Here is a new piece of ambient new age/spa music that I created last night. I was talking with a friend of mine who likes to create ambient music for his own enjoyment, and since I had never created anything in that genre, I thought it was a good opportunity to try. I am quite pleased with how it turned out.

I've shared lots of details so you can try to create it yourself if you want to, since I have learned a great deal from what others have shared. I figured it would be a good piece of music to share.

Enjoy!

-- Mark Knight

Final Mix:
Ambient-Experiment-01-03.mp3

Raw Band in a Box Render for an interesting comparison to how much difference it makes doing extra music production:
Ambient-Experiment-01-BIAB-Render.mp3


****** Song Summary *************
Key=D, Tempo 65, Length (m:s)=1:58
No intro. 28 bar chorus, from bar 1 to bar 28. Repeat x1 chorus
No Melody
No Soloist track.
Style is _OORT.STY (Oort Spacey Ambient Synth)

*******************

[Chords]
|a) D|%|%| D6| D|%| G6/D|%|
|a) G|%| A7|%| Bm| Bm/E| Em|%|
|b) FMaj7| F/A| A|%| G|%| Em7|%|
| DMaj7|%| D6| D|
|a) D|%|%|%|
[ChordsEnd]


DAW: Cubase 12 Pro

Track 1:
Shakuhachi virtual instrument from UVI World Suite, playing the modified MIDI of the Shakuhachi RealTrack. The RealTrack was recorded very quiet and I wanted it to be more prominent, but when I increased the volume, I discovered that the RealTrack had far too much breath and wind noise for my liking, so I used the RealTrack MIDI, but some of the notes were outside the range of the virtual instrument so I changed some of the phrasing.
MIDI from RealTrack 2328:Shakuhachi, Synth, Background NewAge Ev 110.
I disabled the virtual instrument reverb, so that all reverb will come from the send effect channel in Track 2.
- Insert Effect: None
- Send the signal to Track 2 Send Effect channel

Track 2:
Shakuhachi Reverb Send Effect Channel with the following insert effects:
- Insert Effect: Plugin Alliance Maag EQ4 to reduce some high end before going into the reverb
- Insert Effect: Eventide Blackhole for reverb, 100% mix
- Insert Effect: Elysia Mpressor side-chained to the Shakuhachi instrument track so that the amount of reverb will be reduced when the flute is playing a note, and once the note has finished, the reverb will return to full volume. This helps improve the clarity and detail of the flute while still benefiting from a lot of reverb

Track 3:
RealTracks in style: ~2579:Bass, Synth, RnBModernSub Ev16 065
- Insert Effect: None

Track 4:
RealTracks in style: 2666:Pedal Steel, Rhythm LushChordsSlow Ev 075
- Insert Effect: Eventide Shimmerverb to add shimmery reverb

Track 5:
RealDrums in style:WorldPercKeitaSlow16ths: a: WorldPercKeitaSlow16thsb: WorldPercKeitaSlow16ths
- Insert Effect: Eventide Blackhole

Track 6:
Spitfire Audio London Contemporary Orchestra Textures playing the MIDI from the chords from the Cubase chord track
- Insert Effect: None

Track 7:
Steinberg Padshop 2 Crystal Ball playing the chord progression up 1 octave. Adds a nice higher pitch sheen and movement. This sounds a bit like multiple pitches of the tonal components of playing crystal bowls but without the scraping noise
- Insert Effect: None

Track 8:
RealTracks in style: 3621:Guitar, Electric, Rhythm AmbientBalladArp Ev16 065
- Insert Effect: Eventide Blackhole
- Insert Effect: Izotope Neutron EQ to darken the sound after the reverb
Panned to Left

Track 9:
Orange Tree Samples Evolution Vintage Gent DirectInput instrument track playing the MIDI of the Ambient Guitar RealTrack 3621:Guitar, Electric, Rhythm AmbientBalladArp Ev16 065
- Insert Effect: Amplitube 5 to create the ambient guitar effects,
- Insert Effect: Izotope Neutron EQ to tame the highs a bit after Amplitube
Panned to Right

I double-tracked the ambient guitar RealTrack with the virtual ambient guitar so that there was a slightly different timing and tone between the guitar sounds in left and right channels to add more motion and interest to the music. You can hear occasional guitar tones poking out from the left and right channels at different times.

To fill the stereo field and to create a lot of singing air in the background, making the sound very three dimensional, I used the MIDI from the Cubase chord track to play the chord progression using a vocal pad from Spitfire Audio London Contemporary Orchestra Textures along with a Crystal Bowl pad from Steinberg Padshop 2. Each of these instruments has subtle movement to keep the audio interesting. These tracks made such a huge difference.

Mastered the mix using Izotope Ozone 10 and Brainworx bx_limiter True Peak.