What Are Pads?

Drums, bass, lead, what’s missing?

As I play back my trance work-in-progress something is clearly missing. I go play a number of real trance tracks. They all have this nondescript background sound that definitely evokes the “trance” quality of the song.

Random example of pads

After searching various terms, I finally came to the term “pads.” Pads are the atmospheric, epic, trance-like sound that runs below the surface of most trance tracks. I have no idea how they got their name. Perhaps the sound is “padding” the track beneath the bassline, or maybe the pad sound was initially played with electronic instruments that were literally pads. In any case, the name seems to be confirmed by many videos on YouTube that show how to create pad sounds.

Working with pads

Here are some videos that look at creating/using pads in electronic music.

Now that I know what they’re called, on to adding some pads to my own trance track!

Is that right?

For those of you with actual music background, feel free to correct my description of pads. If you have any tips or advice, please let me know in the comments.