Are You Getting The Results You Want With Your Existing Ambient Pads At Church?

Are You Getting The Results You Want With Your Existing Ambient Pads At Church?

If you've found Coresound Pads' website, you are either one of two people.

You've either never used ambient worship pads before and are curious...

Or you've previously used ambient pads from other sources and want to expand your collection.

To both groups of people... Welcome!

To those who haven't used pads before... we'll post more blog content aimed specifically at you.  (Take a look at what's already on our site as well - lots of good info to go around!)

But to those who've used pads from other sources... I want to ask you a question.  

Are you getting the results you want with your existing pads at church?

Maybe the pads you bought weren't as amazing-sounding as you had hoped they would be.  Maybe they began to sour the idea of pads being a genuine asset for your worship team.

You see, the reason that Coresound Pads exists in the first place is because we (Mike and Alex) bought pads from the other main pad vendors out there, too.  We played with them.  We tweaked them.  

And although we loved the concept of pads providing a rich ambient texture underneath the rest of our music, we weren't 100% satisfied with how the pads sounded in our mix.

Some pads drew too much attention to themselves.  Pads should be designed to support the rest of your music team and play a "background role".  They shouldn't be the most obvious sound you hear in your mix!  The drastic changes in what frequencies were being filled and the broad range of overall volume level were too distracting.

Some pads didn't do much of anything.  Some pads sounded nice when we played them... for about 15 seconds.  With no variation in the sound, though, the pad began to make the whole mix feel monotonous and boring.  

BIGGEST OFFENDER - Most pads made our mix sound "muddy" in the frequencies where it counts most - the same range as our main instrument (guitar or piano).  Without getting too geeky, if you have two different instruments both playing in the same frequency range, they will start to create a muddy sound and make the entire mix sound less appealing.  Almost every pad we bought & tried sounded great when played on its own... but then when played with other instruments (like they're meant to be used!), they kept getting in the way frequency-wise.  We had to do some crazy EQ sweeping and other mix-fixing to even make them kinda work.  This defeats the purpose of pads entirely - they should be designed to support your music, not take your music over! 

 

So we set out to design our own Pads, with three main goals in mind:

Our pads will not draw too much attention to themselves.  Each key of every pad will be meticulously worked on to ensure they complement your music instead of becoming the focal point of your mix.

Our pads will not become monotonous.  We labored over every second of pads content to ensure the pads weren't just "filling space", but were musically appealing and truly enhanced the music.

Our pads WILL NOT make the mix muddy in the same range of a typical lead instrument. Without question, this was the most important factor of them all for us.  We wanted these pads to provide ambient texture, atmosphere, and support.... not make our mix sound busy and sloppy.  Lots of time, gear, and work went into ensuring that every Pad sound stood up to this test.

 

If you're ready to give Coresound Pads a try, you won't be disappointed.  We want the hard work to translate into the best possible pads experience for YOU.  We hope you enjoy them!


How about you?  What ways have pads helped (or hurt) your worship sound?



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