Sometimes, when working on a DAW, you want to add some ambience to certain tracks. You can hunt around for that right plugin setting and play and play and play with it, spending hours trying to get that right sound. But what if you could have complete control of the ambiance in a mix, save some time, and have the self-satisfaction that comes when you’ve actually created your own ambiance in a track?
Natural Ambiance in a Track
I tried a technique in the recording of the Hostages “Sunday Suicide” EP to add a natural ambiance. I struggled with plugins on the DAW, but I couldn’t get something that I liked. So I placed mics in different parts of different rooms and recorded the ambiance, which gave me total control of the sound.
My basement has many rooms that reflect and amplify certain frequencies and which have certain resonant characteristics. Some places enhance guitars, some enhance vocals. But you just can’t place mics in a random spot and hope for the best. You have to find the perfect ambiance for that instrument. Here’s How:
Solo the instrument you want effected; loop it; then walk around the room with a finger in your ear, facing your ear in different directions (try the walls, corners, next to your dirty laundry, behind the furnace, at the top of the stairs, of even close to your monitors), and eventually you’ll find that place where the sound is killer. Now MARK THAT PLACE then place a mic there. Playback the soloed track and record from your mic to an empty track (of course, make sure that the track’s monitor is off so there’s no feedback).
When its recorded, moving the ambiance track ahead by from 10 to 50 milliseconds, pan it in the opposite direction of the instruments’ stereo field.
The effects of the following samples have been boosted so that you can hear them. When you mix it all in, use your own judgment.
Guitar Solo
(I used two ambiance tracks, one panned hard right, the other hard panned left. Notice how some notes shimmer from side to side while the meat of the track remains in its stereo field)
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Rhythm Guitar
(Effect hard panned opposite guitar)
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Lead Vocal
(with ambiance as delay)
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Well, that’s it. Simple, elegant, and totally in your control. Plus: you made it yourself. You didn’t need to rely on your DAW and its plugin.
Listen to the Hostages to hear the effect in context with the mix.
