# Anatomy of a beautiful pad sound for Americana



## thequince (Dec 21, 2019)

I love the transparent warm pad souns which widen/deepen soundscape in a very subtle and non-intrusive way. They are in the background and do not get in a way of other instruments, but they add so much depth:



I heard them on albums like _The Ghost of Tom Joad _by Springsteen.

Another sound, in the same realm, but slightly different would be: 






Old CS-80 Pad | MultiTracks


<p style="margin: 0px; font-size: 12px; line-height: normal; font-family: Helvetica;">Made using samples from the Yamaha CS-80, this pad is warm, vintage ki




www.multitracks.com





I have not been able to find a VI or a Kontakt sample set to recreate this kind of sound. 

As for VSTs, I have Memorymoon ME80 and Kontakt, but I'm a guitar player and totally unfamiliar with synth programming, and so far, I have not been able to find something (a preset or sample set) that would be a good match for this sound. Any recommendations would be appreciated. 

Omnisphere seems like one of the good choices, but I was hoping not to have to go down the that route as Omnisphere is a fairly expensive plugin and the versatility is not what I am looking for here, but only need this very specific sound. 

Thanks


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## ReelToLogic (Dec 22, 2019)

MegaMagic Pads for Kontakt has a lot of nice sounds and is on sale right now for $24.50 (see link below). I have the Omnisphere version and I haven't checked to see if any sounds match the ones in your video, but there's likely something that will meet your needs.

https://www.pluginguru.com/products/megamagic-pads/


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## Sample Fuel (Dec 27, 2019)

Nice song....

You might want to check out our PAD MOTION product as well.



https://www.samplefuel.com/padmotion


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## TheUnfinished (Dec 30, 2019)

This seems like a fairly simple pad that most decent synths should be able to manage.

I did this little patch in Zebra in about five minutes (not trying to show off! just trying to point out it's easily within your reach with little programming). Basically it's two oscillators (saw and pulse), low down on a low pass filter, with an envelope controlling the filter to give that subtle movement. Bit of detune, vibrato and chorus to add some width and depth. Then a touch of delay and reverb to taste.

You can pare it back even further, losing the detune and vibrato, to bring that simpler, glassier quality too, if you want to. I had the oscillators in dual mode to add the warm, analogue width - making them single would create a more basic vibe too; something more Prophet-y.


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