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Ambient music has come a long way since Brian Eno’s releases in the ’70s and ’80s, which are often credited for jumpstarting the genre as we know it today.
Although we can trace a few composers back to the European Renaissance who were actively challenging the rhythmic and structural standards of music theory, they could’ve never foreseen the sea of hours-long YouTube playlists branded for focus and relaxation.
That said, ambient music isn’t meant to solely exist in the background. It can be deeply immersive and encapsulating in its own right, and learning how to make ambient music is also central to film scoring and multimedia art installations—instead of focusing on catchy hooks or driving rhythms, it centers on atmosphere, emotion, and gradual evolution, which positions it to uniquely pair with other art forms. In addition, learning how to make ambient music can open up new perspectives and approaches to producing any type of music.
In this guide, let’s explore the key characteristics of this wide-reaching genre and break down some techniques for how you can design your own ambient soundscapes. Feel free to use the table of contents below to easily navigate to a specific section.
What you’ll learn:
- What is ambient music?
- How to make ambient music
- Tools and techniques for slow, evolving soundscapes
- Browse ambient loops, textures, and plugins on Splice
Let’s dive in!
What is ambient music?
Ambient music is a genre built around moods and sonic landscapes that emphasize space.
Forget everything you know about form. By freeing the mind of traditional song structures, ambient composers can create gradual journeys that you can fall deeply into as layers are introduced, removed, and evolved. The lack of very clear patterns like verses and choruses positions the genre for longer tracks, which can be enjoyed with full attention or dropped into the background. This is where pairing ambient music with studying comes from—a reputation that’s shared with lo-fi music.
An ambient producer’s goal is to create a sense of space, with room for long, isolated sounds and periods of swelling and silence that popular music usually can’t afford. Producing ambient music can involve the immense restraint of bouncing a master with only a few tracks across five, ten, or more minutes. It can also be expansive, with intense panning or polyphonic design, creating a lush, emotive piece ready to be paired with moving picture.
How to make ambient music
Here are some key guidelines to keep in mind when setting up your first session for making ambient music in your DAW:
- Slow tempos: Relaxation is at the forefront here. No matter the set tempo within the DAW, an ambient piece might sound entirely arhythmic to the listener. Typically, traditional rhythmic elements like a constant drum groove are kept to a minimum.
- Extended chords: Through prolonged sustains, the color and textures of a single chord can take up minutes. Yes, as long as many entire pop songs! Yet, this minimalist approach will be quite familiar to those who’ve enjoyed meditation, yoga, or sound healing, among countless other mindfulness practices.
- Textural effects: Reverb is a central tool for producing ambient music, assisting in texture-building and blending tones together across measures (we’ll dive more into it shortly). Before any mixing plugins come into play, however, the inherent textures of hardware and software synths also offer ample opportunities to establish a sense of space for an ambient track.
Tools and techniques for slow, evolving soundscapes
One of the most riveting aspects of making ambient music is the ability to “show your work” as you might’ve done with mathematics equations in school. In pop music, there’s an expectation of perfection. While not always, the general expectation is to highly polish each track and layer entirely new ones on top as we move through each song section.
In ambient music, we also evolve through layering, but we additionally allow individual voicings to evolve. We can be unafraid to include those special first takes that birthed an idea, and re-introduce the melody or chord progression later in a more polished way. We can reverse, stretch, and pick apart hooks across the long track to give listeners a more intimate look into the sounds.
In other words, if pop music allows us to look at it as an artifact, preserved in a glass case in a museum, ambient music allows us to pick it up and observe it from different angles. Let’s explore a few ways we can create that tactile sonic object for the listener.
Working with reverb and delay
Reverb is an effect used across every genre of music in one way or another. Most audio recordings will include some form of natural reverb, from the subtle ways in which an untreated bedroom studio responds to sound to the more intense reverberations of a specialized space like a hall or church. In ambient music production, reverb is most often applied to the electronic sounds that make up the genre’s core, and is essential to the space-building we’ve emphasized.
There are countless stock and third-party reverb plugins at our disposal today that can simulate a wide range of room sizes and decay times. These pair well with delay plugins, which can introduce repetition and provide subtle rhythmic foundations within an ambient piece. Remember—ambient music usually avoids the pulsing drums present across most other genres, but we’re still wired to follow any repetitions and perceive them as patterns. Delay can assist in creating some sense of that structure without bringing in a kick and snare.
Here are a few ways you can transform a MIDI pattern into an ambient atmosphere:
- A long hall reverb paired with a delay with high amounts of feedback, creating a tense, dense layer that you can later strip away.
- A short but intense church reverb with an auto-panned delay, providing stereo movement that’s best experienced with headphones.
- A reverse reverb with a basic tempo-synced delay, subtly revealing your BPM amidst an unexpectedly altered sound.
Like any effects, be careful not to overuse these. Too much reverb or delay can cause sounds to disappear into the mix, so producing with a very intentional balance of wet and dry signals is crucial. If you really like what you’ve done on individual tracks but certain qualities are lost when put together, you can also carve out some distinct frequency ranges with EQ.
Layering drones, pads, and textures
A drone is a sustained tone that acts as a bedrock for the rest of your sounds. The easiest way to begin writing an ambient track is finding a drone you connect with. It might be only one note, or change between a few, but it should create a foundation that the listener can trust will remain.
When looking for drones, don’t be shy to get creative. You can play long notes on your MIDI keyboard, or take a single sample from Splice and stretch and manipulate it to become your drone.
Synth pads are also commonly used here. By introducing pads to the harmonic anchor of the drone, we begin to move the track forward gradually with shifts in mood and timbre. Add color over time with chord extensions, or try layering multiple pads—premium synths like Serum have an array of options with infinite opportunities for further sound design, and plugins like Splice INSTRUMENT also offer ever-growing libraries of free presets you can explore.
Minimalist sequencing and automation
In general, we can remove the pressure on ourselves to write complex harmonic structures. While plenty of artists are pushing this boundary today, at its core, ambient music uses fewer notes and focuses on intentional timbres and timing. Here are some ways to make a lot out of a little:
- Automation: We’ve touched on panning already, but there are also automation techniques like filter sweeps, basic volume fades, and dynamic global effects. Each of these can help a note breathe and remain interesting for a long time.
- Thinking in minutes: The early days of radio infamously placed a time limit on songs to have a chance to be played. Today, platforms like TikTok place the same pressure on producers to obsess over track length for potential sync and listenership opportunities. In ambient music, we force ourselves to do the opposite, and from that discomfort comes a versatile world where listeners can do far more than what’s within the constraints of a “radio-ready” song.
Browse ambient loops, textures, and plugins on Splice
Ambient music is a central source of expression for some artists, and a creative reset for others. We’ve gone through how producing ambient music can allow us to slow down, focus on texture, and build immersive soundscapes that feel expansive and cinematic.
The potential source material for such soundscapes is infinite—if you’re not sure where to begin, here are some potential starting points.
Sample packs:
- Sample Magic’s Ambient Textures
- Sample Magic’s Dark Cinematic Electronica
- Black Octopus’ Vocal Atmospheres by Holly Drummond
- Tennyson’s Different Water Sample Pack
- Moment’s Resonance Botanica, a phritz moment
Software instruments:
- Xfer Records’ Serum
- Splice INSTRUMENT
- Spitfire Audio’s BBC Radiophonic Workshop
- Spitfire Audio’s Eric Whitacre Choir
- Arturia’s V Collection
Effects plugins:
- Spitfire Audio’s AIR Studio Reverb
- XLN Audio’s RC-20 Retro Color
- Baby Audio’s Crystalline
- iZotope’s Neoverb
- Output’s Portal
These resources can serve as building blocks. You can layer loops together, process them with effects, or combine them with your own recordings. You can also bring in MIDI clips that you’ve made previously and see how they sound with new plugins.
And there you have it—we wish you the best on your ambient music production journey! What other topics would you like to see us cover next? Start a conversation with us and an ever-growing community of music creators via the Splice Discord.
Inspire your next track with the hundreds of free and premium instrument presets available in Splice INSTRUMENT:
May 6, 2026
