying effects on a track

 

 

The sample we picked for the purposes of this tutorial is somewhat high-pitched, so let's go ahead and lower its frequency a bit.

 

1. Double-click on your track in Audacity to highlight it.

 

To use effects in Audacity you always need to have a part of the audio highlighted, otherwise the effect will be applied to all active tracks in the window. I will not repeat this step again in the instructions, so try to keep it in mind.

 

2. Open Effects > Change Pitch and apply a -80 percent reduction in pitch (the last input box in the Change Pitch dialog)

 

Notice how different the track sounds now? Instead of the earlier high pitched wind and screaming of metal we are left with a much more subtle hum.

 

You can always revert the track by pressing Ctrl + Z to undo your last change. Go ahead and try out the Change Pitch effect with different values to get a feel for how pitch affects the audio track. Just make sure you move on to the next step with just a single -80 percent reduction in pitch as instructed.

 

The tempo of is still a bit too fast for our haunting cemetary theme, so let's slow it down a bit.

 

4. Open Effects > Change Speed and apply a -35 percent reduction in speed

 

The track should now sound significantly slower then before. Just like in the last step, you can undo the change and try out different Change Speed values to get a sense of how the effect modifies the track. Just make sure you move on to the next section with just a single -35 percent reduction.

 

 

V. Trimming, copying & pasting

 

 

With all the slowing down our base ambient track has gotten way too long. The average ambient loop can be as long as just a minute, but naturally a longer track is less prone to being repeative.

 

1. To trim down your track, highlight about a minute worth of audio from the beginning and use Ctrl + X to cut it out.

 

2. Next click in empty space in the window to deselect everything and then use Ctrl + V to paste the audio on its own track.

 

3. You can now close the leftovers of the original audio track by pressing the small X in the top left.

 

At this point it would be a good idea to save your work. Go to File > Save Project and save your work so far.

 

 

VI. Layering

 

 

The trick to a good ambient is in layering a different audio tracks together. We have our base ambient ready, but lets go ahead and add another layer of audio on top of it.

 

1. Download a sample and drag and drop it into your project

 

For our haunted cemetary ambient I picked a sample of rustling an empty garbage bag that turned up as I search for "rustling" on Freesound.org. If this is your first time going through the tutorial, you might want to use the same sample as I did - otherwise feel free to find your own.

 

Note that when you drop the new track in Audacity, the level of zoom might change. Use Ctrl + Mousewheel up and down to adjust the zoom level.

 

2. Mute the main ambient track so we can focus on editing the new track

 

You can find the mute control on the left-hand side of each track. The mute button allows you to individually mute any track which will come in handy when previewing different combinations or working on a single track.

 

3. Use Effects > Change Speed and stretch the rustling sample to roughly the same length as the base ambient track

 

If your base ambient track is about one minute in length, a reduction of -80 percent in speed should be about right. Now the resulting audio would be perfect for a rockslide! That doesn't exactly fit with our haunted theme however, so let's go ahead and modify the sound further

 

4. Use Effects > Change Pitch and lower the frequency by -60 percent

 

The resulting audio should now sound more akin to a thunderstorm. This could work well for a rainy level, but for now let's go ahead and apply another effect.

 

5. Use Effects > Paulstretch and apply the effect with a Stretch Factor of 1 and Time Resolution of 2

 

In addition to stretching sound (the sound is stretched to the power of the Stretch Factor) the Paulstretch effect can be used to smear tracks by using a high Time Resolution with a Stretch Factor of 1. The resulting audio is now a smooth but rather loud monsoon type of wind.

 

At this point we should try and listen to the two tracks layered together.

 

6. Unmute the main ambient track and play the project.

 

You should instantly notice that the track we have modified from the rustling garbage bag sound is now overpowering the main ambient. This is where the individual volume sliders come handy: you can use the volume slider on the left-hand side of each track to change its volume.

 

7. Adjust the volume of the second track until it doesn't overpower the main ambient (the track is very loud, so up to -30dB)

 

 

VII. Adding Instruments

 

 

By instruments I mean shorter samples that are used to give the ambient track structure. In general you want to avoid making an ambient track too rhytmic or melodic, as that will easily make it sound repeative. Yet we still need to break up the monotony of the final track somehow and give it depth.

 

For the purpose of our haunted cemetary I picked a recording of a power tool cutting metal that I found when looking for a violin sound - a good reminder on how a variety of everyday sounds can be modified into interesting ambient sound texture.

 

Let's go ahead and start modifying our power tool track into screams of the haunted:

 

1. Add the sample to your project and mute the two previous tracks

 

2. Use Effects > Paulstretch on the track with a Stretch Factor of 2 and Time Resolution of 0.25

 

The stretched out track sounds more like shrieking mandrakes then the type of howl I had in mind, but let's go on ahead and cut a few good shrieks out from there.

 

3. Highlight and use Ctrl + X and Ctrl + V to place a total of three individual shrieks on their own track, and then close the remaining power tool track. This is what the result should look like.

 

4. Slow down the shrieks by individually applying Change Speed on all of them: highlight a single shriek and then change the speed by -30 to -50 percent.

 

5. Make the shrieks into a low howling by individually applying Change Pitch on all of them: highlight a single shriek and then change the pitch by -80 to -90 percent.

 

6. Give the (now) howls an individual volume by using Effects > Amplify and changing the volume by +-5dB

 

Amplify can be used to both make a sound louder or more quiet.

 

Giving each shriek it's individual values will make them stand out from each other and give your track variety. Next we will need to find out how they sound with the other two tracks.

 

6. Unmute the two previous tracks and listen to the whole project layered.

 

The first thing you will hear is that the howling track is too loud, so go ahead and reduce the volume of the track by 25dB or so. Even then the howls don't seem to mesh too well with the two other tracks, so let's address that next.

 

 

VIII. Adding Fade-ins and Fade-outs

 

 

Fade-ins and Fade-outs can be used to smoothen samples that are played on top of the ambient tracks.

 

1. On the howl track, highlight half of a single howl from the left side and then use Effects > Fadein.

 

2. For the same howl, highlight the right half and use Effects > Fade out.

 

3. Repeat the same process for the two remaining howls.

 

The howls should now mesh with the other audio much better, but let's keep on layering more sounds on top.

 

 

IX. Adding Instruments pt. 2

 

 

While the howls break up the monotony of our track somewhat, the project still feels flat. It needs a bit of melody and high pitched samples to break to give it more structure. To fit our haunted cemetary theme, I picked a recording of bells being rang. Go ahead and drop that into your project in Audacity and mute the rest of the tracks as before.

 

This recording has an amplifying bell sound, so it's not exactly suited for our to-be looping ambient. Let's cut a piece from it to use in our project instead.

 

1. Use Ctrl + X to cut out two consecutive bell strikes from the beginning of the track.

 

2. Copy that over to a new track three times and then close the remaining bell sound track. The result should look somewhat like this picture.

 

Try to place your bell strikes so that they fill empty gaps in the project. Remember that you have to keep adjusting the placement of the strikes as you apply different effects on them. You can use instruments to create different rythms, sequences and melodies into your ambient tracks.

 

3. Now let's modify the bell sounds using a combination of the tools you have learned so far:

• Paulstretch the sounds with a Stretch Factor of 2 and Time Resolution of the default 0.25
  
• Slow the speed of each two strikes by 40 to 50 percent
  
• Give each two strikes a slightly adjusted frequency
  
• Add fade-ins and fade-outs to each two strikes
  

To add even more layering to our ambient, let's create one more bell track from the one we have now:

 

4. Create a copy of the bell sounds track

 

5. Slow down the copied track by 50 percent

 

6. Adjust the hits on the slowed track so that they fit into the length of the base ambient

 

This is what your final project in Audacity should look like. At this point your project is almost done, go ahead and save it in a safe place.

 

 

X. Mixing, Looping and Exporting

 

 

Now it's time to finalize your project!

 

1. Adjust the volume of each track

 

For the final mixing you want to go and adjust the volume on each and every track one more time, making sure you get the volumes just right. Once you are satisfied with how the project sounds, let's go ahead and mix it together.

 

2. Press Ctrl + A to select all tracks and then use Tracks > Mix and Render to compile them all into a single track

 

3. Use Effects > Reverb to add a reverb effect on your track

 

Reverb will add a bit more oomph and organical sound to your track.

 

Looping

 

This simple but effective method is from Goldwell

 

1. Highlight about 5 seconds from the beginning of the track and use Effects > Fade in

 

2. Highlight about 5 seconds from the end of the track and use Effects > Fade out

 

3. Cut the last 5 seconds of the ambient and paste them on their own track

 

4. Use Tracks > Mix and render to put the song back together

 

Your track should now be looping!

 

Exporting

 

The final thing left to do is exporting your project. Use File > Export to save your ambient track as an .ogg.

 

Here is the track I made while writing this guide: Haunted Ground

 

If you want to use the track in TDM, you still need to create a soundshader for it. Follow this guide on how to create a soundshader.

 

Edited December 1, 2014 by kyyrma

[RPGista]

Hey man, this is amazing, will come in handy for sure. Ive got some video art planned and was actually thinking about making my own (simple) background audio, or at least start to look into how I could learn it, I'm starting with your tutorial now. Thanks a lot.

[buck28]

kyyrma said:on Nov 26 at 11:05AM

If you want to use the track in TDM, you still need to create a soundshader for it. Follow this guide on how to create a soundshader.

 

What guide for the soundshader creation? Is it in the Wiki? If so, I can't find it.

[Springheel]

This tutorial shows you my method for creating ambient sound without any previous musical talent or experience in using audio editors required. The guide will be fleshed out as I learn more about the process and everyone is welcome to contribute. Feel free to add your own comments and suggestions in the thread.

 

Very cool. This should definitely go on the wiki, or be linked from there, so it isn't lost.

[ERH+]

What guide for the soundshader creation? Is it in the Wiki? If so, I can't find it.

 

You need your own registry file:

 

darkmod/sound/anyname.sndshd

 

 

And within it:

 

anyname

{

editor_displayFolder your_music

 

minDistance 10

maxDistance 24

volume 15

 

sound/your_music/anyname.ogg

}

 

 

Actual sound file goes to:

 

darkmod/sound/your_music

 

 

 

Just be aware not every format will be recognised by game:

 

http://wiki.thedarkmod.com/index.php?title=Sound_File_Formats

[buck28]

@ERH+

Thank you:)

[kyyrma]

Glad to hear that the guide has been of help. Report back here if it helps you get any results!

 

@Buck28: Sorry about that. That line was a placeholder where I was going to link a guide to creating a soundshader, but I couldn't find one for the life of me. Fixed now.

[buck28]

@kyyrma

 

Thank you. That helps

[SeriousToni]

Wow that's really awesome how easy it seems to make a nice ambient track now - especially after listening to the great demo songs you've put up here!

 

On a sidenode, this link doesn't work:

2. Copy that over to a new track three times and then close the remaining bell sound track. The result should look somewhat like this picture.

[kyyrma]

Wow that's really awesome how easy it seems to make a nice ambient track now - especially after listening to the great demo songs you've put up here!

 

On a sidenode, this link doesn't work:

2. Copy that over to a new track three times and then close the remaining bell sound track. The result should look somewhat like this picture.

 

Thanks, glad to hear it! I'm still very much learning myself, so I'm hoping I can make the guide a bit more clearer in the future

 

I fixed the link, thanks for pointing that out.

[SeriousToni]

I hope for more nice ambient tracks in the next year (the current ones are really starting to repeat all over the FMs).

 

Good job, boy!

[OrbWeaver]

anyname

{

editor_displayFolder your_music

 

minDistance 10

maxDistance 24

volume 15

 

sound/your_music/anyname.ogg

}

 

Some great information here. Just a couple of comments about the sound shader:

• You will probably want to add the keywords global or omnidirectional to make the sound actually ambient rather than appearing to come from a particular location in the game world.
  
• Similarly, you most likely need looping if you want the ambient to repeat indefinitely. These properties can all be set on the speaker manually by the mapper, but it's much better if they don't have to do this.
  
• You almost certainly do not want to use a high volume adjustment like 15, unless your sound file is rendered at a particular low volume to start with (in which case you should re-render at a higher volume to increase signal-to-noise ratio). An "ambient" sound that is 15dB louder than other sounds is going to be extremely intrusive and annoying when playing, so this value will either need to be adjusted by the mapper or they will just skip your ambient because they find it unpleasant to listen to. Most of the ambients with the stock mod do not have any volume adjustment, and those that do have a negative one (I think I set some of them myself after noticing piercingly loud background sounds in one of the test missions).
  

[ERH+]

That was just a copy/paste example for people who don't know how to start. There is a lot to customize just by args on speaker, and in many cases ambient sounds will be used via atdm:location_settings. In .sndshd file I've found interesting option of stocking many sounds on random choice list like that:

 

random_words

{

editor_displayFolder erh_sounds

 

sound/voices/Fridd.ogg

sound/voices/Kaom.ogg

sound/voices/Mega.ogg

sound/voices/Morte.ogg

sound/voices/Movis.ogg

sound/voices/Nhi.ogg

sound/voices/Rhaa.ogg

sound/voices/Folgora.ogg

sound/voices/Spacium.ogg

sound/voices/Stregum.ogg

sound/voices/Taar.ogg

sound/voices/Tempus.ogg

sound/voices/Tera.ogg

sound/voices/Vista.ogg

sound/voices/Vitae.ogg

sound/voices/Yok.ogg

}

 

...so you can hear something more than loop -every triggering will take random sound.

 

I've found also useful placeholder for future voice acting files in voice synthesizers, like Ivona (if you are not good at speaking english and want people to understand dialogue in alpha testing).

Edited December 8, 2014 by ERH+

[kyyrma]

@OrbWeaver

 

I'll eventually add a bit more of this on the tutorial itself. I usually omit looping / global from my own soundshaders, because I always tweak them in DR anyway, but I see your point there.

 

@ERH+

 

... those are the Arx Fatalis spell sounds. right?

[OrbWeaver]

That was just a copy/paste example for people who don't know how to start.

 

Right, and since people following a tutorial will tend to copy what is written exactly, my suggestion is that the given example only includes what is absolutely necessary — and there are very few situations in which it would make sense to start with a volume adjustment of +15.

 

(Assuming that positive adjustments even have an effect at all; I don't recally testing this specifically although I can see no reason why it wouldn't work).

 

in many cases ambient sounds will be used via atdm:location_settings.

 

True, this probably negates any need to add "global" or "omnidirectional" manually, although it still might be convenient in case mappers do want to use the traditional speaker-based method.

[OrbWeaver]

I'll eventually add a bit more of this on the tutorial itself. I usually omit looping / global from my own soundshaders, because I always tweak them in DR anyway, but I see your point there.

 

Oops, I didn't notice that the example sound shader and the main tutorial were posted by different people.

[ERH+]

@kyyrma

Yes. I'm testing random lists of words -verbs, adjectives, nouns- if they could form some sort of non repetitive, enigmatic, prophetic poetry.

[SeriousToni]

Sounds interesting! Do you have some results about the word test already?

[ERH+]

I thought english version will work a bit better due to easier grammar ( lack of cases), but it sound gibberish for most of time. I'm working with different ratios of adjectives and verbs, but I think a good dramatic lector can make a huge difference too, so I will try to find some public domain poem (something like Hamlet) and cut it to pieces.

[SeriousToni]

Just dont let it become a pop song

[Petike the Taffer]

Not sure if this could be helpful, but I guess it would be OK as a simple practice tool:

http://www.ambient-mixer.com/

 

I'd personally use the more usual methods instead.

[SeriousToni]

Well you have to pay money to download your ambient track, soo....

[Anderson]

This is actually very, very useful. Can this be stickied on the forum? I am afraid for this to be lost.

[Bikerdude]

Hasen't Kyyrma added it to the wiki yet..?

[Anderson]

Hasen't Kyyrma added it to the wiki yet..?

I don't know. I wasn't aware anyone had it in plans. It wouldn't hurt if it's possible.