Over the last 2 years, I've been building a dawless desk that can meet my DAW maximalist expectations of effects, mixing and total track count. What began with the Novation Circuit Tracks and a synth has evolved into a massive setup of samplers, grooveboxes, guitar pedals, a mixer and analog synths. Most genres have been relatively easy to port over to this setup, but Ambient, or at least my heavily effects laden version, has always eluded it. Until now! After adding the Digitakt into my setup, I have enough polyphonic voices, midi control and effects to do it. Check out the video below for a full walkthough of my process and keep reading for my guide for creating lush soundscapes with Dawless gear
Why Go Dawless? This is a question that has many answers, but for me it was stepping away from the screen and having limitations that I need to creatively overcome. This has helped me breakthrough writer's block platues and experiment with sounds I'd never use in the DAW. It is very much a personal choice, but if you're looking to go Dawless, start small with iOS apps or a cheap groovebox and expand from there.
Dawless Ambient Cheat Sheet
Start with a "brain" for your setup
A groovebox, sampler or MIDI sequencer is a great way to go. Personally, I've found the Digitakt an excellent combination of all 3, with 8 channels of 4 voice MIDI, and 8 tracks of audio sampling, it's an incredible jack of all trades.
This will act as the center of the setup and control any other gear through MIDI. You will want a MIDI hub (like this) to enable splitting the single MIDI output on the DIgitakt (or any other gear) into as many channels as you need (this is dependent on how many other machines you're using and want to sync.
Sample, Resample... Then Resample Again
When it comes to ambient sound design with dawless gear, your best friend is sampling. I'm not talking about grabbing a vinyl... though that could work, but self sampling. Send in sounds from your other gear and manipulate it in a sampler by chopping the sound, dropping or raising the pitch, and adding effects. I absolutely love sampling in sounds an octave higher then dropping the pitch, as the artifacting adds some lovely cassette worn-like nostalgia. Adding instances of reverb and delay or even reversing the sound can create those long lush drones perfect for an ambient soundscape.
Try Generative Sequencing If you have a sequencer with probability and randomness, it's possible to create lovely and ever evolving sonic textures with generative programming.
If you can set a scale or key it is possible to program interesting ideas that stay in the key of your track. Start there, program a note in every step of the sequence, then set the seqeuncer to play at random (so it bounces randomly all accross the sequence. Finally alter the trigger probabilities of each step so a note will only play once in a while. With that, you've now created a lush texture that constantly morphs around any static samples you've created.
Add Guitar Pedals
Adding some reverb or other interesting pedals can create a nice ambiance for your track. If your setup has a mixer or gear that has an aux input, you can control the dry wet of the pedals and even choose what gear gets treated by the effect. I think of these pedals similarly to plugins in the DAW. Add and remove as needed to get the tonal qualities desired.
Try iOS Apps
PaulXStretch is a free paulstretch app that can turn any sound into one of those youtube 10 hour sleepy time videos.
You can throw a sound into it, slow it down then sample into a sampler... or sample your full track into paulstretch and turn it into one LONG drone.
If you want to truly master your gear and learn how to create, mix and master songs email me at sunwarpermusic@gmail.com for one on one coaching.
🥁Sample Packs: https://soundsbysunwarper.bandcamp.com/
🎧My Music: https://fanlink.to/imlnd
☕️Donate: https://ko-fi.com/sunwarper
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