The Main Ingredients
Cooking up Ambient/atmospheric sounds takes a little more thought than standard synth fodder, requiring some deeper digging under the hood of your synth. Ideally you’re looking to create something that sounds very organic, often with slow attacks and long releases (which give more of an airy, spacious feel). Creating Ambient music generally requires a good understanding of the mechanics of synthesis, so make sure you are as well-acquainted as possible with your synth’s wave characteristics and modulation options (including LFOs, envelopes, hold function, noise, ring-mod, cross-mod and FX).
In terms of the best synths to use, ideally use a polyphonic synth (six voices minimum) with comprehensive hands-on control, comprehensive modulation options (ie two LFOs for movement, full filter/amp ADSRs for tone sculpting, plus velocity and aftertouch, an arpeggiator and ideally a modulation/motion-recording sequencer. Software-wise, Korg’s Legacy Collection Wavestation is a great place to start for Ambient sounds, as is Omnisphere, Absynth and Alchemy (now native to Logic X). Second-hand, there are many affordable older hardware synths such as the JD-800, SY77, Korg Z1 and M1 which are all great options.
The simplest Ambient sounds to start sculpting are drones and, once you’ve learned how to make a single note drone evolve and remain engaging, you can then apply that knowledge to pads and more complex atmospheric sounds. Polyphonic Modulation (as found on synths such as the Prophet-5/6/Memorymoog/ OB-6) can be a godsend for creating more interesting/soulful polyphonic sounds. Generally speaking, the most-used sounds in Ambient music tend to be warm, evolving and airy pads, choir-esque patches, moody/ evolving drones and reverb-soaked low filtered/reduced bit-rate electric piano and FM sounds; but as long as your sounds cast a deep and thoughtprovoking atmosphere/pensive mood then you’re in the right ballpark!
Effects (digital or analogue) are a massive part of Ambient sound design and often become integral to the sound rather than just a finishing touch. Whether in your DAW or in your synth, expect to use high mix levels (in relation to the dry sound) and lots of tape delays, long/ sustained reverb tails (with damped high frequencies), ring modulation (for bell-like/metallic sounds), bit-reduction, vinyl simulators and pitchshifters (to detune and lo-fi-up your sounds); basically whatever you have available to take your sounds away from the norm and make them sound like they’re coming from an otherworldly Ambient space!
Modulation effects help too in terms of adding evolution/ear candy to your sounds; so slow flanging, phasing, auto-panning and rotaryspeaker effects are all fair game for Ambient music. Finally, using soft analogue kicks, filtered white or pink noise snares, resonant hats and lo-fi samples/noise in your beats will add up to a more human/organic feel. Have fun experimenting!