To celebrate the Halloween season this year, we’ve created Cinematic Horror & FX Vol. 3, the third installment of the series. Inside are dark drones, moody pads, big impacts, abrasive risers, and creepy downlifters, each made to have an unsettling edge.

This sample pack is perfect for soundtracks, scoring, or any production that needs a touch of scariness! Whether you’re a beginner or a seasoned pro, check out our production tips below to get started.

Sound Pack Spotlight: Production Tips and Tricks

For Beginners:

Seamless cinematic transitions.

Create a transition between drones by automating a reverb mix knob with a gradual ramp shape. After that, add one of our cinematic impact one-shots to tie the two drones together and seamlessly transition into a new drone.

Explore more cinematic horror elements 👹

Next level: Intermediate

Layering drone pads for more depth.

Layering is a great way to add depth and fullness to your track by filling out the frequency spectrum. We can achieve layered drone pad sounds by having two drone pad samples playing simultaneously and applying the correct FX to ensure they complement each other (rather than clash and sound muddy).

The blue-colored drone pad sample will act as our top layer with an EQ that is cutting off the lows, slightly sculpting the mids with small bell dips, and a slight low pass filter that is cutting off the highs. Then, we add a mid-sized room reverb with an increased high-frequency multiplier to apply more reverb to the high frequencies, making the drone pad less shrill-sounding and softer.

Next, we have our second green-colored drone pad, which will act as the lower layer. This layer will fill out more of the lows to mids. We apply an EQ with an extremely subtle low cut to eliminate any rumble, a small low-mid frequency dip to eliminate some muddiness, and a hard high cut that will omit any high and high-mid frequencies. Finally, we will add some saturation to beef up the sound. The result we end up with is a huge cinematic drone pad that sounds deep, intricate, and fills out our frequency spectrum.

Check out “battle ready” sounds 🤺

For Advanced

From horror to beauty.

Let’s turn a dark drone pad into a beautiful-sounding atmosphere with airy and mystical vibes. First, pitch up the drone pad sample anywhere from +12 to +15 semitones. After this, apply an EQ that cuts the lows and low mids, sculpts the mid-frequency resonances coming from pitching up the sample, and cuts off the high frequencies.

After this, apply a noticeable chorus effect to the sample, with the mix knob at about 30%. Finally, apply a shimmer reverb and granular delay to achieve a wet effect that is dense, harmonic, and almost string-like. With these effects added, we have turned a dark drone into a beautiful and airy atmospheric pad.

Transport to a “day in the park” 🌳