The Volca Sample is very cheap -
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My favorite cheap ambient synth is an old iPad running Samplr
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100% sadly my iPad stopped working …
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a case for " it’s not the gear but how you use it"…beautiful.
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Zoom MS-70CDR + Whatever you can find for under $50 on your local Craigslist second hand ads that has keys.
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It’s nearly an excellent machine, rendered a toy by underdeveloped firmware, no updates, and some baffling design decisions. Best thing about it was not losing money on a used one, which then led to a Digitakt. A crying shame, could have been a beast.
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The songs in the top post were made 100% in software while the user was in a depressed state.
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for cheap hardware to do burial stuff I’d defo grab model samples. just a personal preference.
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Budget. Yamaha SU10 connected to a MIDI controller
Or literally anything you already own played through Valhalla free or inexpensive plugins
Or just buy an actual Alesis QuadraVerb
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Assuming you already have a computer…
might be worthwhile to save up for Organelle, or find it used.
lil hardware box that can do anything from sampling, synthesizers and fx, or everything together.
users make their own firmware versions, and you can combine multiple modules together.
it can sound vastly different from person to person, so look around if anything sparks your interested.
wouldnt recommend it to a beginner, but if you know your way around, it can be a lot of fun.
Best budget ambient synth is any VST and Valhalla Reverbs.
Better than many non-budget synths and separate (or in-synth) reverb!
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Agreed. It really is that easy.
But no, instead of making music, people want to assign a price and then have others list all of the possible devices that fit within that budget while being disappointed that there’s no single solution in-a-box that’s going to magically recreate that song by their favorite artist. Rinse, repeat.
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Not sure if this is targeted to me but I will answer anyways.
I am not trying to recreate burial songs, it is more about the textures that he used (you can find a lot of the same textures in ico soundtrack for example).
I am aware vst and DAW are the best budget options, I just don’t feel inspired making ambient tracks with them.
This is why I asked for some inspiring hardware synths able to do these kinds of sounds, or come close to it.
As for the budget, that is just the money I can spare for music, I know it is not much, but it is what it is.
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“But… but… it must be hardware!” Ok, cool. Hardware is fun. Who doesn’t like hardware? But on a budget (or even not on a budget) there’s going to be no single device that’s going to do the work for you.
It will be likely be a combination of tools and techniques that was used to create the music we know and love.
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I’m sorry. It wasn’t targeted at you. It’s more about the general tendency of threads here.
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Don’t worry, people ranting at others often have hidden profiles so it doesn’t count. It’s in their nature to rant instead of just muting the thread.
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there really needs to be a mod-bot that instantly moves those rants into the Miserable Git thread. No one would even notice
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Ok, I got it it, I searched reverb for older rack samplers and it looks like the akai s2000 is the winner, you can get one for less than $300. That is what I would do if forced to use hardware for this kind of music with that budget.
I flipped through guitar vids and stopped on one where one of Prince and the NPG’s guitarists was discussing her new rig, and how she’s been doing a bunch of “ambient” sets, and while I’m used to shoegaze pedalboards… beyond some tone shaping she had the majority of the ambience being performed by a Strymon Timeline and BlueSky.
And mostly techniques! With quality reverb/delay (again, will always pump Valhalla and Sean Costello’s DSP work which bests stuff far more expensive ) most tone sources can be shaped into what you’re looking for.
Yes, you can get many different variants of reverb (though I would probably chuckle at how many of the lo-fi that would fit into Burial’s aesthetic are PT2399 chips of some variety.)
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