Black Bat Records

How to Create an Atmosphere in Music

The atmosphere of music is very important in composition. Although ambient sounds appear and are mainly used in industrial, film, and epic orchestral music, there is no reason to limit yourself in other genres. After all, today’s digital age offers great opportunities with huge banks of loops and sound samples.

We used to walk down the street with recording devices in the older era of industrial music. We recorded sounds that we liked and then complicatedly edited them and gave them the form of samples on old sampling machines (such as those from Akai). This is no longer necessary in our digital age. You can save hours of work by reaching for pre-prepared samples from various companies. It costs something, but time is money. Moreover, most DAWs have a simple built-in sampler if you want something truly original. The sounds recorded on smartphones in the field are of reasonably good quality and support your endeavor if you want to take a longer but original road.

The atmosphere of the situation in which the music is set is beautifully explained by Hans Zimmer in his Masterclass. However, creating an atmosphere in music is not brain surgery. I will present you with a method you can use in any genre of music you produce.

How to go about it

First, you need to think about which genre you want to create in. Each genre has its own rules, its own sound character, but it should not limit creativity and inventiveness. After all, original work, with its own stamp of authenticity, is greatly valued. First, create the basic lines of chord progressions, rhythms, and an idea of what the composition should be about or what idea it should convey. Then close your eyes and hit play, or “play” it in your head from memory. During your “meditation on the composition,” be aware of the atmosphere of the idea. Is it a politically motivated song, or a loving romantic slow dance, or a tragic ballad? I’ll go with a tragic ballad for this post. I love Shakespeare, so let’s go with a tragic drama about lost love who unexpectedly died and about suffering. There’s a lot of emotion in that. We resonate in the depths of Darkwave at Black Bat Records, and we love a bit of tragic love drama with a hint of death.

For the purpose of my ballad, I imagine a woman standing silently at the grave of her deceased lover. She loved him with all her being. She’s not crying. A mixture of ambivalent emotions like anger at the one who murdered her lover (we support the drama), pain of a broken heart, the silence and emptiness of death, and guilt fight for attention inside of her. She is left with this hole in her heart, which no one else will ever fill.

The setting of my ballad is a cemetery. What kind of sounds can you hear in a cemetery? The silence, only a gentle wind in the trees, and a distant chirping of birds in the background. I have two options. I’ll either express those things by using instruments and a melody or with matching ambient sounds. I can express silence and gentle wind musically, for example, with long synthesizer tones in the background of the entire composition, which resemble a gentle wind in the trees. The chirping of birds can be played by a gentle flute or higher string instruments. However, there are no limits to your imagination. This is the background of the composition, which is not dominant. It can become more dominant if the text refers to it, for example, irritation by the chirping of birds because her beloved can no longer chirp or do anything for that matter. The things you want your listener to give attention to should be noticeable.

Another part of your music production’s atmosphere would be the emotions of the woman standing by the grave. Emotional ambivalence can be expressed in various ways, ranging from the expert level of counterpoint to the level of hard-hitting it with opposing sounds as you see fit. We decide whether the love, despair, and grief are stronger than the anger. We adjust the volume of the two instrument stems accordingly. If the woman is internally wailing with grief, we choose an instrument that sounds like wailing or a melody. We can use a more intense drum line and other instruments like a dominant electric guitar to express anger. We can convey piercing pain by a sudden, piercing sound of a brass instrument that breaks through the composition, like a sudden unexpected pain when remembering something intense.

You can continue in the same manner until you are satisfied with the atmosphere of the composition and you feel it expresses everything essential. Some composition settings are loaded and eventful. That is why it is also important not to overdo it. Less is more. Try to choose only important things from all your options and decide what supports your creation and what is too much. It should not sound like chaos, although chaos can also be useful at times. For example, in my ballad, it would be important to portray the peaceful atmosphere of a cemetery, but for the needs of expressing contradictions and ambivalence, I’d use only some emotions. Sometimes we can express contradictions in such a way that the music will express mainly anger, with very subtle elements of love and sorrow, and lyrics will reflect mostly love with only a hint of anger. It creates balance. It is an author’s choice. There are no limits to your imagination.

If you create something based on this blog series, I would be happy if you shared your creations here in the form of a link so we can enjoy your production with you. And if you have your specific process for creating the atmosphere of a song, you are also welcome to share if you wish. It can present a great opportunity to be inspired for me and other producers.

What to look forward to in the next post

You can look forward to how to create lyrics for such a composition and combine it with music in my next blog post.