How to create an ambient pad with Paul's Extreme Sound Stretch

It might not look like much, but Paulstretch enables you to do some pretty amazing things to an audio file.
It might not look like much, but Paulstretch enables you to do some pretty amazing things to an audio file.

Paul's Extreme Sound Stretch - Paulstretch for short - isn't your average time-stretching application.

Capable of stretching audio files to 10,000 times their original size, it can make a piece of music that lasts a few minutes go on for several days! Even more incredibly, the results sound amazing - so good, in fact, that a stretched version of a track by no, er, less than Justin Bieber made with it went viral. It's quite a thing to behold the original version's pop hooks turn into wave after wave of glacial shoegaze bliss. Paulstretch is more than just a novelty, though, with its ability to stretch pretty much any sample into a weird and wonderful soundscape.

For more on timestretching, get your ass to Future Music 286, which is on sale now.

Step 1: First, download and install Paulstretch for PC or Mac. Load up the .wav, .ogg or .mp3 file that you want to stretch, and run Paulstretch.

Step2: To load music into Paulstretch, select File>Open Audio File from the menu. Navigate to the file you want to load, then double-click it to open it. Take the Stretch time down to about 4x by dragging the bar near the top of the interface.

Step 3: Press the Play button (bottom left-hand corner) to hear how the audio sounds. To hear the original version, right-click Play. Quite a difference! Try different Stretch and Window Size parameter combinations. Export sounds with File>Render and Save Audio File.

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