Creating a sonic desert

The visuals I am using are based in a desert, in a sandstorm too. I want to get an idea of how a desert actually sounds to attempt recreating this.

Listening to sounds of a desert, the main thing I hear is noise, faint rumbles, animals and faint sounds of the sanding being blown.

A sandstorm on the other hand has howling winds, louder sand blowing around and things around being hit.

Creating a desert/sandstorm ambience

Using howling wind and a sand dune recording together created the sandstorm ambience I wanted.

I had an idea of having this ambience change in volume with the piece. Louder when not much is playing and quiet when a lot is. I automated this by sidechaining the ambience with the rest of the track, with a glue compressor.

I tried doing this on a previous track idea I had. I think it worked quite well but I should put the volume of the ambience down more.