I can't thank you enough for this very detailed response. As far as your Komplete story, I'm realizing that using stock synths allow you to be more creative with how you shape your sound since you're fairly limited, so that's kinda cool to think about it like that now.
I tried automation and the horns sounded much better, but I ended up just cutting them entirely. The pattern seemed too slow for the beat. I also automated the strings and they sounded great. I never really used automation before in my mixes but it seems like a real game changer. And your tip about the bass under the kick really helps my track have more depth without being overwhelmed with all the sounds.
I'm still learning about arranging pop songs, mostly by listening to pop songs, but I see a lot of them are composed of only a few tracks going on at one time, never more than 3 at a time. Like how you said less is more. I also read though how these songs can have up to 100 tracks in the project. I'm assume this is by layering, but everytime I layer sounds it tends to sound overwhelming with fuzz/noise or just too clashy. Any tips on this?
The good news is most stock DAW synths are fine. You can make a lot of sounds with almost any synth.
Yeah, they can really bring strings to life. I'd say, in this context, this is less of a mixing decision. If someone had sent you the beat you linked in this thread, and you automated the strings to have really obvious volume changes, they'd probably be like "uhh please don't do that." Or they have no idea how dynamics works and that's what they would've done if they knew better.
The thing is, when people first get into sound quality and mixing, they immediately talk shit about pop music and how and it's squashed and everything. They do this out of insecurity to get their cool audio guy glasses. The truth is, pop music is amazingly well produced. It's mixed by very skilled people. Of course, when I say pop music, I'm talking about stuff like Katy Perry or whatever sounds bubble-gummy. Pop music is getting a little less defined because of the popularity of songs with less poppy instrumentation (Happy-Pharrell, Don't-Ed Sheeran, i-Kendrick Lamar). I don't even have one meaning for the word pop to be honest, and I often confuse myself and others with it. The point being, it's a big goal to tackle, and you'll probably be learning how to do it your whole life to be honest. Even the successful pop engineers are still learning.
Layering is a bit tricky. Arguably, a sound isn't being layered on another sound if you can tell those sounds apart, but this is a messy territory. If you feel like a sound isn't really layering, and it's adding that fuzz/noise, it is usually as simple as turning the track down. This goes back to things that are felt more than heard. But this also works for things that are there own sound. I think you'll find the really simple tracks you like might have things incredibly low in volume that are playing their own role. Most likely percussion. That often adds depth to a track, as the quickest and cleanest way to make something seem farther back is not eq or reverb, but turning it down.
And yes, sometimes tracks have a crazy amount of layering going on. And if it sounds good, there's a reason for it. It's a tricky area. Generally, you layer sounds when you want different formants. You can think about this in simpler waveform terms. A sine wave on top of a sine wave makes it hard for any one sinewave to cut through. A saw can cut through better (funny). Of course, instruments are way more complicated than these wave forms, but there is no doubt certain formants to certain instruments.
I forgot if mods are cool with this, but I'm going to link a few private tracks from my soundcloud for examples.
https://soundcloud.com/gabe-hawk/sentient-2/s-bjCfW. In this track, I make a layering decision. It starts off with some rhodes, and I slowly bring in a really bright synth that's low in volume to brighten up the beat a little. Without it, it's a very dark track. But I don't have it so loud that it's overbearing, because chill beats to me are more on the dark side. It seems even chiller when that synth drops out. I really wish I had a more scientific reason for bringing this synth in, but I just knew these rhodes couldn't be alone. I will say I had another synth layered in before I chose this one, and it made it sound really cheesy. I'll post that example at the end of this explanation. Basically, my brother was in the room, I muted that cheesy synth, and the track just got better. That's really the number one way to know if a parts working, because in the end, even the pros do trial and error. Mute a part, and see if the track gets better. I figured it would in the case of your beat and the brass just because I've been in a similar situation. I also have a lot of stuff side-chained compressed to the kick for that flying lotus-esque style. To be honest, I was not sure about the beat before I put that in. It just wasn't breathing in a way. Because the rhodes really just sit there at full volume, the drums have a really repetitive pattern, and nothing is coming in or out (though I did add some risers in this version). Not to say a beat is only good with side-chain compression, since most beats don't even use it, but a beat needs a little movement. So the side-chain compression was a bit of a cheat for movement and breathing. Movement is a big key to energy in a track as well. That's why people use risers. People like when music sort of SWINGS into other sections. Even when it seems like a big hit in a rock band comes out of nowhere, the bassist usually did some sort of slide like 40ms before the bar (A great example of this is for free? (interlude) - Kendrick Lamar. Before that huge hit, the bassist clearly does a little slide into the root note). There's also of course, a groove and swing to my song, just because of the way the drums are placed. It's not too hard to put swing into your drum timing, but groove is also about the dynamics of sounds. If that kick was for some reason 2 seconds in length, it would completely lose it's groove. It's decay works with the track. In this case, it has a short decay. It's a very punchy kick, and I think anything even a little longer would ruin the feel.
There's also something to be said about that pro comment above. While the more you learn, the more you know what works, you are also falling into the trap of not being creative. I feel like everytime I say "I know this sound won't work, so I won't try it", I'm just committing to being non-creative. Of course, in the world of music, you have to move fast. The amount of time it takes to record an album after it has been written would shock bedroom producers that spend a year on one song. But the really creative types that also make good music (I love experimental music, but nothing that sounds weird is inherently good) know how to say "I don't know." They just show up with confidence. They don't say "We need to add brass to this song because it's a hype song and brass can hype things up." That's a slippery slope. As always, it's a balance between the competent producer and the creative type that just throws paint everywhere. However, it is always better to be good than creative, in my opinion. You can focus on being creative later. Someone once said the more you learn, the less creative you get, and I think that's bullshit. I think it's harder to be creative, because you've seen more and are less willing to move from what you know works, but it can be done.
Also, in regards to pros and trial and error. You know those videos you see on software advertisements where some producer bangs out a beat in 7 minutes with headphones and Maschine or some shit? Well it's true that that happens, sometimes. But make him do that one day of every month for 9 months under the same conditions and even the pros probably won't do it every time. Those advertisements are more than likely staged, unless the producer is making the exact same derivative shit he always makes. But I even saw Avicci take a few hours to make very similar beats to what he already has made, and he's a reputable producer.
So this first version that I sent to someone had no risers of any kind, no side-chain compression, the cheesy synth I didn't like, and also the percussion was a little too loud. It was a beat I wasn't that excited about and now I really like the soundcloud version I did.
View attachment Sentient.mp3
This example is going to be a little annoying cause one version is louder than the other, and has a riser, even though it's the worse version (and louder always sounds better).
I was trying to make something similar to Hugs by lonely island, and I was having a hard time making the beat sound full.
Here is the original version, and here is the version with 3 more percussion elements layered underneath the track, quietly.
https://soundcloud.com/gabe-hawk/hugs-beat-rip-off/s-2bEuH
https://soundcloud.com/gabe-hawk/cheers-without-risers/s-TCC7b
Oh yeah, they also have totally not similar titles.
You might not be able to hear this without decent monitors, but it makes a difference. There are three percussion parts in cheers without risers that aren't in Hugs rip off (there is also a snare roll). I can't explain it any other way than saying, when these percussion parts are taken out (making it sounds like the hugs rip off beat) the beat just loses it's depth and it sounds empty. The percussion is interacting with the main parts in such a way that it almost sounds like you are taking notes out of the song when you mute the percussion parts. Now here's the version with risers and falls and what not.
https://soundcloud.com/gabe-hawk/cheers/s-cm5HW
The number one thing to remember, when you start feeling constricted about what you can layer and what instruments can be playing at the same time, is contrast. Contrast is king. In fact, if you want to make life easier, just always think about contrast in everything. In companies, EA doesn't seem as shitty to people as a developer with a lot of fan support and a great history that suddenly does a really shitty business practice. In Shakespeare's Henry The Fourth, Henry has a scary ass monologue about his plans for when he becomes king. In the play, Henry is royalty who hangs out with thieves and robs other people with them. Everybody knows he does it. But in his monologue, he reveals that he's doing it so that when he becomes king and starts acting good, he will seem that much better to the public. Eminem almost had his career taken down when a song of him leaked, where he made fun of black girls and said the N word, but all it really did was show the court and the people how far he has grown since then (he was like 16 or something at the time of the tape). It actually worked in his favor.
In sex, you don't just thrust as deep as you can ALL THE TIME. That's boring. You alternate depths, angles, positions, or sometimes you're doing something else entirely.
Girls are going to talk to the most attractive guy at the party, but if he's surrounded by a bunch of channing tatums, he's not going to seem as attractive.
In stories or film, a character that yells and is angry all the time is played out and boring. A character with multiple emotions has depth. A character that almost never gets angry and suddenly does makes for one of the scariest scenes in the story (as long as it still seems characteristic of them). In Justified, Rayland has a very tolerant police chief that puts up with his shit, but there is one episode where he gets truly pissed, and it is not fun to watch. It is uncomfortable and scary. That's depth. Contrast is depth.
I mean, even from a logic and reason point of view, contrast is king. A painting of just the color black is not a good painting. That is pretentious as hell. That's why we paint pictures, because a picture can't be a picture without contrast. And you can use contrast to focus the reader on parts of the picture. A picture of one color is a picture of nothing. That doesn't look like a house, does it? How could it?
So it is with music. If you want a big sub bass in a song, you want all the other parts to get the hell out of that frequency range. A song with nothing but high frequency synths and percussion with a simple sine wave for a sub bass has a huge potential for bass power. I can't remember which decade of metal this was, but it was common practice for the actual guitars to domiante the bass range, and the bass sound, if you soloed it, was this super paper thing clicky thing. But because of contrast and psychoacoustics, when those guitars and the bass hit at the same time, it seems like the bass is where the bass is coming from (why wouldn't it?). In drake's music, his beats are often heavily low passed, and it makes his vocals seem way brighter than they are. Listen to lord knows by Drake, suddenly his vocals don't seem so bright. Same with over.
If you want a kick to be punchy, maybe don't have other punchy things hitting at the same time as it (unless they are hitting in such a way that they seem a part of the kick, but just like in all layering, you need to consider how low in volume they can be while still adding to that kick. I may regret this statement, but it makes sense to think that, in all layering, one sound has to dominate all the other layered sounds. For stuff that hits at the same time as a kick, it's almost always a kick). It's a big pet peeve of mine when the drums in my songs aren't coming through well. Which is weird, because there are songs I like where the drums take a back seat. But that's the thing. There will always be parts of your song that take a back seat. Sometimes it's drums, but for beats it's usually not. You will use contrast in arranging, and you will use it in mixing. Maybe you have a piano at the beginning and you really want the low end, but when the beat comes in and the bass comes in it turns to shit. You can automate some eq, take the low end out when the bass comes in. Then the bass is basically acting as the low end.
I'm really hesitant to post these songs, because they're old and the exact opposite of good mixes, but I think they're still good examples of what I'm talking about.
View attachment Classy Devil Anji (2).mp3 This beat has a high passed piano, some really clogged up high end with percussion, and a sub bass turned up REALLY LOUD. The sub bass is sidechained to the kick, and the low end on this track is kind of undeniable. It might be better turned down, but that's besides the point. THis sub wouldn't have worked if the piano was playing an octave lower and there were super pitched down toms hitting and a baritone singer. Even if it was this loud in the song, that wouldn't have worked. That would be a soupy mess, although it would make the percussion seem brighter. It's important to remember that lower frequencies are very special and need to be handled with care, due to physics and the way we hear sound. We don't hear low frequencies well in the first place, and the octave frequencies are much more bunched together (an octave above 30 hz is 60 hz, but an octave above 5000hz is 10000hz. Huge difference). So even if you were trying to get a soupy low end mess so your track seemed brighter, it could all go to shit. When I talked about drake lowpassing stuff, they usually lowpass synths that don't have a lot of low end content anyway. They just get really dark sounding beats, but it doesn't turn into a soupy mess. Anyway, this beat has that going for it. A big sub bass. Of course, that also means this beat isn't that interesting on phones or small speakers. The coolest part of it is the bass melody, to me at least. The pianos are only kinda interesting. A little halloweeny. The beat slows down at the end and is filtered, but then the filter widens and it seems much bigger. That's contrast again. All in all, I don't think it's a bad beat, but it's certainly messy. I couldn't even imagine vocals on here.
View attachment Alone.mp3. This is an old song of mine. Terrible mix really, but I think it's a creative song. This is an example of emotional contrast and making something seem bigger. Frankly, the chorus isn't as big as I could make it today. I made this about a year ago. The kick is indistinct. Things are too far back that shouldn't be. Things are louder than they should be. But I Really like this chorus drop. Genuinely. I think it seems much more emotional because the intro is so gentle, and then I have very distorted vocals that are louder than the verse. I might remake this someday. But it's a good example of arranging something for bigger contrast.
This is why some people say folk music is more emotional than other types of music. Folk and Jazz are the most dynamic types of music, period. There's arguably more emotion and energy (I personally listen to really folky stuff and Hip Hop, so I like both). Listen to I'll keep coming by low roar (which is more neo-folk). When the big part comes in, and you'll know it when it hits, it's undeniable. And yet, it seems like it has really simple and soft elements in it. It seems so big because the first half of the song has truly sounded like an intro. This is a great arrangement. If you are working on a song, and you can't seem to get the chorus big enough, maybe think more about getting your verses small enough (as long as they are still entertaining). Drake also spends like an entire minute rapping to JUST a piano on look what you've done. That's totally fine in music. It's not as common in pop music, but remember how ONE by ed sheeran was very popular? Talk about simple. The verses are some weird layered drums, a single note hit, a guitar, and Ed. I don't really have the energy to look for all the subtleties of the chorus, but there's a synth, piano, layered vocals, some hats are added, and I'm sure the drum samples were changed to make them stronger than the original, if only slightly.
Edit: Jesus christ that was way longer than I thought it was.
