Tips and tricks for making your sound bigger

[BaseBass]

Hi Guys,

Recently I have been comparing my own tracks with other work, and my biggest problem is that my sound just sound a bit too flat, thin, empty etc. I have no trouble writing and composing a song (I've been doing it for years). but since a few months or so, I wanted to learn more about sound and mixing a track.

So far I've learned quite a bit about levels, cutting frequenties, compression and all the tricks to make your sound clean and have no clipping. This has been going pretty good for me, but my tracks still lack a certain "fullness".

I have tried using panning and reverb. panning works quite good, but with reverb and delay my track just seems either too dry, or too chaotic.

Do you guys have any tips or tricks to give my tracks that certain polish? I don't have to get entire tutorials or something, but just some techniques to give a bit more sparkle to a certain sound. I used to just put a Sound Goodizer on my master to make it sound better... but is'nt that a bit... unproffesional?

Thanks!

Greets,

BaseBass

[blinx]

There was an article/thread a little while back where porter robinson explains how he gets his "bigger" sounding tunes to sound "big" by compressing alot and limiting alot (sucking dynamics out). Im sure if you search a bit it will show its self to you.

MHO is that i would rather have dynamics on my tracks and just adjust the gain knob a little then squish my tracks.

Truthfully getting a real ME with real analogue gear and real knowledge of mastering is probably the easiest and most realistic way to get the end product you are looking for.

[Zöo Pop]

Layering some notes on the piano roll can help sometimes, but that will make it louder, not really bigger.

[Turnipish_Thoughts]

I'd say basically a mixture of what you have been doing already. Reverb and delay can help a lot in giving your track a much fuller sound but too much and it can get chaotic as you've already noticed. So it really is about carefully balancing the amount of reverb/delay you use.

there's also the trick of paying a lot of attention to how much high frequency content you have in your track as this is where you get a lot of air/bite and a crisp presence to your tune. You could for instance layer a high passed break over the top of your normal drum pattern EQing the highs to poke out the top a little, adding moderate reverb to this also widens up the shimmer. Then there's the other end of the spectrum. Layer some low-mid/low freq elements with a sine wave underlay to give it more weight/punch and width.

The idea is to fill as much of the freq spectrum as possible without it getting too cluttered and everything smudging into its self.

So yeh, its basically about using the stereo field and frequency spectrum in an intelligent and balanced manner, finding the margin above which the mix falls apart but below which lacks as much fullness as it could have.

We all start out with quite crude an imperfect 'sketches' while perceiving the works of others as more artistically balanced and intricate. That's because the people that have reached that point of professionalism have put in a hell of a lot of time practicing the fundamental theory you already understand to a degree the manifold minute nuances are worked together into a unified piece, something that is applied not through a new set of knowledge, but by an intimate understanding of the same underlying theory.

You already understand what you need to to get fullness, it's a matter of experimenting and exploring the medium and developing that all important experience with the concept. there's really nothing beyond that that you can do to get to where you want to.

[nowaysj]

BaseBass, if your sound is a little weak, check out Strengthening Your Beats.

I suspect your issue is more closely related to dynamics control. But the technique at that link should help with some other aspects of blowing up your beats.

[BaseBass]

Hi Guys,

Thanks for the replies so far. I've been experimenting alot lately. The only downside to this... is that I really want to finish a new track (it's been a while). But everytime I start to get a song written, I realise there are nummerous things wrong with it, and I start over from scratch.

Btw, what do you guys think about cutting freuenties? Is it better to roll them off, still leaving a bit of overlapping? Or just very straight cutting?

Greets!

[blinx]

Rolling off in a gentle manner offers for a more consistent filter sound and less chance of introducing unwanted transient noise when applying the filter.

Sraight eq cutoffs can introduce unwanted transient noise but used in the right context it is a production technique that can be useful too.

I generally use gently sloped and overlapping eq roll offs when i eq stuff.

Also a good tip is when you eq, its a good idea to cut freq's that are unneeded/wanted than it is to boost wanted freq's.

But this is just my 2 cents.

[BaseBass]

@nowaysj
Thanks for the link btw, this is very helpfull ^^.

@Blinx
Sounds good. I've been doing it somehwat the same as you. I still have a bit of trouble getting unwanted frequenties out tho... Is it something you do by ear? Or is there a common rule for let's say... a top Bass, on wich frequenties are only a bother, and are best removed? I use the Fruity Parametric EQ 2 for cutting frequenties:

[nowaysj]

I don't know if that is a generic pic of the peq2, or if that is a screen shot, but that eq is not cutting... well it is a little, but really it is adding. That means it is increasing the level of certain frequencies in the sound. Generally speaking, it is better to cut than add. What you'd want to do in this case is turn down 1, 3, 5, 6 until they were around 0db, the center line, and drag 2, 4, 7 even further down. If the sound is too quiet, turn the channel volume up (in any number of ways in fruity, but I recommend increasing the volume at or as close to the source as you can).

In regards to what freqs to cut, there are suggestions, but they're all bollox. Use your ears.

Also of note, that pic of the peq2 there shows that eq in linear phase mode. You can get off that mode by clicking the round HQ button in the middle bottom of the interface. Every time you use eq you are damaging your sound through phase distortion. You have to learn what aspect of your sound can/should be damaged to achieve your desired effect. As a rough guide, I would only use eq's in linear phase mode on busses and on the master. Make sure you are letting flstudio do its APDC, as linear phase eq's will introduce a fair amount of latency for that mixer channel. I understand there is a lot of information in this short message, but it is important, research all of these topics!

[62hertz]

On the note of making your sound bigger, for me, I have found that its not only filling the frequency spectrum but also the stereo field.

For example having your kick, bottom end snare and bass in the centre. Then having your more 'top endy' stuff such as hats panned off a little or maybe send them to a bus and have an extremely sutble auto pan on them to have stuff going around in the stereo field.

Then for the leads you could have the bottom mid range lead more centre and layer it with a top mid lead and widen it out (I've found chorus's and stereo imagers work wonders when doing this, a stereo imager I have found really useful is the Izotope Ozone 4 plugin). After this you could send both to a bus channel and add a compressor, saturation, reverb, subtle chorus or anything that will help these two sounds gel together to make it sound like one fat and wide lead.

Layering synths with white noise seems to give the sound more presence.

Hope this helps pal.

[BaseBass]

Thanks to the both of you =). This is all very helpfull stuff. As for the screenshot of the P EQ2, that was just to show wich EQ I was talking about. I rarely (actually never) drag the curving points over the line in the middle. What I DO have to check, is if I all my EQ's are in linear phase mode. Is this turned on by default?

[sketchyderek]

What I find has helped me (even though I want my tracks to sound even bigger, yet):
-subtle delay on lots of parts; fills out empty spaces. use different delay settings so they aren't all the same one.
-good sidechain of your kick to your kick to your sub (or is your sub to your kick?)
-more subtle sidechain with the snare and the midbass
-EQ like a mother fucker
-master bus quick master (roll off <30hz, limiter)

[Sparxy]

Alot of good tips here. It's a good idea to always use your ear, if it sounds good, chances are it probably is good!

Compression is very important in getting your sound punchier. Effectively it will emphasise the loudest parts of the noise you apply it to. If you're worried about squashing your sound too much then think about paralell compression, which is effectively blending an uncompressed signal with a compressed one, like a wet/dry mix. You can do this with sends / groups or some compressors come with the functionality built in.

I would say though, fundamentally if your sounds aren't good to begin with then you'll have trouble making them sound "big" (in effect, you can't polish a turd). So if you feel your sounds are a bit weak and are struggling to get them sound how you want them, I would say the first port of call would be to work on your sound design, get to know your synths inside out or layer better samples

[nowaysj]

Thanks to the both of you =). This is all very helpfull stuff. As for the screenshot of the P EQ2, that was just to show wich EQ I was talking about. I rarely (actually never) drag the curving points over the line in the middle. What I DO have to check, is if I all my EQ's are in linear phase mode. Is this turned on by default?

Most eq's don't offer a variety of modes. Most are linear or not. Fl Studio's PEQ2 equalizer is switchable, but is in linear phase by default. As to the others... just check the documentation that came with your eq. Usually a dev will let you know if their eq is linear phase.