Timbral Ambient Work

Use sound as a texture to create a work that fully explores timbre and the inner subtleties of sounds.

Creating Slowly Evolving Textures

Delicate manipulation and subtle automation should allow you to create slow moving and continuous textures.

You might find it useful to explore these ideas:

• • Energy and flow.
  • Make use of panning and reverb to provide you with a three dimensional sonic space.
  • Move sounds left and right, but also forwards and backwards using reverb and volume automation.
  • Experiment with flanging, chorus and beating in order to construct subtle variations in your sounds.

Composition Tip

Try to create smooth and imperceptible transitions and transformations. This will help to keep your listener enfolded in the sounds.

Any jarring transitions might jolt them out of their immersion in your sounds.

You may find it useful to revisit the page on ‘Phase and Complex Soundwave Interaction’ for inspiration.

Time-stretching can also be a powerful tool in creating very extended and slowly shifting sound textures. Take a small sound and stretch it until it is quite big.

Structuring the Piece

You might find it useful to have a basic overview or structure to aid in the composition of your piece. This might be something very simple, such as moving gradually from noisy to pitched sounds over the course of 4/5 minutes, or in taking inspiration from clouds rolling across a landscape.