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Hey guys, as I said in the topic. Basically I've started to notice that throughout my time producing there's a certain "emptiness" to my songs which lead to a amateur sounding final track. It's not the sounds or the notes as my synths and basses are nice and processed. It's just the fact that during a drop or a melody it's feels empty? I've heard of people using side chained white noise in their production to fill up the track, but I don't want it to be noisy. I don't want to sound like a fanboy or anything, but for example, skrillex has this very clean filled up style in his drops (especially his new music). It'll be a simple arrangement in his song nothing too wild but it still passes as catchy and bold without much happening.

I think I can spice up my drums a bit but I'm not sure if that's the case.
Any help?

Is it possible for me to here a sample?

Indeed, show us some of your work and then it'll be much easier to tell what is going wrong.

Ensuring your both synths and drums are as full and clean as possible is key, it's something Skrillex tends to do well, regardless of whether you like the songs or not. For example on a lot of leads he uses distortion/saturation/bitcrushing to beef up the higher end - which in some cases isn't obvious when you first hear it, but the synths sound "big".

Adding white noise doesn't have to be obvious to the listener, if you're clever about it you can mix it in and around other elements and not make it stick out, have it play the same notes as your midrange and also sidechained and then routed to your midrange buss for example, that way it shouldn't be heard "on top of the mix" but instead "in the mix". Aside from this you could mix in foley, vinyl noise, glitches or fx sweeps.

Reverb would be another suggestion, especially on leads and perhaps drums, just to give a little sense of space to the track.

reverb and rides, some hihats and a crash

Saturation is your best friend. Technically speaking it actually adds more harmonics to whatever it's applied to, so it quite literally does fill out a track. Also good to use in small doses in mastering. Also layering stuff behind drops, like a lead or vocal line that is panned wide with some reverb and high passed to make sure it keeps out of the way of the bass. There's a couple skrillex tracks where he actually layers a sustained, reverberated crash to fill out the drop. Pretty sure he does this is hey sexy lady.

Sure_Fire wrote:Saturation is your best friend. Technically speaking it actually adds more harmonics to whatever it's applied to, so it quite literally does fill out a track. Also good to use in small doses in mastering. Also layering stuff behind drops, like a lead or vocal line that is panned wide with some reverb and high passed to make sure it keeps out of the way of the bass. There's a couple skrillex tracks where he actually layers a sustained, reverberated crash to fill out the drop. Pretty sure he does this is hey sexy lady.

Saturation is good if you want extra harmonics in the mix, no doubt, but if your track feels empty, odds are there's not enough reverb or there's no enough going on in the track. Reverb is amazing on everything from vocals, to leads, to pads, to risers, and especially SNARES AND PERCUSSION, even on occassional bass notes!!!! Too much and it'ss create an awful mix. I recommend setting up a reverb return/bus channel and sending some parts to it, use mild compression after to gel everything together. Most skrillex tracks you hear only 1-2 sounds at a time, except when leads come in. When you hear his basses, it's either only bass with big beats under it or bass and some kinda of high end stab or quick high end hit. It's all about keeping the listener interesed in dancing or feeling an emotion. If you did that, don't mess around too much if you are satisfied

Don't forget, if only your bass is hitting, make it fill up the whole frequency spectrum, that is if it's a mid-range bass

Ps: skrillex is an great producer. If you have ableton, check out loopmasters.com and purchase the High Rankin ableton projects. HE GIVES YOU 5 bass projects, dubstep, drumstep, dnb, 110 bom whatever you call it, and trap. It is a freat way to learn how producers do their tricks. And it's great because he's been in the game for so damn long and worked with so many producers, you know he's a damn pro and he even tosse in 2 massive patches in the drunstep project! It has become somewhat of a refernece guide. Seeing where his snares, kicks, basses, leads, risers and fx hit in the spectrum and when they hit and how they function with the other parts, and the songs are good! Not like slapped together crap, they are legit, maybe not hits, but good enough to bump at a club!. But you need like ableton 8.5 or something at least, i had to upgrade to 9!

Sorry I turned it into an advertisement, but seriously if you have $30-40 to spend on learning material, this ^^^^is worth it!!!!!!!

Or maybe the sounds aren't perfect and the notes aren't fine?

put a bangin' donk on it

Slap an EQ on the master and look at where the mix is lacking frequency wise. Make a simple pad that sits low-ish in the mix to fill this out. Or something less subtle to fill out that area.

I'd be less likely to reach for reverb or distortion to fix this problem unless are going to carefully control it. Probably on a send with EQ. Again, if you are already happy w/ the tune but it just feels too empty you want to be very careful about only filling the frequencies that are a bit sparse.

Another thought, make sure you aren't over EQing...that'll make a mix feel cold an empty. I find picking/designing sounds that naturally sit together w/o EQ usually will avoid the "empty" problem altogether

johney wrote:put a bangin' donk on it

u kun.t i came here to post that

I once had this same problem. What I did was make a little arpeggio out of 1/16th notes in the key of the track, then I high passed, added a subtle chorus effect, and some reverb. In the mix, I made it pretty quiet, almost to the point where you can't hear it if you weren't listening for it. It really filled in the cracks of the drop and made it feel more full.

Likely one of these three things..

compression, both on master and throughout the mix
percussion and groove
eq (especially with regard to high frequencies)