How To Create Ambient Music From Sampled Loops In 7 Steps

Yoon Suin The Purple Land, is a Dungeons & Dragons setting written by David McGrogan. The setting was my introduction to the Table Top Roleplaying Hobby, and has been my go to setting ever since. After seeing the success of the recently kickstarted second edition of the setting, I decided to expand upon the Topaz Isles; a region within the setting that I felt was underdeveloped. There was just one issue, being a college student, I needed to somehow incorporate this project into my school work, inorder to justify the time I was spending on it. And inorder to do that, I decided to create an ambient mini album for the Topaz isles; and make a record of the process so that you might learn how to make your own Ambient tracks.

What You'll Need To Follow My Process

-Access to Ableton Live 11, or the trial version of the application.
-A Novation Launchpad.
-A Splice subscription.
-20 to 30 sheets of paper with an 8 by 8 grid printed on them.

Step 1: Pick & Write Down A Theme

Your theme is going to be the bedrock, the foundation of your tracks. By choosing a theme, you'll reduce the amount of you spend looking through splice for the right sounds. In my case I wanted to put together a couple tracks that transported the listener to a island filled environment, so I choose nautical sounding tracks an instruments as my theme. Meaning I'd want to limit my search to revolve around steel pan drums and reggee music.

Step 2a: Start Searching Splice For Loops

After picking and writting down a theme, you should open Splice and begin searching for instruments and sounds that are evocative or reminasent of your theme. For a beginner like myself, I recommend limiting your search to Loops only. This part should take the longest as your tune will only be as good as the loops you select.

Step 2b: Move Your Selected Loops Into The Ableton DAW

As you come across a loop that fits your theme, and sounds pleasing to your ear your going to want to download the loop and drag the loop into one of the MiDi colmns in your Ableton DAW. Personally, I like to group similar sounds. Synths with synths, percussion with percussion, and vocals with vocals.

Step 3: Remove Inharmonious Loops

Now that you’ve dragged all the loops you want to use for your tune, you need to identify Loops that complement eachother. Personally, I found that its easiest to do this by playing a single loop repeatedly and cycling through the remaining loops as it plays. Do this for evey loop you’ve, deleting the loops that aren’t complementing one another.

Step 4: Start Creating "Loop Combinations"

After cutting out the uncomplementry loops, you can truely begin having fun. Start messing with the loops, creating combinations and recording them on your 8 x 8 grid sheet as you go. For a 3 minute tune you want about 10-20 different Loop comobinations.

Step 5: Organize "Loop Combinations" Into A "Track Sheet"

Now that you’ve made your loop combinations, you want to organize them. Personally, I like to keep similar patterns together, arranging them in a progressive manner. You want to draw a pathway with sound, abrupt changes can make the tune sound discordant. So if your tune isnt ment to be discordant, this should be avoided.

Step 6: Record Your "Track Sheet"

Once your happy with how you've organized your "Track Sheet", you can begin recording your track. To do this in Ableton press the TAB key on your keyboard. This should take you to the following screen.

After you've it TAB, you can begin recording by clicking the Circle Button at the top of the screen. When you'd like to finish recording your track. Click the Square Button at the top of the screen.

Step 7: Export Your Track Sheet

Once you've finished recording your Track, click File, Export Audio/Video, Rendered Tracks, Master Track, and Export.

The Fisnished Product

Hopefully after following the advice presented in these steps, you'll have put together an ambient Track. Using these same steps I came up with the following Track; "Trade Wind Rush". If you enjoyed listening to "Trade Wind Rush, you can buy the Track from my BandCamp.

[For Class] The Objectives I Completed With This Project

-Utilize natural sound in audio packages - I used bird sounds and ocean sounds to create the effect of world building.
-Effectively employ sound bites and other audio recording to tell media stories - I combined multiple loops to create a couple songs.
-Prioritize collected research - I priortized loops that fit within the project's theme.
-Utilize a storyboard and shot-sheet to plan music.

[For Class] How Does This Project Connect To My Dream Or Future Career

The comericial incoperation of Audio is a recent development within the 3rd-party publishing space of D&D. Borough Bounds is the most popular group of creators who have made an effort to include ambient audio in all their projects. Given that my long-shot dream is to become a fulltime 3rd-party publisher. Adapting to new niche is certianly somthing I could do to differentiate my work for the many other 3rd-party creators. Esspecially since moving foward, I will be creating my own settings, rather than adding to already existing settings.