layering

[046oh]

i watched a tutorial on youtube and the guy talked about a sample layer added for "texture".
this was really an eye-opener for me and i thought i wanted to learn more about layering.
i realize that one difference between "pro" sounds and my sounds is the thickness and this is because i usually only have around five tracks.
when layering to add richness to the sound, what can you do and what do you aim for? (eg target frequencies, timbre, etc)
the only layering i know of right now is add pads and basses.


thanks!

 

[Thee3ternal]

LOL I'm in the same boat with you bro I can't really layer drums, I probably could I just don't like to, the process bores me.

IDK about textures, they may be referring to things like attack, decay, and grittiness vs. a drum sounding bright.

I also want some insight here

 

[steffeeh]

If you want to make a sound more full, fat and rich by layering, you can start with making another version of a synth that's slightly different, and let it play an octave lower along with the original.
Another layering principle is the topkick and the bottomkick.
By this you can choose 2 different kicks and let them complement eachother.
One can be a very attacky kick that you highpass, and the other one a more controllable and powerful kick that you lowpass.
And pretty much the same thing applies to percussion.
For example you maybe have a hihat that sounds nice, but it lacks something, so then you see if you can find another hihat that complements it in a desired way.
Also you can use layers for mixingpurposes. You take 2 hihats that sounds very similar, pan them to each side, and process them to create those 2 to 1 wide hihat.
The same thoughts apply to a lot of the layering, so now you just gotta get started and experiment.

 

[bandcoach]

layering is a simple term for a simple yet at times complex idea - assign two or more instruments to the same line in a musical work. By adjusting the dynamics of each instrument and the playing technique (muted trumpet and flute for example) you can create a new sound that is a combination of both instruments. In orchestral terms this is achieved by physical position in the orchestra pit as well as the aforementioned dynamic and playing techniques.

In daw terms, where you are working with synthetic or sampled sounds, most folks attack this problem by stacking them all in the same pan position in the mix, forgetting that the technique works better if spread across the stereo field

so apart from choosing which sounds to stack consider whether they can be spread about a bit to improve your overall breadth of sound and mix.....

 

[SimonT]

This is all new to me too. As far as drums go though, and what I was told is for kicks. I was told to take 3 kick drums, one with predominantly low end, one with predominantly mid range, and the other with predominantly high end, and eq them (now that is the hard part, which I'm not exactly crash hot on), so that they sound and sit nice together. That's where being a good listener comes in. Then once eq'd, you bounce all 3 down as one, then you have one big fat full sounding kick, that covers the whole frequency range. Might sound like an effort, but, if it's say for house music (and you're always gonna be doing that genre with this particular kick), then you only have to do this once for that one kick don't you. Then you use that kick for your house. Was also told though, you can't have a weak snare in relation to that kick, so then it's a similar principal for the snare too. Not sure it matters for the other drums really.

 

[SimonT]

Steffeeh - I didn't know it applied to percussion. In what way would you be listening for hi-hats complimenting each other, same as the kick technique? and what did you mean by 2 to 1 wide hi-hats?

Bandcoach - So when layering, you want to spread the instrument/track so it's spans the whole field, or just some of the field? how would this affect things when you eq it, or do you eq it as you go? can start to get complex can't it.

To the OP. I've been learning music production for 22 months, and it was only about 10months back I'd heard of layering. I was surprised that someone had 40 tracks in a song. Staggering. I have been told it's not unusual to have 100 in some professional tracks, then you need a lot of RAM to be able to handle things then.

 

[Ddream]

This is all new to me too. As far as drums go though, and what I was told is for kicks. I was told to take 3 kick drums, one with predominantly low end, one with predominantly mid range, and the other with predominantly high end, and eq them (now that is the hard part, which I'm not exactly crash hot on), so that they sound and sit nice together. That's where being a good listener comes in. Then once eq'd, you bounce all 3 down as one, then you have one big fat full sounding kick, that covers the whole frequency range. Might sound like an effort, but, if it's say for house music (and you're always gonna be doing that genre with this particular kick), then you only have to do this once for that one kick don't you. Then you use that kick for your house. Was also told though, you can't have a weak snare in relation to that kick, so then it's a similar principal for the snare too. Not sure it matters for the other drums really.

I've been researching some layering techniques for snares, as they play a lead role in drum and bass (sometimes they're more important than the kick itself), and what I discovered is that layering two or three different sounds and highpassing and lowpassing is just the tip of the iceberg. This is what every producer does. But the unique sound is achieved through countless techniques. All in all, there's no rule of thumb.