THE JOY OF PADS

For many, the term ‘synth pad’ conjures up thoughts of loud 80s bands with big hair, utilising equally large polysynths from the same era and using them to ramp up the cheese, but the actual concept of the pad was initiated long before then, it’s just that the pad’s increased association with synths placed it on a trajectory that catapulted the term firmly into the production lexicon.

TERMS AND CONDITIONS

Nobody really knows where the term ‘pad’ came from, or even when it first appeared, but it’s possible to chart its use back several hundred years, where composers such as JS Bach would have used string instruments to basically ‘pad-out’ textures, alongside a degree of harmonic movement. Despite these classical beginnings, it could be argued that the overall concept of the pad has largely been unchanged since this time, while the way we produce the sounds has altered substantially.

Looking at the term’s description literally, the purpose of the pad is to pad-out the texture, whether it be in a musical sense, or for the sake of fleshing out a mix, when producing music in a studio or live setting.

One of the earliest uses of electronic pads could be cited back to the contemporary works of experimental composer Karlheinz Stockhausen. His work called (1967) made groundbreaking use of the national anthems of the world, which were recorded, processed and mutated in such a way