#14 Next level pad sounds
If there’s one sound that polyphonic and plugin synthesisers can do really well, it’s the pad.
Originally intended as a facsimile of an orchestral string sound, the rise of the synth pad in commercial music goes back to the 70s, with the dominance of the string synthesisers that first appeared during this era. Before then, musicians were reliant on string sections, the history of which obviously stems back several hundred years, but the origins of the “swelling“ nature of the sound are found therein.
Steeped in so much. This month, our patch relies on a very similar modulatory path, but instead of altering pitch, we will use a low frequency oscillator to modulate the width of a square wave. Apart from being a very common practice, it creates a unique sense of depth and interest in a pad sound.
