EDM arrangements - the less elements the better?

[recursive one]

I have general question concerning EDM arrangement (say transe, progressive etc). I use to make complex arrangements with lots of layering, different parts playing at once, some little parts playing here and there etc. At the end, my tracks sound muddy and weak, perceived loudness is waay to lower than that of commercial tracks as the same or higher RMS. On the other hands, when listening to released tracks, I hear that they apparently have fewer parts playing on at once, say, drumline, bass, some stabs and nothing more than that and everything sounds dense, loud and clear. But when I try to make may arrangements like this I feel that the track becomes very sparse, and I tend to add more things to make it denser. Should I avoid this and just focus on having few instruments and make them fatter (saturation, compression, reverb sends, whatever else)? Or it's all about careful layering several instruments to make the impression of only one (but huuuuuge one) playing? Or am I totally wrong with both suggestions?

I understand that the question may seem quite vague, but probably some related suggestions could put me on the right track (no pun intended)

[Tricky-Loops]

Should I avoid this and just focus on having few instruments and make them fatter (saturation, compression, reverb sends, whatever else)? Or it's all about careful layering several instruments to make the impression of only one (but huuuuuge one) playing?

Both. Either you have less instruments, but with fat sound, or you have more instruments, but with a thinner sound. Or you have some instruments with fat sounds and some instruments with thin sound.

But you don't have to fill up the whole frequency range from 20 Hz to 20 Khz...except if you're playing e-guitar...

Personally I love songs with more space - because that's what I miss today. Everything has to be phatter, and more phat and most phat...ultra punchy kicks, mega phat bass, hyper fat lead line...

I think I need some time to breath...

[Bathrobe]

hi,

i would seperate the arrangement from the sound. do what you feel that should go into the arrangement.
then there are ways to make the sounds fit so they don't add to the mud. like highpass filter every sound individually except for the kick and the bass.
if you use a spectrum analyser you see that sometimes hihats also have bass frequencies below 150hz. so cut these out.
make the sound fit into the arrangement by adjusting their basefrequency. look where they have the highest peak in the spectrum.

i can recommend this tutorial. http://music-production-videos.com/prog ... e-tutorial

[recursive one]

Thanks, guys!

i would seperate the arrangement from the sound. do what you feel that should go into the arrangement.
then there are ways to make the sounds fit so they don't add to the mud. like highpass filter every sound individually except for the kick and the bass.
if you use a spectrum analyser you see that sometimes hihats also have bass frequencies below 150hz. so cut these out.
make the sound fit into the arrangement by adjusting their basefrequency. look where they have the highest peak in the spectrum.

That's basically what I do to clear up my mess of arrangement. I usually can make any part be clearly heard in a mix unless I want it to sit somewhere in background, like pad or additional bass layer. I'm pretty sure I hipass any instrument besides sub and kick at 100 to 400 Hz. But something is still muddying things up and taking off the energy of my tracks.

i can recommend this tutorial. http://music-production-videos.com/prog ... e-tutorial

Thanks. I have some tuts from Sonic Academy on how to produce progressive house and electro tracks and I followed them making exactly the same things as the guys in the videos. The results sounded exactly as supposed but I cannot make my own tracks to sound as good as the tracks I copied from SA guys. Seems that this type of tuts, wherein someone explains how to produce in a specific style, is aimed at those who already has good production skills and just wants to get into a different style of music. Seems that I need something more basic.

BTW. How many bass layers do you usually have in your dance tracks? Are two (bass and sub) ususally enough?

[Ecto]

I have the same problem as you, and its so depressing.

[Loki Fuego]

On the other hands, when listening to released tracks, I hear that they apparently have fewer parts playing on at once, say, drumline, bass, some stabs and nothing more than that and everything sounds dense, loud and clear. But when I try to make may arrangements like this I feel that the track becomes very sparse, and I tend to add more things to make it denser.

First of all, you should make sure that when you make sparse arrangements, you make your sounds move. Static sounds make your track sound boring.
Second, make one sound huge (lazy tip: apply saturation, chorus, reverb).
Third, make over sounds complement the main sound, not compete with it.
Fourth, add some movement to your track (open filters over time, add risers and drops, etc).

[Sendy]

I suffered a lot from arrangements that were all over the place (What do you mean I still do? Hey who asked you? Get bent!)... You know it's really bad with the following test:

The test:

This - (see below \/)

Transport yourself to the middle of your track at a random point. Hit play. If it sounds messier NOW than it does when you hear this part of your track after all of the other parts, it's bad news. This happened on every one of my crappy arrangement tracks. Whole tracts of music that sounded fine flowing on from the previous material would sound awful and dithery if I just outright played it from there with fresh ears. There's something about listening to a track from beginning to end that can really disguise problems with the arrangement, continuity and intelligability, so I have this test, which I've called the "random entry point listening test". (Actually I just made that name up, but that's a good name for it should I need one, which I did just then.)

The good news is you can still have complex or weird arrangements as long as they pass this test. I think this test is important because each moment of your music should have a clear intent encoded in it. This comes across as confidence or boldness.

[sharke]

Sometimes when you listen to an EDM arrangement that sounds "sparse," what sounds like one instrument will actually be two or more instruments playing the same part. But they have different attacks, or evolve differently, or one of them has a delay on it. If they're mixed well, the ear perceives it as one very interesting part instead of multiple parts. All of a sudden, what would otherwise be a very flat arrangement becomes 3 dimensional and textured. But the core arrangement (ie the MIDI notes being played) is still quite sparse, and so it doesn't sound muddy or cluttered. Often when you try a sparse arrangement with just one instrument playing each part, it sounds dull and flat. So you add more parts, thinking that its the arrangement that needs spicing up. And then it sounds cluttered and muddy, despite your best attempts to mix it better. I know exactly what you're talking about.

I know this sounds weird, but I sometimes feel that a well layered group of instruments playing the same part develops a texture that almost sounds good enough to eat. I came across a combination of sounds on a track I'm working on now that sounds like cake, and it makes me hungry. Perhaps I'm on my own here, lol.

[Bathrobe]

here are some very interesting approaches and good advices !
sharke's layering technique reminded me of the tip from pensado's place some weeks ago:
putting a reverb on a sound and gating it when the sound decays.

That's basically what I do to clear up my mess of arrangement. I usually can make any part be clearly heard in a mix unless I want it to sit somewhere in background, like pad or additional bass layer. I'm pretty sure I hipass any instrument besides sub and kick at 100 to 400 Hz. But something is still muddying things up and taking off the energy of my tracks.

I have some tuts from Sonic Academy on how to produce progressive house and electro tracks and I followed them making exactly the same things as the guys in the videos. The results sounded exactly as supposed but I cannot make my own tracks to sound as good as the tracks I copied from SA guys. Seems that this type of tuts, wherein someone explains how to produce in a specific style, is aimed at those who already has good production skills and just wants to get into a different style of music. Seems that I need something more basic.

BTW. How many bass layers do you usually have in your dance tracks? Are two (bass and sub) ususally enough?

i don't know the sonic acadamy's tutorials, but it's great that you managed to reproduce them.
if you are not satisfied with you own tracks yet then make small variations from the originals first. and with each version you bring more of your own ideas into them.
it helps hearing them on a big PA sometime and make notes.
eq the hell out of the sounds that you don't like yet. do not be afraid of taking a sound out completely if you spend too much time trying to make it fit.

i layer several kicks into one kick but just use one bass-sound. then i have only this one kick and one bass playing and going below 110hz.

maybe post a track so we can give you specific hints.

[recursive one]

Many inetersting suggestions here. Sharke,thanks for your layering tips. Seems that this layering thing is really important. Probably you can post some tuts or videos showing the examples of such method?

Bathrobe, if you don't mind listening to long and dodgy produced track i could upload something. I have a track, it's not finished and will never be (i'm tired of it like hell) but at least it's long enough to show most of my mixing and arranging problems. How do I upload mp3 here?

[JJBiener]

There has been some good advice on this thread. One thing I would add is to use your ears. They are the best tools you have. Listen to the people you want to emulate. Listen to their arrangements. Take them apart piece by piece, note by note, track by track. Listen to what is playing and when. Listen to each part and hear what the musician does to fill up a particular sonic space.

Once you've done your analysis, do the same thing to a piece of your own music. When I did this with my music, I ended up cutting out three-quarters of my tracks.

The advice about layering is excellent. Combining sounds with different attacks, sustains and releases gives the final sound more life and interest. Another thing you can do is to transform each sound using some of the more aggressive effects plugins and then mix in some of the original sound. This can also add interest.

Good luck.

[recursive one]

Layering is the thing! Tried layering two legato saw basses separated by one octave and with distortion fx thrown at one of them and ended up with really fat electro bass that nicelly fills all the sonic space and makes some cute motion together with nothing more than drums and some sparce stabs.

[kritikon]

I completely disagree with the layering thing.

BTW. How many bass layers do you usually have in your dance tracks? Are two (bass and sub) ususally enough?

There's no need to have any layers at all in your bass. So many synths are so fully featured nowadays that you can do all the layering you need (and more than you need) inside the synth. Go back to synths made 40 years ago, and all you had with basslines was a single oscillator, and at best one oscillator with a sub. There's almost no synth on the market today that can't do that. And plenty of us still make powerful bass sounds with only one oscillator. The rest of it is in the mixing and processing - mostly the mixing. Same with kicks - sure you can layer them if you want to, but there's no actual need to. Look at any number of tracks made with 909s and even 808s (and 808s didn't really give that much of a kick - sure they can pump out low end bass, but they definitely don't oomph like a 909). And I never met anybody using a 909 that even considered layering it. And samples are good enough, and the mind-boggling number of ways you can make up the loss of presence of samples within your DAW FX is huge, if the samples aren't the best.

So I'm not saying that layering shouldn't be used - we do that within the synth often. But then people go and layer already-layered patches together. Not necessary. Why do it twice? Layer synths if they're playing different octaves, basically. You're simply creating problems if you layer two synths that are both already playing exactly the same frequencies.

There's this mad trend to overdo everything just because we can. And webmyths play their part in promoting unnecessary nonsense. Sidechaining everything is not necessary, although it can help. But usually it's not necessary at all. Most instances of sidechaining I hear could be overcome by mixing better. By not trying to force a big bassline over a big kick. By not playing bass notes on top of kicks all the time. By not having the lead compete with every other sound. By not trying to play bass patches that aren't actually bass patches at all because they go up to something silly like the 3rd octave. So many tracks pretend that the lead is a bassline. Bass is generally 100Hz and lower. Put some typical "phat" basslines through an analyser and you'll see they're leads, not actually bass. Supersaws with 7,8,9 or more oscillators is ridiculous and often they don't sound any better or more powerful than the original synths such as AlphaJunos that only use 3 oscillators to do it. It's not that Alphas were any more powerful than modern VSTi (often it's less powerful), it's simply good programming of the patch with detuning, pitch mod etc. (And I still have one - an Alpha can swamp any mix with the What The? preset, or derivative. I'm not talking make believe - I play it regularly).

And the OP already mentioned that many mixes he hears sound sparser - there's your answer. The more powerful sounds you have in any mix, the less space for anything to be heard. Simple. It doesn't mean you can't have full mixes, but as someone mentioned, if you have lots of sounds, they can't all be big sounds. You'll fail every time if you try. Don't even bother. Often, how powerful or big a sound is on its own is completely and utterly irrelevant to how it'll sound in a mix. I hear it all the time - "I start with a big powerful kick" or this bassline sounds hugely great when I start". To me that's such an arse-up way of mixing a track. You start with the melody/feel/whatever, not with an individual sound. Of course you have to start somewhere, but just get out of your head the idea of a sound being the same at the end of the mix.

Sit down and really analyse what some of your favourite tracks are playing. I can think back to some of the best Acid tracks, jungle through trance, and up to today, and most of the more powerful tracks play quite sparse drums - kick, snare, hats. Some twiddly bits but generally only 3 main sounds. A proper bassline. A lead. Pads (some don't even have pads). FX. Vocal or not. And yet today we seem to try to do it with 57 channels on the go. Just because a DAW can do it doesn't mean you have to do it.

Another bugbear of mine is stereo. Get rid of as many stereo channels as you can. I still have my DAW default set up as if it was a desk. All mono unless I particularly have something I have to have in stereo, such as a stereo phasing pad. All drums can be mono. They always are on desks and it doesn't complicate stop good mixing. Leads don't have to be stereo either. The odds are that you're going to put stereo FX on top, so leave it mono. Double the channels, double the mush. Cut down on FX too. Many people use way too many FX. Yes, it's lovely we have access to so many nowadays, but one or maybe two reverbs is enough. Plenty of famously powerful tunes were made with few reverbs. If you want a lead to stand out, don't smother it in delay. And don't get me started on compressors. It seems like everyone wants to compress every channel, before they even get to the master buss. Completely unnecessary. All compressing generally does is to make things sound more powerful. Once again, if you have too many powerful sounds, they compete, you're going to fail. Compress only the sounds you want to be powerful. Not everything should be powerful.

Repeat that line to yourself ad infinitum, until it actually sinks in.

Not everything should be powerful

Not everything should be powerful

Not everything should be powerful

Even that one thing will get you far into better mixing.

[recursive one]

kritikon, I usually hipass my bass at about 100 Hz and layer a sine patch playing at 30-100 Hz. I'm doing so in order to have separate control over the sub and the body of my bass.

Some random dude in teh internetz told me to do so.

I just figured out that this is another possible source of my mixing problems. I have decent headfones, in wich I at least do hear sub, but my speakers and room conditions are not so good to properly control the sub level. May be, relying on bass patches made by good sound designers with better listeing conditions will be better in my situation.

[Loki Fuego]

Layering is the thing!

Remember, layering is not the thing. It's just one of techniques available. Use it amongst the others.

I suggest you to try the following thing (it'll teach you couple of useful tricks):
1. Pick up a thin sound.
2. Apply some saturation to it.
3. Apply phaser to it.
4. Add some reverb.
5. Add a bit of delay.
6. Remover all fx and start from the scratch using different set of FX (ring modulation, pitch shifter, chorus, etc.)
7. Listen to how each fx changes the sound adding movement to it and making it sound bigger (or turning it to awful noise in the worst case .

Remember, experimentation is the key. I learned a lot this way.


PS: Oh, and check videos from this Youtube channel: