Tips on making songs with lots of instruments? (sound selection wise)

crimsonhawk47

New member
So I'm being more careful lately with how much I put on a song to make my mixing job much easier.

But it's not like you can't have big productions forever. Does anybody have a tip for creating songs with lots of instruments?

For example, obviously I don't want to pick anything with low mids, or those will get clogged up. But maybe too many upper harmonics would cloud up some of the finer details of, say, a piano.

So does anybody take a certain approach to sound selection with a lot of instruments?
 
the last thing that I am thinking about when selecting instrumental resources is what is their frequency range, at least at the level of it goes from xhz to yhz. Rather I am interested in what is its playing range in musical notes - this affects how you write for the instruments and how you space parts for effect

simple orchestrational practice will help you avoid 99% of all the so-called frequency clashing problems people warn against:

Notes below the bass clef should be spread an octave below the next nearest note, the use a 5th, a 4th a 3rd, a 3rd, a 3rd, a 2nd and so on

taking the Note C this would give us a spread of C[sub]1[/sub]-C[sub]2[/sub]-G[sub]2[/sub]-C[sub]3[/sub]-E[sub]3[/sub]-G[sub]3[/sub]-Bb[sub]3[/sub]-C[sub]4[/sub]-D[sub]4[/sub]-etc If i were to put a note below the lowest note it would be a C[sub]0[/sub]

If my bass were the 3rd of the chord then I would rearrange my spread like so E[sub]1[/sub]-C[sub]2[/sub]-G[sub]2[/sub]-C[sub]3[/sub]-E[sub]3[/sub]-G[sub]3[/sub]-Bb[sub]3[/sub]-C[sub]4[/sub]-D[sub]4[/sub]-etc If i were to put a note below the lowest note it would be a E[sub]0[/sub]

If my bass were the 5th of the chord then I would rearrange my spread like so G[sub]1[/sub]-(C[sub]2[/sub])-G[sub]2[/sub]-C[sub]3[/sub]-E[sub]3[/sub]-G[sub]3[/sub]-Bb[sub]3[/sub]-C[sub]4[/sub]-D[sub]4[/sub]-etc If i were to put a note below the lowest note it would be a G[sub]0[/sub]

i.e. there would be no shifting in the upper arrangement at all simply the lowest notes change

In fact most so-called frequency clashes are not clashes as such but beat frequencies between low notes that are too close together in pitch - take an 808 pitched at E[sub]1[/sub] and then play that against a bass note playing F[sub]1[/sub] E is 82.4Hz more or less and the F is 87.3Hz more or less the frequency difference between these two notes is 4.9Hz - not audible but certainly adding a wobble to the perceived combined pitch - take all of the frequency differences across two complex waveforms and you begin to create miasma of beat frequencies into the audible range causing the so-called frequency clashes - to be blunt they are caused by poor note choice not poor sound choice
 
Last edited:
Back
Top