Struggling with layering progressive house

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Coleman1

Coleman1
I've been producing progressive house for a little while now and am still struggling with clear, wide and big sounding layers. When I have saws panned each side, they sound really harsh to the ears, it's kinda muddy and unclear to hear the sounds together. And no amount of compression/eq'ing is really helping it sound clearer, so I'm not sure if it's the sounds I'm using or what. I like having my bassline more in your face and the leads a tad behind it, but not much. Example of what I mean ----

 
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There are several answers to this and variables unaccounted for. One thing that will help is choosing sounds that work well together. That will make it much easier during the mixing process and help things sound "full." Another thing you can do is sidechain certain elements. A lot of prog house tracks use a lot of mid frequencies. So if you have several soft synths and saws, you will need to EQ them respectively. This also could be an issue of what your monitors are allowing you hear and the acoustics in the room you are mixing in.

If it is muddy, clean up some of the low end on sounds that don't need it as much. HPF work well. But do not forget about the mids. Find where each sound sits well in the frequency range. Use other effects to push or pull a sound from the forefront to the background. If saws sound harsh, find what frequencies are causing that harshness. Does one saw sound good and then sound bad when combined with another? EQ cutting helps.

Coleman1 said:
I've been producing progressive house for a little while now and am still struggling with clear, wide and big sounding layers. When I have saws panned each side, they sound really harsh to the ears, it's kinda muddy and unclear to hear the sounds together.
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I don't feel like it's related to the low end at all, it's the mids/highs that feel harsh. I don't know, it just feels like when I put say a saw centred, two saws panned both sides - that it doesn't nothing but increase the amplitude and make it sound not only muddy but like I said, ear fatiguing. That song I linked is a guy who posted a tutorial on his synths and he has like 8 layers. And they're all very clear. But one thing I noticed is that he doesn't put the chord progression with his saws, just the melody itself, but when I do that it feels like something's missing. Difficult one haha...
 
Coleman1 said:
I've been producing progressive house for a little while now and am still struggling with clear, wide and big sounding layers. When I have saws panned each side, they sound really harsh to the ears, it's kinda muddy and unclear to hear the sounds together. And no amount of compression/eq'ing is really helping it sound clearer, so I'm not sure if it's the sounds I'm using or what. I like having my bassline more in your face and the leads a tad behind it, but not much. Example of what I mean ----

https://m.soundcloud.com/laurentiacomucci/laurent-iacomucci-through-the-air-original-mix-1
Click to expand...

Is that your soundcloud?, or just an example
 
Coleman1 said:
Yeah but problem is that I spend too long on just that then end up not even knowing if it sounds good or not.. :/..
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that comes with experience.. maybe stop and listen to the song again the next day.... if over time this doesn't work.. then maybe making music isn't for you cause music is about making stuff that sounds good at the end of the day..
 
No no! It's not like that at all, it's a matter of listening to it repetitively because I', zoning into what is and what isn't working with the layers. It's like any song you listen to over and over, eventually you might get used to it whilst still knowing it sounds good.
 
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