How To Sound Design Cinematic Pads (using Vital)

In this sound design tutorial on how to sound design cinematic pads using Vital, I want to give you a basic setup that you can use to create your own pads and atmospheres.

Most of my tutorials cover rather dark sounds, so with this one you should be able to get more neutral and uplifting results (although it can be used for darker sounds too).

I'm using the free soft synth Vital but this can easily be replicated with other synths as well.

0:00 - The sound
0:17 - Intro
0:40 - First oscillator
1:39 - Second oscillator
2:10 - Reverb
2:33 - Third oscillator
3:23 - Master envelope settings
4:58 - Chorus
5:08 - Demonstration
5:40 - Tip for lower notes
6:07 - Tips for creating variations

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[JohnValhalla]

You are always my first choice whenever I need insightful wisdom on sound design. Your expertise is truly inspiring

[cornbrains]

Very nice tutorial, thank you. I love your channel. The method you use for movement by attaching an LFO to the 3rd oscillator volume is a nice alternative to what I had been seeing commonly elsewhere. I often see an LFO attached to the FINE pitch knob with micro tuning slightly moving but it quickly muddies the harmony. I like your approach because just a slight alteration on the amount that LFO 2 adjusts the volume is very satisfying. I added LFO 3 to adjust LFO 2 so that change comes in and out. Regardless, you made me look at this patch more critically so I can think how I can make slight variations to suit my mood. That is more important to me than learning a specific patch. Thank you for helping me understand what I am doing more deeply.

[emma_error]

omg i just opened youtube to look for another vital tutorial and the notification popped up 😭😭 thanks a lot!

[golden_calf]

Beautiful. This is the kind of content I NEED. Thank you!

[LearnTrainPlay]

Thank you this may come in useful, as does all your stuff.

[fluffykitties]

Thank you for this video. What key factors influence whether it will sound like a dark drone versus a more dreamy, positive light drone?
I find many "distopian", dark sounding drones on Youtube, but it seems to be difficult to find uplifting, light, dreamy "utopian" drones that sound really nice.
Do you have any suggestions for doing this? Thanks!

[dashdot]

Loving the tutorials but to my ear and depending on the chords the third oscillator is causing some dissonances because of the high frequency of LFO2 affecting it's volume, applying a bit more smoothness to that LFO2 fixes that problem. Thanks for the tutorials, learning a lot from them.