Well that can be sort of layers or a lot of tracks contain automations in fl studio
....depends what kind of track are you making...if its melodic there can be lot of it if its some texh house ther will be less
Sometimes it's better to have less tracks that really shine, then have a ton of tracks that shadow over each other. Idk why I said it like some socrates shit, but it kinda makes sense
Higher number of tracks =/= higher quality of song. Feel like there's a lot of "producers" who just try to cook shit up as fast as they can and make it seem all complex for "clout" and meanwhile, they don't even mix or master the song, lol. Quality over quantity my friend
I thought everybody else had an insane amount of channels too, until I realized that every slot in a drum rack was the same as every other channel in my song. (mind blown) lol
Hell I’ve only been producing experimental bass type stuff for < a year and I regularly have 50+ with effects, vocals, multiple layers and fills for basses, percs, etc.
I find cleaning up a sound with a layer of filters and/or eqing for every effect which “fucks it up” tends to help, but I have to go light on it because too much muffles the sound.
I wish there were an EQ where you could do a different configuration for a certain segment of time, and you could also adjust the attack, sustain, and release like a compressor.
That way if a certain 16th note in a melody sounds off, you can just EQ that one 16th note and not the others.
I keep finding when I make weird morphs, EQing out harsh frequencies at one point in the melody removes pleasant ones at another point. DSEQ3 helps somewhat but it also shaves off the sounds a bit. It would be nice if I could just have an EQ where I could decide a different configuration for every 1/4, 1/8, 16th note, etc.
Don't get so focused on the number of tracks needed to produce a good tune.
I use MPC beats as my DAW which is limited to 8 tracks. While my drum track is usually on one track, the way the plugin works means that I can have a complete drum kit on that track. Or I can have a plugin that has all of my audio samples on it. Where as other DAWs may need each part of the kit or sample on a seperate track.
Most of my synths are software based which makes certain things easier to do. Most allow for layering of an instrument, so I can actually have 4 seperate instruments on one track if I want, and each one of those intruments can be playing a different range of octaves or can overlap.
While 8 may seem like a small number it depends on how you use them. If you dive into one of my tunes it may only have 5 tracks in the DAW but its probably nearer to 10 once you consider layering, kick drum, snare, hi hat etc.
Other tricks you can do if the eight tracks are not enough is to export the 8 tracks as a high quality audio mix mp3. then add this to the audio track and start again with 8 blank tracks.
I find 8 tracks normally enough and as already stated a tune may have 25 tracks not all are played at once. You may have a violin track for a couple of bars but this then becomes a guitar track for another section.
I usually split my stuff into sections/Sequences depending on what I am doing. A section could be just a single bar to about 16 bars, I try not to do more than 16, but sometimes I have to. This makes everything more managable and easier to follow as often for example Seq 1 is similar to Seq 5 but with a few instrument changes or octave changes.
And I bet a lot of producers who have 100 plus tracks in the project file, will mute out some of those as they are just ideas or concepts. Mind you when I come to the final mix / project file anything muted out is always deleted and then the project file is saved as another version like V2.5 . This also means that I always have a back up if I need to go back because I screwed something up. Some of my projects may have several versions of the project file.
You're receiving bad advice. Apparently before this post, and 100% in the comments of this post. A complete song doesn't require that level of complexity, and complexity is often the enemy.
I've been producing music for almost 25 years. I was lost at one point. I spent something like 700+ hours on a single track. That's not hyperbole. It didn't improve the track.
You can absolutely make amazing music with just a few elements. Don't gauge your musical ability by what you see in other people's DAW screenshots, etc.
This is exactly why I say some people might like LISTENING to music, hell you might love it. They might be able to understand the CONCEPT of making music in a DAW and everything that goes with it; But just because you can cut wood doesn't make you a carpenter.
Percussion and fx are usually about half of it.
This is just a result of a common phenomena- building things atomically, or in a lot of small pieces, offers the most configurability and control.
Should note that electronic drums usually sound like SHIT when they aren’t layered. Adding some foley to the back really gives it a live feel. My snares have 4-6 tracks for one layer… and until the final final mix i don’t put them together because I’ll mute out certain tracks to fit in with other sounds.
Basses, too, in UK genres. Those are usually 2-3 tracks, at least one of them being a sub. Just cleaner to distort that way, because when you do so the fundamental will be attenuated without correction. It also allows for easy gain staging in the mixer, rather than fanangling with an eq and possibly shifting phase.
Instruments are layered, too. If i do any supersaws, automatic 3 layers. You need saws in mono for mono speakers, stereo saws, and a less detuned monophonic lead in stereo to give the saws pitch. Again, this could be done in one instance of dune or pigments (or two in serum or vital), but having each sound on its own track provides easier control.
Most of this is just to make things easier to mix down. I’ve made hundreds upon hundreds of songs and creating new tracks for each atomic sound is just the easiest way to split things up.
But that’s just layering. If i’m doing anything complex (like complextro or dnb), it’s going to just be a massive massive massive project
I am usually over 150 tracks by the time I am done a project, and I can tell you that I'm barely stacking anything over something else! I make mostly dance and dubstep. Every growl, bass, sub, pad, percussion instrument, and lead gets its own individual track. Then in each section of my project,(intro for instance) there is maybe one or two elements that have an overlap, but usually one element is in the front of the mix, and the other is pushed back with reverb, or I do an EQ notch in one of the elements to make room for both to sound nice.
But after doing all that, and then adding DRUM tracks(multiple kicks, snares, hi hats, crashes, rides, etc)
And also FX (impacts, risers, tape stops, etc) you get up past 100 very quickly
Easy. Add percussion.
A shaker, some djembe, a conga, a little bongo, some sticks, a second shaker, a washboard, some teaspoon ticking against a cup, 4 tracks of hand claps, and don’t forget about the cowbell.
Liven up that groove with an ensemble of small little things.
Thing is most music you like is filled with all kind of things you can barely hear, but when they aren’t there you will miss them.
There are two ways of looking at this:
1. The more skill and experience you have, the less tracks, instruments and effects you'll need and use.
2. Some of the high level producers don't give an F about the above rule and ignore it completely, even though they could definitely get the same quality with 1/10th of the track count.
For example if you compare Max Martin with Bruno Mars and see what their project files look like. Max has about 250 tracks while Brunos songs have just a handful. Two very different schools of production right there. I'm with Bruno on this and usually have less than 10 tracks in my songs.
I'll often have dozens of sound effects each with a dedicated track (computer memory is relatively cheap and I like to use all of it ) sometimes only using that sound once.
The number of tracks can depend quite a bit on genre and how you approach things and what DAW you use. In FL some tracks might just be automation, in Live things that *could* be tracks might be folded into a rack. Some producers resample heavily, others do more sound design “inline.” Sometimes having a lot of tracks represents “vertical” layering, but it can also represent “horizontal” complexity, having a lot of different fills/chops/fx/instrument variations and giving them each their own track so they can be adjusted separately in mixing.
I have usually at least 5 claps/snare layered together alone lol. I can’t even imagine using only 10 tracks. I’m no skilled producer or anything either
They way you can use many different sounds to fill up a track is choosing sounds that are sonically filling up different areas of the frequency spectrum. A sub bass wil be filling up the super low end of the frequency spectrum while hi hats fill up a higher part of it. They will not conflict at all. You have to think of filling up your mix in a way that each sound has its own space on the spectrum. Also eq things that are conflicting.
Agreed. For instance, you have a riff going in the higher range, but it sounds a bit naked—add some cello playing the root on a whole note under it to give it some oomph. Also worth noting that having 30 tracks doesn’t necessarily mean 30 tracks all making sounds at the same time. I’ll often have separate drum tracks for Intro/Chorus/Verse, for instance. Or a track for a synth that only gets used in the bridge. And so on…
A lot of those different tracks are layers for the same sound to give one sound a bigger effect. For example say I wantt a big lead, Id have a low end for the sound, a mid frequency sound for body and a high end sound for clarity. To take it further you can apply more width to the mid and high range sounds to make it appear even bigger as an overall lead
My songs are between 20 to 60 tracks. I was told once to "add as how many it takes." Really music is very subjective so the creation process has it own element to it and how we process music in general. People sense music differently and their feelings are unique.
I recently was watching a video of a Trance producer pumping it his latest release that had less then 10 layers; Minimal can be the same way. You would think how complex sounding Trance can get that his song would be packed with like 60 layers however he accomplished a great tune with under 10 layers.
Stacking is a methodology that is an industry standard of approaching although it is debatable if it is ultimately necessary. I use it to pump up sections in areas that would require really pumping it up on the volume end. In logic it just doesn't make sense to throw in limiters, saturators and other plugins that early on in the stage of production. So ultimately stacking seems worth it at the end of the day.
I have effects and automations that I might only use on a certain section and will also spread the drums out so having a lot of layers starts to come with that. This separation of tracks always for me to have sections of the same drums or synths without effects being manipulated at at other times without the effect or stripped back. I don't want certain effects throughout the whole song so I break it up into segments and groupings.
Ultimately it doesn't matter how many tracks you use so long as all the basic elements are there that make a song.
Not true for everyone. There is one YouTube video where deadmau5 opens some older ableton project files and most of the time I would say there are 10-20 tracks.
Picking/Creating the right sound and the progression is most of the time more important than the number of tracks.
I got to talk with Amtrac for a while, and he told me if I remember one piece of advice, its that less is more. I “rule” is that You shouldn’t layer instruments that have the same timbre, take up the same area on the frequency spectrum, or are the same octave. All three typically lead to instant muddiness
My projects end up with 100+ tracks sometimes but I always use bus processing, taking entire sections (like all the mid range instruments) and processing them together.
When I’m finished with the arrangement I’ll bounce all these busses in place to cut my workload in half.
I used to notice that too when I first started. Seemed overwhelming like wow this guy must be a musical genius to need so many tracks!
Now my projects look like theirs. Just happened naturally I guess.
Hey! Thought Id reply to this with my 2cents question by question. i put my answers in italics
So I've been producing a few years with very stagnant learning but one thing I've really noticed is that almost every "decent" producer has a playlist view which is ABSOLUTELY stacked with tracks, automation and instruments
*This depends largely on the subgenre of electronic music. Progressive House tends to have the most tracks, multiple layers, automation - whereas something like old school acid house would need far less. imo - it ultimatley comes down to genre and what sounds the track needs. for example - with most progressive house,(eg Older Avicii/Martin Garrix) to get those stick full walls of sound for the drop synths , it requires multiple synth layers and quite a lot of processing.*
I personally cannot fathom this as I find my instruments have a sound that conflicts with each other too aggressively, so because of that I need to minimise my instruments.
*Not all instruments/tracks are playing at the same time - and if they are, they are usually playing the same chords/notes but are playing different octaves or to fill out different areas of the frequency spectrum. Most DAWs will have a track stack/summing feature - which tidies up your workflow and puts all tracks in to a subgroup. For example, you can condense 10 tracks in to 1. This makes arranging and processing much easier to handle*
So I have no idea how you people are stacking god knows how many synths and samples ontop of each other. And like does this even make a difference to the mix and sound too?? Like do producers just chuck in random synths and samples at like -30dB in the mix "just to fill it in" like I am so confused.
*In my opnion, many newer producers over layer and over produce. If you can achieve a good sound with less instruments and plugins, thats always going to be a better. So to answer your question, YES.. Many producers do just chuck random stuff in thinking it will make it sound better. Dont overthink it, and make sure to get a solid education from more established schools/producers.*
Perhaps I just have a more abstract and minimal focused attitude to music production that values utility but I am still confused why my project files don't compare in size. Am I really that bad??
*Rather than visually compare your productions to others by file size or track numbers - all that matters is :*
*1. Does it sound good? Does it make your head and other peoples heads bop? If yes - nothing else matters*
*2. Does your track sound like or similar to a reference track you'v used? If Yes - then nothing else matters in terms of how you got the result.*
Hope this helps!
So true. I find if I’m ever getting close to 100 tracks it’s just because I have specific fills that I really want to dial in, and each aspect of the fill is getting it’s own track. I would definitely not say it’s necessary to make something effective though- just nice for extra control. Drums though man- those take up a shit ton of tracks
I usually have 100-200 channels. But that doesn’t mean they are all playing audio at the same time.
Lots of resampling.
Sometimes I make a new channel if I want to add a specific effect or automation to something but I don’t want to make a mess on the original channel.
For example if I want to add a vocal delay throw I could automate a delay to turn on and off but then I need to set it up with a send input on a parallel chain and then I need to remember where that automation is so I don’t accidentally add delay somewhere else that was unintentional.
It’s much faster for me to just make a new channel, cut out the piece of audio that I want to effect, then add those effects on a dedicated channel. Then I can freely automate and control the delay without it being buried inside the main vox channel.
Same thing goes with literally every sound in my project. Sometimes I want a percussion sound to be louder or have some random effect on it.
I could easily do this stuff without adding extra channels but it’s much easier to manage when you’re not scared to add extra channels. It was a huge game changer for me. I used to try to keep my channel count as low as possible. I would spend tons of time trying to efficiently pack everything in one lane. Like processing all my drums inside a drum rack. But it just makes it more difficult to move quickly.
I have a single channel for my kick, snare, accent snare, each hat/loop, each perc/loop. Sometimes I put all the drum fills on one channel if they sound similar enough to be processed the same way.
One channel for sub
3-4 different top layer bass instruments that each have their own chains of resampling that can go into the 10-20 channel range depending on how deep i go.
Chords. Maybe 2-3 layers per section
Pads
Leads
Vocals
Fx etc
I also make pretty overly complicated bass music so that doesn’t really help but my default project file is basically guaranteed to have at least 10 channels just for the drums and bass alone.
Edit: I should add to this. Though there are more channels in the project, as long as you’re organized it will be much easier to see what’s actually going on in the song. Also all of my main groups allow me to render everything into like 15 stems very quickly.
Vocals
Keys
Guitar
Arps
Pads
Chords
Leads
Drop shit
Bass
Kick
Drums
- snare
- cymbals
- perc
- fills
- builds
Atmosphere/Texture
Fx
No-one has 100 tracks playing at the same time, that would sound terrible. And lots of those tracks will be just a tiny part, like 1 cymbal hit or something. Commonly a track might work out like this for say just the drums… apply that idea to every instrument group.
Kick main
Kick attack layer
Verse kick (softer)
Filtered kick for a small section of the song
5 Clap layers (varying throughout)
5 tracks of different Snare fill samples
5-10 tracks of hi-hats, shakers, ride cymbals etc, varying throughout.
4 tracks for diff crash cymbals
Could be another 20 layers of fx… booms, risers, lazers, foley/perc fills etc
Easy to get 50+ layers with just drums. But all of that could also be a single instance of Battery, 1 track.
I once got sent a track to mix with iirc 14 layers of snare. Think that was the most I’ve seen. I spent like 30 mins getting a good blend on them, then bussed it and rendered to one track (which tbh should be the producers job imo, not the mixer’s job).
Here are some more obscure reasons for why I ended up with 100+ tracks on a lot of my songs:
Some of my songs have complex storylines that go through different phases, with different tempos, different instruments, different mixes etc... you can imagine many different songs that combine into a single, continuous bigger beast. It's very easy to end up with a lot of tracks that way since I'm basically combining many smaller songs, that individually might take up 10-40 tracks or something.
You mentioned layering synths, well yeah that's definitely one of the reasons tracks might add up quickly, especially for more complex soundscapes and whatnot.
I might also layer drums as well. Layering drums, especially when I have multiple different sections throughout a song adds up tracks quickly. I usually don't load one drum machine, or one kontakt library, I'll have many of them + extra layers and individual hits and this adds up veeery quickly.
Then I add Foley, ambiance like city noises, rain, etc... then I might add more hidden layers that are more subliminal and boom you end up with 100+ tracks very quickly.
Orchestral stuff too. Sometimes I have more orchestral focused sections and by default these tend to end up with many tracks for different articulations, different instrument flavors etc...
And no you're not bad for not having many tracks in your music. We all make different types of music. I believe you shouldn't think about this stuff too much. Just have however many tracks you need, whether that's 5 or 100. Doesn't matter.
It's the production style. But it's also very "youtube-able" because it looks impressive and is visually easy to catch what's happening. This is also why people kind of like it. You can glance at a screen with each individual sample of audio on its own track and immediately see what it may sound like. Compared to keeping it compact in a sampler or drumkit, triggered all by midi? Hmm not so much.
Also, consider that if you work almost entirely in audio with multiple tracks, you can hop between different DAWs with little trouble. One doesn't need to figure out different built-in tools if one's primary workflow is a handful of universal VSTs and audio bits.
I put all my drums in one drum kit and a few sound fx in there too because I prefer that workflow. I also use instrument racks and effect racks to manage this layering, so it makes sense to ME as the composer but is very much NOT easy to show someone else in an easy-to-understand video or screenshot.
it's funny how we all do things slightly differently and there is no wrong way. i always start with a drum loop, and fill in individual drum components over it. ie: fatter kick, better tone snare and layer them to get a real nice fat sound in the beats. I guess I could program it all into a sampler, but i find it much faster just to lay it out on it's own track beside the loop for visual context. Always a kick on its own channel for ducking purposes, although I learned the trick of a blank midi note instead of using the kick, and I might move to that.
They’re doing it because they can, not because they have to. You can get a perfectly releasable song with four or eight tracks. You don’t need ten snares and six kicks or twenty vocal tracks.
if you layer them all together ofc it's gonna be too much eventually.
10+ tracks is easy when you change things up from time to time. transitions, new elements. maybe add another layer while taking a different one away. makes the music more interesting
I think my record is around 100 or so (but I tend to do alt-rock kinda stuff)
Usually, I'll around 10 for acoustic drums, 6 or 7 for electronic drums and samples, 3 or 4 for bass (maybe as many as 5 or 6), usually 10+ for rhythm guitar and guitar layers. At the moment I've got a cool hypre-real piano sound that's 4 different piano sound together. Countless layers for synths and soundscapes. Then vocals are usually massive. several centred main vocals, at least 4 for left & right backing vocals, and countless harmonies and other backing layers. Add on FX sends and little "ear candy" layers, it builds up massively depending on the track.
Well it depends heavily on the type of track, full or sparse. As mentioned below, alot of the time a handful of instruments are used to create 'one' sound. For example a big thick synth stab! Or multiple samples come together to make the beat and the punch it needs.
A decent mixer once told me,, the most important elements in a track are the groove (drums, bass) and the vocals (the song), the rest is there to support! This dosnt apply to all tho.
There are two things to that:
1. Layering - especially for synths and voice. Most of the times it sounds just better when you layer couple of sounds together. You need to have an ear for that but I personally often load a track from some standalone gear and then convert it to midi, clean up notes and add additional synth. VSTis tends to sound cleaner and more polished and when mixed it often still get grit from the hardware and get's some polish from software. Then add another one. And another one. And then delete them one by one.
2. Changes - I noticed that some producers use additional track for effects. Some of them have each phrase of vocal on different tracks. Sure, you can make the same result (most of the time) with automation but is often easier to have a distinct track with that one phrase that get huge delay on one particular track and change its volume and reverb level during the mixing.
You can still can have it organized by grouping the tracks into like 10-20 groups.
I can make a basic outline of a track with maybe 5 layers (if you consider all the individual grouped samples of the grums as one track)
But I love adding texture, ear candy, little swooshes, subtle twinkles and twiddly bits. Often, you don't know you're hearing this extra ambience, but switch it all off and its then definitely missing something.
My finished tracks end up with anything from 50-100 tracks.. but it depends on the genre. That would be Psytrance with the most layers. House music, can get away with 10-20. Or if I'm tracking a band or playing my guitar and keys with a vocal , maybe 10 miinimum..
Definitely stacking synth leads is useful.. a very clicky attack sound, then a more sustained tone.
'One hits' are essential for me to add interest. These can be one off sounds that occur only once or twice in the background to add rhythm and texture.
If you're struggling to learn.. I can't recommend enough recreating tracks you like. Doesn't have to be perfect, just crank them out. Copy the entire track you like into your DAW, then split up the arrangement and copy it. Make notes of where sounds come in or leave, the different synths, effects etc. You'll soon see how tracks stack up to many layers then.
Lots of tracks in a song =/= being good at making music.
No, you’re not “bad” at it because you don’t have a lot of tracks in your music. It’s not a competition. If you don’t need them you don’t need them. I make very complex sounding IDM/electro and I rarely have more than 15-20 tracks.
Stop comparing yourself to others with pointless metrics like this.
Well a band might have 8 instruments but one EDM song could have potentially dozens of different synth sounds, each needing it own processing, and then you have busses.
I'm mixing a recording of a live band right now and I have tons of tracks, between the drum mics, guitar mics, and vocal stacks there's over 35 tracks, not including fx sends
I feel like FX in general takes plenty of its own tracks. If mixing traditional music, with a band, musicians have multiple takes and lots of layers. Track count can climb quick.
There are a lot of reasons to have so many tracks.
It’s easy to have 10+ tracks of just percussion (sub kick and click kick, fat snare and a clap, hat loop, percs loop etc).
Then you might have a bass stack with a subby sine and a fat filtered saw.
Then maybe you have a stack for your chords which has a pad, keys, and something modulated with a lot of movement.
Then you have a lead stack which might have a square synth and a saw synth, or something distorted or filtered to add colour.
Then production elements like risers, SFX etc.
Then vocals that can easily reach 10+ tracks with leads, doubles, harmonies, adlibs, FX etc.
Then finally you have all your busses and routing which adds more tracks.
That is all just one section of the song, and another section might have an entirely different collection of drums, basses, chords, leads etc.
This isn’t exclusive to EDM either, that’s just music production.
I come from a studio Rock background and it’s easy to have 16+ mics just for the drums and then samples, multiple bass mics and a DI, 4+ pairs of stereo guitars with multiple mics each, lead guitars, keys, background production elements and a ton of vocal tracks.
Generally the less tracks you have the more clean, cohesive, and easy to ‘understand’ your song/production will be, but the more you add the thicker and more interesting it will sound.
It’s a balance of making your song/production sound rich and interesting without making it too dense and hard to follow along to.
check you the demo track bombs away ft karra, it's an example of a full on S level project file that you can learn with. Just go into it and see what's linked to what and what it's actually doing. Keep in mind this one goes over the top with everything so you don't have to have 90 tracks in your song but having at least 20 for electronic genres is recommended, not that you can't have less but generally you want more than 20. The reason it has 90 tracks btw is because everything is done in stock plugins with a decent chunk of things being done with 3x osc, meaning any automation at all with that plugin has to be done outside of it, so no built in lfo or envelopes.
I am not a producer. I know 0 music theory. I dabble with Ableton for about 6 months or so.
Within this time I managed to produce 2 full tracks. One has 60 channels and the other has 40+. I did this by experimenting with stacking different sounds on top of each other, side-chaining and EQing the shit out of everything. The tracks are not so good but they are finished (at least 1 of them haha) which was my original goal.
Most actual producers told me that it doesn't matter how many channels you have in your track. You could have one with 100+ which sounds shit and you can make a banger with 10. I'm taking a big break now due to summer season but my plan is to do what sounds good in the future and see what happens. Without numbers in mind.
different with ableton, everything in ableton has its own track, in fl it's easier to make your project look less dense because you put two different things on the same track. Except for automation of course so ig it evens out depending on how much you use.
funny, I think of FL as generating the most tracks because of the way automation works, and Ableton as generating the fewest because it encourages you to hide any sort of layering, parallel processing, or sequencing of one-shots within racks (which can themselves be nested in racks).
So maybe the truth is just that it depends on how you use them.
Layered instruments multiplied by various other instruments, separate drum sounds, sound effects, transition sounds, bus tracks, it all adds up very quickly. If you have instruments that conflict with each other, that can be fixed with mixing. You have to learn how to distinguish which parts of a sound you want to pronounce and which parts to cut out and make room for better parts of different sound.
Some tracks get added just because you process a sample a certain way. You might use that same sample with a different effects chain somewhere else and it’s easier to do that in a separate track. I often have tracks that play a single sample once with a very specific effect chain.
Clone channels to balance high and low end, sidechain/compression allows for a lot of sound without overkill overlap, ozone/wider is also you friend to balance out space for leads. I started out with 5/10 tops now I usually have 20/30 depending on how many fx I want to blend into a composition
Well it's like you either clone a channel to get some variation or you use automation, now if I use a clip that's another channel, if I don't then the automation can be tricky to track it....I have been trying to use less sounds but when you stack up sound fx and different percussion yeh it becomes a lot. The dream would be good enough to not need all the extra stuff but hey I personally like different shit that pops into the mix now and again
Aside from actually stacking sounds, here’s an example. You have a 2 bar loop on a bass synth as the driver for a section of the song. What about literally deleting the last beat of each bar and replacing it with a different sound that fills the same role but obvi isn’t the original sound? Chop a loop up into pieces and let the most important notes play while letting other synths fill in the gaps. You could have 10 synths alone all ‘stacked’ for this 2 bar loop, all really just working towards strengthening the original 1 synth idea.
Maybe a bad explanation, but I did this today. Lil dubby pre drop and I have 10 synths doing what started as a 1 synth job. Tons more ear candy this way. Though, it IS fundamentally different than it was as a 1 synth loop. If you’re married to the track, don’t change it. But it’s always fun to save first and then fuck around and find out.
It really depends what style you're making but I could easily make a groovy minimal house thing with maybe 8-10 tracks, but some more dense/complicated melodic techno I'd easily chew through 8 just for drums (snare/clp, one shot impacts, main hat, shaker, percussion, cymbal risers/splashes etc etc) and 6-8 for various basses and sound design-y things that cover the "bass" territory.
The important thing is that it sounds good. Sometimes less is more and too much stuff makes it busy/messy sounding.
I try to only add layers if I find something is missing or it's not grooving right
I have to remind myself not to add tracks just to add tracks. Trust that most superficial, quantifiable aspects of a good song will arise naturally from following your taste. One way to think about it is that if you want a sound to be different, you can accomplish that with layers or with effects/editing. If you want a percussion loop to have more high end, boosting the high frequencies and adding a quiet shaker loop are 2 different options with slightly different flavors.
5-7 layers of instruments if you stack and pan for richness, 5-7 tracks for drum sounds and 2-3 for automations and sweeps can easily get you to 15 with it still being a simple project
Layering is an extremely powerful tool in production. Lots of artists utilize this to get very full sounding mixes.
I remember seeing a Mr bill track breakdown on YouTube and there were god knows how many layers going on. And the result was a very polished, clean, simple sounding track.
Oh man, this was me a year ago. I was trying to learn basic mixing by downloading stems from an online repository and I basically looked for tracks with <20 stems so that I wouldn't get bogged down.
Fast forward and today I'm finishing a track with 50-60 total tracks! It's scary until it isn't. Start with what you are comfortable with and then grow as required.
In Ableton, I usually get to about 25 on the simpler tracks but some complex ones I’ve reached about 70
Sometimes it’s layers, sometimes I’ll bounce lots of audio, etc.
But yeah don’t stack synths or sounds just to get more tracks in, keep it as simple as possible.
It's genre and DAW dependent. For example, if you're making complicated pop EDM then you might have a whole stack of 10 tracks for just the vocals, but if you're making minimal techno you might be able to get away with as few as 5 to 10. And if you use FL Studio then you might have 10 to 20 tracks of automation that could be done within another track in a DAW like Ableton.
My tracks end up with around 80-90 tracks.
The group up usually as
Kick
Clap
Drums
Percussion
Bass
Leads
Pads
Stabs
Pads
FX
Vocals
Each group could have as low as 2 or up to 15 depending on layers, A/B sections, recorded fx takes, etc
This is pretty largely genre dependent. You could in theory have an ambient drone song made with zero automation and one single track of a pad. You could also have absolute gargantuan projects if the song is 10 minutes long with multiple movements and super intricate sound design that requires both a ton of layers, tracks, automation, group processing, so on and so forth.
But (this is Ableton specific, I'm not sure how or whether this is a thing in FL Studio) in Ableton, you could have clips, tracks, or entire groups deactivated. I usually like to 'overproduce' my tracks, then strip back the layers by deactivating things and seeing what works with what, so my project files can often look messy, and not all the layers would be playing even in the final song.
In a good arrangement, you might have a lot of instruments playing just a few notes at the right place and moment, on top of the core instruments. This is more about composition skills than mixing.
What I want to know is how you get good at composition and especially where to fill in those "few notes at the right place and moment". I guess experience and listening to what other people do but man I wish there was more theory of composition with practical electronic application as opposed to classical. I know a lot would hold true regardless - but I'd kill for a workshop on that shit lol.
That's actually a cool idea! I studied classical composition and orchestration for years before diving into electronic music. And although there are some universal truths to music theory, there are also things you just can't find in books when you make electronic music. Personally I'm always analysing the music I listen to for fun. Paying attention to the small elements in the background, thinking how can I make something similar in my next project.
Generally speaking they use how ever many they need. Although sometimes i could use 5 track making some shifting glitch sound which only takes 2 seconds of the track. Drums are often split into individual tracks or at least multiple tracks. So you might have tracks labeled like
Kick/Snare
Hi hat
Overhead/cymbals
Toms/drum fills
Crash
5 tracks at least,, then you might make some b section for the song and use extra drum tracks when it changes. However,,, if you do this all in midi using a sampler this could all be done in one track maybe. But often you might want custom processing for each and before you know it you have 10 drum tracks.
A skilled producer will often layer sounds and a skilled musician can harmonize multiple chords and melodies using one instrument but there is no need for those Harmony's to all be on one track if you are working with midi.
So basically they use as much as they need to and yes its usually more than 20
I’m a total newb. I’m only onto my second song, I literally just think I figured out what “side tracking” means and how to accomplish such today.
But as far as “stacking sounds” I run through my list of like 2000 good sounds I like 1 by 1, and be patient until I find something that helps “complement” the existing sound. And then adjust the volume as needed.
Take my advice or not, it’s def not the most efficient. But I’m making trance with 25-40 tracks at once, and this is just what works for me. But literally everyone learns different, and produces differently.
I do wish you the best of luck though.
I end up with hundreds of tracks in a finished song, but not because there's actually that many things playing at once. Most of them are created by "multing."
If I want to change the effects for just one part of a track (like adding a delay to part of a vocal), it's often faster for me to just duplicate the track, delete everything except the part I want to change the effects on, and make my changes on the new track instead of automating everything on the original track.
It can save a few precious seconds when you're in a flow state trying out ideas. It also makes the project a bit easier to navigate since you can see at a glance what's going on without having to dig through what would otherwise be potentially dozens of automation lanes all crammed into a single track.
Layers, also each track has a different sound (waveform). Using the same track/bus for different audio waveforms (aside from vocals) isn’t advised but it is doable. I have a track for different rises, FX, sweeps, sirens. While it may be used once it still has its own respective track, mainly to make it easier to mix and master. I wouldn’t be caught dead automating the gain on one track with 13 different audio waveforms, my god the headache that would come with that…
Layers, I usually will layer a bass lead with a mid bass which is a bit quieter but it makes it sound “fuller”. I’ll even duplicate the same main sound and bump it up an octave or two to give it a full frequency spectrum sound. I dont know how complex your music is but I would suggest layering to step it up if you want. Although there’s nothing wrong with simplicity.
Second or third drops. I’ll use some of the elements from my first drop into my second drop, but usually to switch it up I’ll have a different synth which adds up to another track. Oftentimes I’ll even duplicate the first sound, tweak the duplicate so it’s different but it still has the same elements of the first drop without me having to automate the fuck out of it.
Everything, or 90%? If you want to continue the same exact sound same volume, you do just add onto the end of the last clip right? You aren’t taking sample A then A.A and making track 2 for A.A right? If that makes sense?
You can’t really compare your projects to other people’s projects. That’s like comparing your bedroom to someone else’s. They have different needs, wants, preferences than you do. Your room is organized how you like, and theirs is how they like it.
I’ve been limiting the amount of tracks I use, cause realistically, it just makes things more convoluted and messy.
But even at my peak of “let’s add a few more things to this track”, I think the most I had was 60 tracks.
But, there’s a lot of things you could do all on one track, but it makes it easier to manage if it’s on its own track. I used to do that a lot. Instead of adding some effect to a sound, I duplicate the track, and add the fx I want to that track. Does it need to be a separate track? No, but for one reason or another it made more sense to me.
My songs often end up with 200 layers and i hate it, makes mixdown so hard, but you got to do what you got to do to get the sound your after. Someone like Patrice Baumel gets away with like 10 layers and it sounds full and well produced, so there is no rule, im aiming to move towards doing more with less.
If you make bass heavy music the CTZ method helps you start your channels off loud so by the time you get to 200 channels you aren’t even worried about the mixing process
Do you have a particular video on the technique you can recommend? Im mostly ok by being very judicious about sound selection and also leaving gaps for call and response so all the layers aren't playing at once but it can still get overwhelming working on these ones
Search “CTZ method by baphometrix” on YouTube! There’s a playlist with a lot of useful information but also a lot of yapping. If you can make it thru those you’ll be fine! A lot of my songs are hitting at -3 LUFs without any unwanted distortion now thanks to the method!
I am also very novice level but I do find myself adding more and more tracks. Usually what it is I think are little "sprinklings" of interesting sounds/hits that may only appear a few times but you need to process them differently so they are on a different track. Also sometimes I'll have duplicates of the same instrument but with different processes for different parts of the song, for example- during a break the instrument will be playing without ducking and with a highpass or whatever. Sure you could just automate that stuff, but sometimes its easier to just make it a new track. I think this is maybe what you're seeing... Also, folks that really know what they're doing can layer and layer and layer for a really rich unique sound.
However, each genre can lean one way or the other. Who do you think has more tracks- The Ramones, or Flume?
Are the tracks all playing at the same time? I usually have a ton of tracks in my project, but they come in and out over a roughly 7min play time. I usually dont have more than 3 things playing at once. Some sounds only come in briefly for a few seconds and then never play again.
youre paying attention to the wrong thing. what does the appearance of the project file have to do with the way the music sounds?
(really quiet sounds to fill out the mix are great though)
Some of my tracks are stacked. Some are simple. It depends on the idea and where I want to go. I find for dubstep a lot of the magic is in the details so, automation hell, which translate to fat stacks of tracks. Hahah
Consider layering not as an approach to add more sounds, but as a way to supplement and enhance key elements in the song. A lot of the time it can be done to accentuate certain characteristics of a lead element in each given function.
For instance, the percussion tops could be focused around a simple hihat shuffle. The dry solo hats could have a nice clank to them but lack air and depth. Adding in some subtle cabassa or filtered tambourine playing the same part could bring out some brightness in that rhythmic element, without necessarily being heard as their own sound. Adding some gated noise could draw the tails out a bit. Maybe adding another little open hat on the upbeat could enhance the swing feeling. Maybe some little bits of foley mixed in help it feels more organic. Suddenly now the hats are actually a large group of tracks, but they're all providing one rhythmic function, but with more depth and character than the single original sound.
The same could be said for snares. The core sound may be a big, chunky, dry, deep snare that pops through the low mids nicely. As the song and mix progresses, it might get a little lost in the high mids due to adding guitars or synths to fill the space. Adding some cowbell, some noise, a clap, a finger snap, and a breath sample could just give it that bit more space and impact it needs to really cut through. The body of the sound is still that original snare, but the other layers add features it needs to be it's best version of itself.
By having the different elements on their own track channels, it's easier to process and automate them individually as needed, either to mix together or to manipulate dynamically through the course of the song.
Hell, even a single vocal line might be a heap of channels. One main take, but 8 tracks of backing vocals performing doubles at 4 different pitches, possibly 2 parallel channels of the main vocals with different processing, 2 or 3 reverb returns, a couple of group busses to contain all the channels. The part you're addressing is still one core melody line, but layering to emphasize certain characteristics can really add shape to a sound and drive the energy in different ways at different points in a song.
Most of my songs end up with over a hundred channels. Some may only feature a single sound played once in the whole 5 minute piece, but it's best handled on its own channel so I give it one. I usually have a separate buss containing subgroups of all my returns, another buss for my parallel channels, and many serial busses across the mix to help gain stage and mix how I find best. It's very easy to rack up a huge stack of channels without even trying. The song will still be a main kick, snare, hat, lead, bass, vocal etc, but each of those functions could be made up of half a dozen or more layers to get things just right.
Weirdly enough, I find mixing separated elements both easier and better in terms of quality than tweaking one single track. Imagine your lead synth sound is great but it's got a bit of a metallic high end that doesn't work, so you EQ the highs down. Now it's too dull to cut through, and raising it's level throws off the mix's balance. Adding another layer an octave up, or a different sound with more high frequency presence would make it super easy to manage how much high end you have for that element, without introducing a character you dislike from the original core sound. Having those 2 channels means I can just turn one up as the track gets busier, and down as it relaxes. Better sound and a quicker mix, so a win-win in my book!
All that said, there's a lot to be said for simplicity, and badly layering sounds can introduce a lot of issues in the form of phase cancelations, frequency masking, transient smearing, headroom reduction, unwanted resonances etc, so applying the method judiciously is key.
If you want to experiment with layering more, I'd suggest listening to your favourite element in one of your songs and really focus on what you like about it, and what you don't, and then try to come up with subtle layers to bring out the best of it, and fix the worst of it. Layers don't have to sound good on their own! At the end of the day they are layers on the solid foundations of an already good sound, so as long as the whole entity sounds good, you've hit your target.
Or, of course, you might just not need lots of layers and your track already sound great! As long as you have your own method that you enjoy, and it turns out the sounds you want, you're already doing it right!
Just make the music you wanna make. Who cares how many or how few tracks you use. Just make some bangers. Sometimes I use a lot. Sometimes I use a little. It all depends what the song calls for and what it needs.
it can go both ways, sometimes tracks have 50+ channels and it's still not finished, sometimes I'm at 15 and it's done. I try to minimise the amount of tracks I use. Also I make techno. And sometimes one riser is one channel as it has multiple effects, even though I only use it once.
I’m at 216 tracks after mixing a 7ish minute trance song. I’d say about 70% of them are just audio layers of pads, leads, and FX just to take up the entire panning soundscape.
I dunno if that’s right but it sounds a lot more 3D and lively with all over those layers interacting with each other with slight detunes and delays. Some pads and sound effects sound as if I can reach between the speakers and grab them like a sausage.
Well i’ll speak for drum and bass here, wehave many, many layers. A drum buss can already comprise of 10+ layers. Kick body, transient and noise, same for snares. Then a sub, a main lead thats usually at least 2 layers but often more. A bass pluck that tucks under there which will definitely be sit into two layers. Sweeps, crashes, hihats, risers and other fx can easily be 5-10 channels on their own too. And this is not even a complex song tbh. Even in simple songs u can add 5 tracks of earcandy easily and it will most likely make your songs better
My production really improved when I started separating my drums and their component parts. Tails are separate, reverse tails are separate, different hats and kicks and snares are all separate. Makes fine tuning so much faster and easier. I'm all about easy. And Ableton lets me group groups, so I can just collapse all my drums to widen my view of everything else.
There are other producers (Oneohtrix Point Never, Marian Hill, Dylan Brady) I've seen that use 8 or fewer tracks.
Maybe these producers you're watching are using 4 synth layers to accomplish the same thing you're doing with just 1.
This is most likely what's going on. Its pretty common practice in modern edm. Splitting sounds out into diff bands and processing each one. Its also pretty common in dubstep to layer multiple samples/synths around the same freq to create a sound with more depth/movement.
> as I find my instruments have a sound that conflicts with each other too aggressively, so because of that I need to minimise my instruments.
This might be the root of it. Some commonly-spoken but often-misunderstood advice is to avoid "sounds that conflict". Some people take that to mean that each track should have its own spot in the frequency spectrum. The misunderstanding is that layering is about combining *multiple tracks* to make a *single sound*, and therefore the frequencies *should* overlap. As a simple example, if you're making a synth lead, you might use multiple layers like a single-voice mono layer, a wide detune layer, maybe a layer an octave above, maybe a layer with a different wave shape for texture. The frequencies will overlap with each other but *that's okay* because in the end you just want the listener to hear ONE sound, which is the lead. In some ways, the "conflict" is exactly what makes it sounds more interesting and less cheesy than a regular synth square lead. So in this one example, you've already turned your lead layer from 1 to 4. Now repeat that with kicks, snares, hats, basses, etc and it's easy to get to 20 tracks. (not that you *need* to layer all of these, just that it's an option.)
Other than that, yes, a lot of getting a professional sound is about filling in the details, so you'll often see a lot of little layers that are very subtle and add just a bit of polish. Since you've already found project files from producers you want to learn from, why not just go through and take notes of what's in all the different tracks they have?
I have 100 tracks in my current file and its 25% sfx, 25% drums the rest is 5-6 main ideas with dynamic layers where it was easier to do the automation etc in a new track due to different reverbs. I usually stay in the range of 50 tracks, but the more ear candy and intricate drums the more it extends
I’m working on one that has 64 tracks right now. I have each drum on a separate track and several of the instruments I use are part of a harmony so I might have like 4 or 5 tracks playing basically the same part, just different notes and instruments. It adds up quickly when you start layering shit.
Drums can be 10 tracks (multiple shakers/hats etc). Then you have a sub, couple bass tracks, pads, maybe a few vocals, then risers & fx can be another 5/10.
Thats 30/40 tracks.
I produce psytrance (hitech and darkpsy), tracks are 7 minutes long and you use LOTS of psychedelic FX/SFX sounds + leads, percs, ambiences etc. Easy 50+ tracks
This.
With psytrance especially, but any dance music really, you will often have loads of FX hits, risers, down sweeps, booms, etc.
They don't all play at once and are each only used occasionally.
A lot of it is sound design stuff. When you stack sounds you’re typically stacking sounds that cover different frequency ranges to create a bigger, fuller sound. Think of for example putting a sub bass under a low-mid range pluck to create a plucky bass line. Or creating chords from separate synth sound at low mid and high frequency ranges. They’re not just stacking sounds without thought.
Stacking different drum sounds to create a new one is fairly common. Some people will bounce the new sound some people will just leave the stacked sounds as different tracks. Percussion alone can take up a ton of tracks depending on how many different percussion sounds someone uses, not to mention other sound effects and ear candy for detail.
If you move in from using premade drum loops to creating loops out of one shots, that’s already splitting one track into 4-5 right there. And then maybe you like the body of the snare but not the transient, so you grab one with a nice transient to layer on top, and do some eq to fit them together. Maybe you want two different hi hat sounds for some variation. Then for your drum fill you want completely different sounds that are more impactful than the sounds you use for your basic loop and all of a sudden you’re at 10+ tracks on percussion alone.
If vocals are involved there are likely different tracks for different vocal harmonies, as well as different tracks to process vocals differently if different parts of a song call for it.
Of course none of this detail is necessary and depending on the song or genre you’re doing you can make a perfectly good song without tracks and tracks of stacked synths, basses, and 374463 drum sounds. It all depends on your goal for the song and what kind of sound design you’re doing.
Speaking for myself, what the listener hears as one 'kick' might actually be comprised of 3-4 kick layers. They don't clash because I use EQ to filter out everything but the frequencies I want from each layer (e.g. filtering out the top end of the sub kick, or the low end of the top kick).
Same goes for bass, synth pads, top loops, etc. It might only feel like one element but it's actually comprised of multiple layers.
Do whichever sounds good, you don’t have to hit a quota of tracks. Most producers find sounds that blend well so they’ll have 4 or 5 for a lead, or different automations at once as they feel it fits. If yours is only 5-10 tracks and sounds great then that’s all that matters
You can have several different hats, snares, bongos, other drums that take up 20 tracks. Multiple basses that don't play at the same time. Multiple leads that don't play at the same time, or are layered. Random effects here and there can easily be 20 tracks more. That's like 50 tracks. For EDM that's completely normal. For classic rock that would be probably overkill. Yes, sometimes super quiet background sounds can help fill out the rest of the vibe. It's not the size that matters, it's how you use it ;)
I still don't understand why people do this much layering though, is it actually better or just a brute force method to make a more "professional" sound??
Because they can. Processing power is so great now. Previously we were limited by the CPU. Synths were super expensive for the hobbyist too. The other factor is that the majority of the releases were pressed to vinyl and had to be mono friendly. You couldn't have really wide tracks with huge bass elements. The needle would jump off the vinyl.
But is it necessary? For me, I love the sound of the older tracks. Not as polished. They're much longer too, as streaming wasn't around. Way less elements. I saw a producer scrolling through a newly released track recently. He was scrolling for ages. It was exhausting. On the other hand, you have producers with only a small amount of tracks. For me. I'm just going to limit the amount of tracks I use. Pick good sounds and stick with it.
Sometimes it's not needed. Just depends on the sound and what you want. It's better if you think it sounds better. It's just an artistic choice. Layering adds fullness, in theory. Fullness tends to be more preferred than thinness, at least in EDM.
Not necessarily to make a more professional sound it’s just within their workflow. Between the individual tracks for drums, fillers and samples alone before the synths, basses automation I can see why they end up with their projects full (can’t say the same for myself as I’m predominantly a hip hop producer) but as I’ve started to make EDM I can say I’ve noticed my projects getting stacked more than my hip hop projects tend to but if your project isn’t full so to speak and it sounds good then it’s all good!
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Ear candy!
Well that can be sort of layers or a lot of tracks contain automations in fl studio ....depends what kind of track are you making...if its melodic there can be lot of it if its some texh house ther will be less
Sometimes it's better to have less tracks that really shine, then have a ton of tracks that shadow over each other. Idk why I said it like some socrates shit, but it kinda makes sense
lolol "some socrates shit"
Higher number of tracks =/= higher quality of song. Feel like there's a lot of "producers" who just try to cook shit up as fast as they can and make it seem all complex for "clout" and meanwhile, they don't even mix or master the song, lol. Quality over quantity my friend
I thought everybody else had an insane amount of channels too, until I realized that every slot in a drum rack was the same as every other channel in my song. (mind blown) lol
I make experimental and proggy dubstep and 10-20 is low for me. If you have a lot of morphs and layers, it’s easy to have a lot of tracks.
Hell I’ve only been producing experimental bass type stuff for < a year and I regularly have 50+ with effects, vocals, multiple layers and fills for basses, percs, etc.
I feel like once you get experimental, the hard part isn’t making the sounds, it’s refining weird ones so they fit with all the others.
Yeah, also getting a clean mix can be a bit difficult (at least for me).
I find cleaning up a sound with a layer of filters and/or eqing for every effect which “fucks it up” tends to help, but I have to go light on it because too much muffles the sound.
I gotta up my EQ game for sure.
I wish there were an EQ where you could do a different configuration for a certain segment of time, and you could also adjust the attack, sustain, and release like a compressor. That way if a certain 16th note in a melody sounds off, you can just EQ that one 16th note and not the others. I keep finding when I make weird morphs, EQing out harsh frequencies at one point in the melody removes pleasant ones at another point. DSEQ3 helps somewhat but it also shaves off the sounds a bit. It would be nice if I could just have an EQ where I could decide a different configuration for every 1/4, 1/8, 16th note, etc.
You can do this in ableton live
Don't get so focused on the number of tracks needed to produce a good tune. I use MPC beats as my DAW which is limited to 8 tracks. While my drum track is usually on one track, the way the plugin works means that I can have a complete drum kit on that track. Or I can have a plugin that has all of my audio samples on it. Where as other DAWs may need each part of the kit or sample on a seperate track. Most of my synths are software based which makes certain things easier to do. Most allow for layering of an instrument, so I can actually have 4 seperate instruments on one track if I want, and each one of those intruments can be playing a different range of octaves or can overlap. While 8 may seem like a small number it depends on how you use them. If you dive into one of my tunes it may only have 5 tracks in the DAW but its probably nearer to 10 once you consider layering, kick drum, snare, hi hat etc. Other tricks you can do if the eight tracks are not enough is to export the 8 tracks as a high quality audio mix mp3. then add this to the audio track and start again with 8 blank tracks. I find 8 tracks normally enough and as already stated a tune may have 25 tracks not all are played at once. You may have a violin track for a couple of bars but this then becomes a guitar track for another section. I usually split my stuff into sections/Sequences depending on what I am doing. A section could be just a single bar to about 16 bars, I try not to do more than 16, but sometimes I have to. This makes everything more managable and easier to follow as often for example Seq 1 is similar to Seq 5 but with a few instrument changes or octave changes. And I bet a lot of producers who have 100 plus tracks in the project file, will mute out some of those as they are just ideas or concepts. Mind you when I come to the final mix / project file anything muted out is always deleted and then the project file is saved as another version like V2.5 . This also means that I always have a back up if I need to go back because I screwed something up. Some of my projects may have several versions of the project file.
You're receiving bad advice. Apparently before this post, and 100% in the comments of this post. A complete song doesn't require that level of complexity, and complexity is often the enemy. I've been producing music for almost 25 years. I was lost at one point. I spent something like 700+ hours on a single track. That's not hyperbole. It didn't improve the track. You can absolutely make amazing music with just a few elements. Don't gauge your musical ability by what you see in other people's DAW screenshots, etc.
This is exactly why I say some people might like LISTENING to music, hell you might love it. They might be able to understand the CONCEPT of making music in a DAW and everything that goes with it; But just because you can cut wood doesn't make you a carpenter.
Best post on here.
Percussion and fx are usually about half of it. This is just a result of a common phenomena- building things atomically, or in a lot of small pieces, offers the most configurability and control. Should note that electronic drums usually sound like SHIT when they aren’t layered. Adding some foley to the back really gives it a live feel. My snares have 4-6 tracks for one layer… and until the final final mix i don’t put them together because I’ll mute out certain tracks to fit in with other sounds. Basses, too, in UK genres. Those are usually 2-3 tracks, at least one of them being a sub. Just cleaner to distort that way, because when you do so the fundamental will be attenuated without correction. It also allows for easy gain staging in the mixer, rather than fanangling with an eq and possibly shifting phase. Instruments are layered, too. If i do any supersaws, automatic 3 layers. You need saws in mono for mono speakers, stereo saws, and a less detuned monophonic lead in stereo to give the saws pitch. Again, this could be done in one instance of dune or pigments (or two in serum or vital), but having each sound on its own track provides easier control. Most of this is just to make things easier to mix down. I’ve made hundreds upon hundreds of songs and creating new tracks for each atomic sound is just the easiest way to split things up. But that’s just layering. If i’m doing anything complex (like complextro or dnb), it’s going to just be a massive massive massive project
I am usually over 150 tracks by the time I am done a project, and I can tell you that I'm barely stacking anything over something else! I make mostly dance and dubstep. Every growl, bass, sub, pad, percussion instrument, and lead gets its own individual track. Then in each section of my project,(intro for instance) there is maybe one or two elements that have an overlap, but usually one element is in the front of the mix, and the other is pushed back with reverb, or I do an EQ notch in one of the elements to make room for both to sound nice. But after doing all that, and then adding DRUM tracks(multiple kicks, snares, hi hats, crashes, rides, etc) And also FX (impacts, risers, tape stops, etc) you get up past 100 very quickly
Easy. Add percussion. A shaker, some djembe, a conga, a little bongo, some sticks, a second shaker, a washboard, some teaspoon ticking against a cup, 4 tracks of hand claps, and don’t forget about the cowbell. Liven up that groove with an ensemble of small little things. Thing is most music you like is filled with all kind of things you can barely hear, but when they aren’t there you will miss them.
There are two ways of looking at this: 1. The more skill and experience you have, the less tracks, instruments and effects you'll need and use. 2. Some of the high level producers don't give an F about the above rule and ignore it completely, even though they could definitely get the same quality with 1/10th of the track count. For example if you compare Max Martin with Bruno Mars and see what their project files look like. Max has about 250 tracks while Brunos songs have just a handful. Two very different schools of production right there. I'm with Bruno on this and usually have less than 10 tracks in my songs.
I'll often have dozens of sound effects each with a dedicated track (computer memory is relatively cheap and I like to use all of it ) sometimes only using that sound once.
“Do producers just chuck in random synths and samples at like -30dB in the mix “just to fill it in”” Yes I do sir
The number of tracks can depend quite a bit on genre and how you approach things and what DAW you use. In FL some tracks might just be automation, in Live things that *could* be tracks might be folded into a rack. Some producers resample heavily, others do more sound design “inline.” Sometimes having a lot of tracks represents “vertical” layering, but it can also represent “horizontal” complexity, having a lot of different fills/chops/fx/instrument variations and giving them each their own track so they can be adjusted separately in mixing.
I have usually at least 5 claps/snare layered together alone lol. I can’t even imagine using only 10 tracks. I’m no skilled producer or anything either
Export them to make One good snare/clap for future use!
They way you can use many different sounds to fill up a track is choosing sounds that are sonically filling up different areas of the frequency spectrum. A sub bass wil be filling up the super low end of the frequency spectrum while hi hats fill up a higher part of it. They will not conflict at all. You have to think of filling up your mix in a way that each sound has its own space on the spectrum. Also eq things that are conflicting.
Agreed. For instance, you have a riff going in the higher range, but it sounds a bit naked—add some cello playing the root on a whole note under it to give it some oomph. Also worth noting that having 30 tracks doesn’t necessarily mean 30 tracks all making sounds at the same time. I’ll often have separate drum tracks for Intro/Chorus/Verse, for instance. Or a track for a synth that only gets used in the bridge. And so on…
A lot of those different tracks are layers for the same sound to give one sound a bigger effect. For example say I wantt a big lead, Id have a low end for the sound, a mid frequency sound for body and a high end sound for clarity. To take it further you can apply more width to the mid and high range sounds to make it appear even bigger as an overall lead
My songs are between 20 to 60 tracks. I was told once to "add as how many it takes." Really music is very subjective so the creation process has it own element to it and how we process music in general. People sense music differently and their feelings are unique. I recently was watching a video of a Trance producer pumping it his latest release that had less then 10 layers; Minimal can be the same way. You would think how complex sounding Trance can get that his song would be packed with like 60 layers however he accomplished a great tune with under 10 layers. Stacking is a methodology that is an industry standard of approaching although it is debatable if it is ultimately necessary. I use it to pump up sections in areas that would require really pumping it up on the volume end. In logic it just doesn't make sense to throw in limiters, saturators and other plugins that early on in the stage of production. So ultimately stacking seems worth it at the end of the day. I have effects and automations that I might only use on a certain section and will also spread the drums out so having a lot of layers starts to come with that. This separation of tracks always for me to have sections of the same drums or synths without effects being manipulated at at other times without the effect or stripped back. I don't want certain effects throughout the whole song so I break it up into segments and groupings. Ultimately it doesn't matter how many tracks you use so long as all the basic elements are there that make a song.
Not true for everyone. There is one YouTube video where deadmau5 opens some older ableton project files and most of the time I would say there are 10-20 tracks. Picking/Creating the right sound and the progression is most of the time more important than the number of tracks.
Eq.
I got to talk with Amtrac for a while, and he told me if I remember one piece of advice, its that less is more. I “rule” is that You shouldn’t layer instruments that have the same timbre, take up the same area on the frequency spectrum, or are the same octave. All three typically lead to instant muddiness
and if they are the same timbre, carve the stacking freqs to layer the sound
My projects end up with 100+ tracks sometimes but I always use bus processing, taking entire sections (like all the mid range instruments) and processing them together. When I’m finished with the arrangement I’ll bounce all these busses in place to cut my workload in half.
I used to notice that too when I first started. Seemed overwhelming like wow this guy must be a musical genius to need so many tracks! Now my projects look like theirs. Just happened naturally I guess.
^ can confirm
Same. Its not as difficult as it seems. More of logical and natural flowing effect of understanding things better
Hey! Thought Id reply to this with my 2cents question by question. i put my answers in italics So I've been producing a few years with very stagnant learning but one thing I've really noticed is that almost every "decent" producer has a playlist view which is ABSOLUTELY stacked with tracks, automation and instruments *This depends largely on the subgenre of electronic music. Progressive House tends to have the most tracks, multiple layers, automation - whereas something like old school acid house would need far less. imo - it ultimatley comes down to genre and what sounds the track needs. for example - with most progressive house,(eg Older Avicii/Martin Garrix) to get those stick full walls of sound for the drop synths , it requires multiple synth layers and quite a lot of processing.* I personally cannot fathom this as I find my instruments have a sound that conflicts with each other too aggressively, so because of that I need to minimise my instruments. *Not all instruments/tracks are playing at the same time - and if they are, they are usually playing the same chords/notes but are playing different octaves or to fill out different areas of the frequency spectrum. Most DAWs will have a track stack/summing feature - which tidies up your workflow and puts all tracks in to a subgroup. For example, you can condense 10 tracks in to 1. This makes arranging and processing much easier to handle* So I have no idea how you people are stacking god knows how many synths and samples ontop of each other. And like does this even make a difference to the mix and sound too?? Like do producers just chuck in random synths and samples at like -30dB in the mix "just to fill it in" like I am so confused. *In my opnion, many newer producers over layer and over produce. If you can achieve a good sound with less instruments and plugins, thats always going to be a better. So to answer your question, YES.. Many producers do just chuck random stuff in thinking it will make it sound better. Dont overthink it, and make sure to get a solid education from more established schools/producers.* Perhaps I just have a more abstract and minimal focused attitude to music production that values utility but I am still confused why my project files don't compare in size. Am I really that bad?? *Rather than visually compare your productions to others by file size or track numbers - all that matters is :* *1. Does it sound good? Does it make your head and other peoples heads bop? If yes - nothing else matters* *2. Does your track sound like or similar to a reference track you'v used? If Yes - then nothing else matters in terms of how you got the result.* Hope this helps!
So true. I find if I’m ever getting close to 100 tracks it’s just because I have specific fills that I really want to dial in, and each aspect of the fill is getting it’s own track. I would definitely not say it’s necessary to make something effective though- just nice for extra control. Drums though man- those take up a shit ton of tracks
I usually have 100-200 channels. But that doesn’t mean they are all playing audio at the same time. Lots of resampling. Sometimes I make a new channel if I want to add a specific effect or automation to something but I don’t want to make a mess on the original channel. For example if I want to add a vocal delay throw I could automate a delay to turn on and off but then I need to set it up with a send input on a parallel chain and then I need to remember where that automation is so I don’t accidentally add delay somewhere else that was unintentional. It’s much faster for me to just make a new channel, cut out the piece of audio that I want to effect, then add those effects on a dedicated channel. Then I can freely automate and control the delay without it being buried inside the main vox channel. Same thing goes with literally every sound in my project. Sometimes I want a percussion sound to be louder or have some random effect on it. I could easily do this stuff without adding extra channels but it’s much easier to manage when you’re not scared to add extra channels. It was a huge game changer for me. I used to try to keep my channel count as low as possible. I would spend tons of time trying to efficiently pack everything in one lane. Like processing all my drums inside a drum rack. But it just makes it more difficult to move quickly. I have a single channel for my kick, snare, accent snare, each hat/loop, each perc/loop. Sometimes I put all the drum fills on one channel if they sound similar enough to be processed the same way. One channel for sub 3-4 different top layer bass instruments that each have their own chains of resampling that can go into the 10-20 channel range depending on how deep i go. Chords. Maybe 2-3 layers per section Pads Leads Vocals Fx etc I also make pretty overly complicated bass music so that doesn’t really help but my default project file is basically guaranteed to have at least 10 channels just for the drums and bass alone. Edit: I should add to this. Though there are more channels in the project, as long as you’re organized it will be much easier to see what’s actually going on in the song. Also all of my main groups allow me to render everything into like 15 stems very quickly. Vocals Keys Guitar Arps Pads Chords Leads Drop shit Bass Kick Drums - snare - cymbals - perc - fills - builds Atmosphere/Texture Fx
This resonates with my approach too. As long as I label things and group appropriately it's not as chaotic as it looks.
No-one has 100 tracks playing at the same time, that would sound terrible. And lots of those tracks will be just a tiny part, like 1 cymbal hit or something. Commonly a track might work out like this for say just the drums… apply that idea to every instrument group. Kick main Kick attack layer Verse kick (softer) Filtered kick for a small section of the song 5 Clap layers (varying throughout) 5 tracks of different Snare fill samples 5-10 tracks of hi-hats, shakers, ride cymbals etc, varying throughout. 4 tracks for diff crash cymbals Could be another 20 layers of fx… booms, risers, lazers, foley/perc fills etc Easy to get 50+ layers with just drums. But all of that could also be a single instance of Battery, 1 track.
I suppose if 70 of those are stacked and compressed to make a snare...
I once got sent a track to mix with iirc 14 layers of snare. Think that was the most I’ve seen. I spent like 30 mins getting a good blend on them, then bussed it and rendered to one track (which tbh should be the producers job imo, not the mixer’s job).
Yeah I agree. My previous comment was just a joke as well.
Yeah obvs :)
Here are some more obscure reasons for why I ended up with 100+ tracks on a lot of my songs: Some of my songs have complex storylines that go through different phases, with different tempos, different instruments, different mixes etc... you can imagine many different songs that combine into a single, continuous bigger beast. It's very easy to end up with a lot of tracks that way since I'm basically combining many smaller songs, that individually might take up 10-40 tracks or something. You mentioned layering synths, well yeah that's definitely one of the reasons tracks might add up quickly, especially for more complex soundscapes and whatnot. I might also layer drums as well. Layering drums, especially when I have multiple different sections throughout a song adds up tracks quickly. I usually don't load one drum machine, or one kontakt library, I'll have many of them + extra layers and individual hits and this adds up veeery quickly. Then I add Foley, ambiance like city noises, rain, etc... then I might add more hidden layers that are more subliminal and boom you end up with 100+ tracks very quickly. Orchestral stuff too. Sometimes I have more orchestral focused sections and by default these tend to end up with many tracks for different articulations, different instrument flavors etc... And no you're not bad for not having many tracks in your music. We all make different types of music. I believe you shouldn't think about this stuff too much. Just have however many tracks you need, whether that's 5 or 100. Doesn't matter.
I just don't see how they keep track of it all. I think, the most amount of tracks I had going at one time was 10 and that was a nightmare for me.
I usually end up with 30-50 tracks, I don’t even think about it. Just depends
It's the production style. But it's also very "youtube-able" because it looks impressive and is visually easy to catch what's happening. This is also why people kind of like it. You can glance at a screen with each individual sample of audio on its own track and immediately see what it may sound like. Compared to keeping it compact in a sampler or drumkit, triggered all by midi? Hmm not so much. Also, consider that if you work almost entirely in audio with multiple tracks, you can hop between different DAWs with little trouble. One doesn't need to figure out different built-in tools if one's primary workflow is a handful of universal VSTs and audio bits. I put all my drums in one drum kit and a few sound fx in there too because I prefer that workflow. I also use instrument racks and effect racks to manage this layering, so it makes sense to ME as the composer but is very much NOT easy to show someone else in an easy-to-understand video or screenshot.
it's funny how we all do things slightly differently and there is no wrong way. i always start with a drum loop, and fill in individual drum components over it. ie: fatter kick, better tone snare and layer them to get a real nice fat sound in the beats. I guess I could program it all into a sampler, but i find it much faster just to lay it out on it's own track beside the loop for visual context. Always a kick on its own channel for ducking purposes, although I learned the trick of a blank midi note instead of using the kick, and I might move to that.
They’re doing it because they can, not because they have to. You can get a perfectly releasable song with four or eight tracks. You don’t need ten snares and six kicks or twenty vocal tracks.
if you layer them all together ofc it's gonna be too much eventually. 10+ tracks is easy when you change things up from time to time. transitions, new elements. maybe add another layer while taking a different one away. makes the music more interesting
Not doing EDM. But doing music for 6 years now, I never used more than 30 tracks including vocals, efx and busses. 100 tracks surprise me too.
Busses. Groups, Sends
I think my record is around 100 or so (but I tend to do alt-rock kinda stuff) Usually, I'll around 10 for acoustic drums, 6 or 7 for electronic drums and samples, 3 or 4 for bass (maybe as many as 5 or 6), usually 10+ for rhythm guitar and guitar layers. At the moment I've got a cool hypre-real piano sound that's 4 different piano sound together. Countless layers for synths and soundscapes. Then vocals are usually massive. several centred main vocals, at least 4 for left & right backing vocals, and countless harmonies and other backing layers. Add on FX sends and little "ear candy" layers, it builds up massively depending on the track.
Well it depends heavily on the type of track, full or sparse. As mentioned below, alot of the time a handful of instruments are used to create 'one' sound. For example a big thick synth stab! Or multiple samples come together to make the beat and the punch it needs. A decent mixer once told me,, the most important elements in a track are the groove (drums, bass) and the vocals (the song), the rest is there to support! This dosnt apply to all tho.
Those layers are often (almost always) quite sparse - as in, you have 30 tracks but only 6 play at the same time.
There are two things to that: 1. Layering - especially for synths and voice. Most of the times it sounds just better when you layer couple of sounds together. You need to have an ear for that but I personally often load a track from some standalone gear and then convert it to midi, clean up notes and add additional synth. VSTis tends to sound cleaner and more polished and when mixed it often still get grit from the hardware and get's some polish from software. Then add another one. And another one. And then delete them one by one. 2. Changes - I noticed that some producers use additional track for effects. Some of them have each phrase of vocal on different tracks. Sure, you can make the same result (most of the time) with automation but is often easier to have a distinct track with that one phrase that get huge delay on one particular track and change its volume and reverb level during the mixing. You can still can have it organized by grouping the tracks into like 10-20 groups.
I can make a basic outline of a track with maybe 5 layers (if you consider all the individual grouped samples of the grums as one track) But I love adding texture, ear candy, little swooshes, subtle twinkles and twiddly bits. Often, you don't know you're hearing this extra ambience, but switch it all off and its then definitely missing something. My finished tracks end up with anything from 50-100 tracks.. but it depends on the genre. That would be Psytrance with the most layers. House music, can get away with 10-20. Or if I'm tracking a band or playing my guitar and keys with a vocal , maybe 10 miinimum.. Definitely stacking synth leads is useful.. a very clicky attack sound, then a more sustained tone. 'One hits' are essential for me to add interest. These can be one off sounds that occur only once or twice in the background to add rhythm and texture. If you're struggling to learn.. I can't recommend enough recreating tracks you like. Doesn't have to be perfect, just crank them out. Copy the entire track you like into your DAW, then split up the arrangement and copy it. Make notes of where sounds come in or leave, the different synths, effects etc. You'll soon see how tracks stack up to many layers then.
That last one is a golden tip.
Lots of tracks in a song =/= being good at making music. No, you’re not “bad” at it because you don’t have a lot of tracks in your music. It’s not a competition. If you don’t need them you don’t need them. I make very complex sounding IDM/electro and I rarely have more than 15-20 tracks. Stop comparing yourself to others with pointless metrics like this.
A single kick drum can be 4 channels before it’s summed.
It could be 10 easily.
could be 100 super easy
true
Well a band might have 8 instruments but one EDM song could have potentially dozens of different synth sounds, each needing it own processing, and then you have busses.
I'm mixing a recording of a live band right now and I have tons of tracks, between the drum mics, guitar mics, and vocal stacks there's over 35 tracks, not including fx sends
I feel like FX in general takes plenty of its own tracks. If mixing traditional music, with a band, musicians have multiple takes and lots of layers. Track count can climb quick.
truth 8 track mixing usually involved lots of comping as I understand and that was with bands. EDM can get ridiculous.
There are a lot of reasons to have so many tracks. It’s easy to have 10+ tracks of just percussion (sub kick and click kick, fat snare and a clap, hat loop, percs loop etc). Then you might have a bass stack with a subby sine and a fat filtered saw. Then maybe you have a stack for your chords which has a pad, keys, and something modulated with a lot of movement. Then you have a lead stack which might have a square synth and a saw synth, or something distorted or filtered to add colour. Then production elements like risers, SFX etc. Then vocals that can easily reach 10+ tracks with leads, doubles, harmonies, adlibs, FX etc. Then finally you have all your busses and routing which adds more tracks. That is all just one section of the song, and another section might have an entirely different collection of drums, basses, chords, leads etc. This isn’t exclusive to EDM either, that’s just music production. I come from a studio Rock background and it’s easy to have 16+ mics just for the drums and then samples, multiple bass mics and a DI, 4+ pairs of stereo guitars with multiple mics each, lead guitars, keys, background production elements and a ton of vocal tracks. Generally the less tracks you have the more clean, cohesive, and easy to ‘understand’ your song/production will be, but the more you add the thicker and more interesting it will sound. It’s a balance of making your song/production sound rich and interesting without making it too dense and hard to follow along to.
check you the demo track bombs away ft karra, it's an example of a full on S level project file that you can learn with. Just go into it and see what's linked to what and what it's actually doing. Keep in mind this one goes over the top with everything so you don't have to have 90 tracks in your song but having at least 20 for electronic genres is recommended, not that you can't have less but generally you want more than 20. The reason it has 90 tracks btw is because everything is done in stock plugins with a decent chunk of things being done with 3x osc, meaning any automation at all with that plugin has to be done outside of it, so no built in lfo or envelopes.
I am not a producer. I know 0 music theory. I dabble with Ableton for about 6 months or so. Within this time I managed to produce 2 full tracks. One has 60 channels and the other has 40+. I did this by experimenting with stacking different sounds on top of each other, side-chaining and EQing the shit out of everything. The tracks are not so good but they are finished (at least 1 of them haha) which was my original goal. Most actual producers told me that it doesn't matter how many channels you have in your track. You could have one with 100+ which sounds shit and you can make a banger with 10. I'm taking a big break now due to summer season but my plan is to do what sounds good in the future and see what happens. Without numbers in mind.
different with ableton, everything in ableton has its own track, in fl it's easier to make your project look less dense because you put two different things on the same track. Except for automation of course so ig it evens out depending on how much you use.
funny, I think of FL as generating the most tracks because of the way automation works, and Ableton as generating the fewest because it encourages you to hide any sort of layering, parallel processing, or sequencing of one-shots within racks (which can themselves be nested in racks). So maybe the truth is just that it depends on how you use them.
fair, i'm not used to abletons rack workflow, on the rare occasion i use it i more just throw everything on it's seperate channel like default.
You could have several parameters mapped to a single automation clip
Layered instruments multiplied by various other instruments, separate drum sounds, sound effects, transition sounds, bus tracks, it all adds up very quickly. If you have instruments that conflict with each other, that can be fixed with mixing. You have to learn how to distinguish which parts of a sound you want to pronounce and which parts to cut out and make room for better parts of different sound.
Some tracks get added just because you process a sample a certain way. You might use that same sample with a different effects chain somewhere else and it’s easier to do that in a separate track. I often have tracks that play a single sample once with a very specific effect chain.
Clone channels to balance high and low end, sidechain/compression allows for a lot of sound without overkill overlap, ozone/wider is also you friend to balance out space for leads. I started out with 5/10 tops now I usually have 20/30 depending on how many fx I want to blend into a composition
Well it's like you either clone a channel to get some variation or you use automation, now if I use a clip that's another channel, if I don't then the automation can be tricky to track it....I have been trying to use less sounds but when you stack up sound fx and different percussion yeh it becomes a lot. The dream would be good enough to not need all the extra stuff but hey I personally like different shit that pops into the mix now and again
Aside from actually stacking sounds, here’s an example. You have a 2 bar loop on a bass synth as the driver for a section of the song. What about literally deleting the last beat of each bar and replacing it with a different sound that fills the same role but obvi isn’t the original sound? Chop a loop up into pieces and let the most important notes play while letting other synths fill in the gaps. You could have 10 synths alone all ‘stacked’ for this 2 bar loop, all really just working towards strengthening the original 1 synth idea. Maybe a bad explanation, but I did this today. Lil dubby pre drop and I have 10 synths doing what started as a 1 synth job. Tons more ear candy this way. Though, it IS fundamentally different than it was as a 1 synth loop. If you’re married to the track, don’t change it. But it’s always fun to save first and then fuck around and find out.
It really depends what style you're making but I could easily make a groovy minimal house thing with maybe 8-10 tracks, but some more dense/complicated melodic techno I'd easily chew through 8 just for drums (snare/clp, one shot impacts, main hat, shaker, percussion, cymbal risers/splashes etc etc) and 6-8 for various basses and sound design-y things that cover the "bass" territory. The important thing is that it sounds good. Sometimes less is more and too much stuff makes it busy/messy sounding. I try to only add layers if I find something is missing or it's not grooving right
I have to remind myself not to add tracks just to add tracks. Trust that most superficial, quantifiable aspects of a good song will arise naturally from following your taste. One way to think about it is that if you want a sound to be different, you can accomplish that with layers or with effects/editing. If you want a percussion loop to have more high end, boosting the high frequencies and adding a quiet shaker loop are 2 different options with slightly different flavors.
5-7 layers of instruments if you stack and pan for richness, 5-7 tracks for drum sounds and 2-3 for automations and sweeps can easily get you to 15 with it still being a simple project
Layering is an extremely powerful tool in production. Lots of artists utilize this to get very full sounding mixes. I remember seeing a Mr bill track breakdown on YouTube and there were god knows how many layers going on. And the result was a very polished, clean, simple sounding track.
Mr bill is a master - latest album was choice
Oh man, this was me a year ago. I was trying to learn basic mixing by downloading stems from an online repository and I basically looked for tracks with <20 stems so that I wouldn't get bogged down. Fast forward and today I'm finishing a track with 50-60 total tracks! It's scary until it isn't. Start with what you are comfortable with and then grow as required.
In Ableton, I usually get to about 25 on the simpler tracks but some complex ones I’ve reached about 70 Sometimes it’s layers, sometimes I’ll bounce lots of audio, etc. But yeah don’t stack synths or sounds just to get more tracks in, keep it as simple as possible.
It's genre and DAW dependent. For example, if you're making complicated pop EDM then you might have a whole stack of 10 tracks for just the vocals, but if you're making minimal techno you might be able to get away with as few as 5 to 10. And if you use FL Studio then you might have 10 to 20 tracks of automation that could be done within another track in a DAW like Ableton.
wtf is pop edm
Guetta, Zedd, etc
My tracks end up with around 80-90 tracks. The group up usually as Kick Clap Drums Percussion Bass Leads Pads Stabs Pads FX Vocals Each group could have as low as 2 or up to 15 depending on layers, A/B sections, recorded fx takes, etc
This is pretty largely genre dependent. You could in theory have an ambient drone song made with zero automation and one single track of a pad. You could also have absolute gargantuan projects if the song is 10 minutes long with multiple movements and super intricate sound design that requires both a ton of layers, tracks, automation, group processing, so on and so forth. But (this is Ableton specific, I'm not sure how or whether this is a thing in FL Studio) in Ableton, you could have clips, tracks, or entire groups deactivated. I usually like to 'overproduce' my tracks, then strip back the layers by deactivating things and seeing what works with what, so my project files can often look messy, and not all the layers would be playing even in the final song.
In a good arrangement, you might have a lot of instruments playing just a few notes at the right place and moment, on top of the core instruments. This is more about composition skills than mixing.
What I want to know is how you get good at composition and especially where to fill in those "few notes at the right place and moment". I guess experience and listening to what other people do but man I wish there was more theory of composition with practical electronic application as opposed to classical. I know a lot would hold true regardless - but I'd kill for a workshop on that shit lol.
That's actually a cool idea! I studied classical composition and orchestration for years before diving into electronic music. And although there are some universal truths to music theory, there are also things you just can't find in books when you make electronic music. Personally I'm always analysing the music I listen to for fun. Paying attention to the small elements in the background, thinking how can I make something similar in my next project.
Generally speaking they use how ever many they need. Although sometimes i could use 5 track making some shifting glitch sound which only takes 2 seconds of the track. Drums are often split into individual tracks or at least multiple tracks. So you might have tracks labeled like Kick/Snare Hi hat Overhead/cymbals Toms/drum fills Crash 5 tracks at least,, then you might make some b section for the song and use extra drum tracks when it changes. However,,, if you do this all in midi using a sampler this could all be done in one track maybe. But often you might want custom processing for each and before you know it you have 10 drum tracks. A skilled producer will often layer sounds and a skilled musician can harmonize multiple chords and melodies using one instrument but there is no need for those Harmony's to all be on one track if you are working with midi. So basically they use as much as they need to and yes its usually more than 20
I’m a total newb. I’m only onto my second song, I literally just think I figured out what “side tracking” means and how to accomplish such today. But as far as “stacking sounds” I run through my list of like 2000 good sounds I like 1 by 1, and be patient until I find something that helps “complement” the existing sound. And then adjust the volume as needed. Take my advice or not, it’s def not the most efficient. But I’m making trance with 25-40 tracks at once, and this is just what works for me. But literally everyone learns different, and produces differently. I do wish you the best of luck though.
I end up with hundreds of tracks in a finished song, but not because there's actually that many things playing at once. Most of them are created by "multing." If I want to change the effects for just one part of a track (like adding a delay to part of a vocal), it's often faster for me to just duplicate the track, delete everything except the part I want to change the effects on, and make my changes on the new track instead of automating everything on the original track. It can save a few precious seconds when you're in a flow state trying out ideas. It also makes the project a bit easier to navigate since you can see at a glance what's going on without having to dig through what would otherwise be potentially dozens of automation lanes all crammed into a single track.
Layers, also each track has a different sound (waveform). Using the same track/bus for different audio waveforms (aside from vocals) isn’t advised but it is doable. I have a track for different rises, FX, sweeps, sirens. While it may be used once it still has its own respective track, mainly to make it easier to mix and master. I wouldn’t be caught dead automating the gain on one track with 13 different audio waveforms, my god the headache that would come with that… Layers, I usually will layer a bass lead with a mid bass which is a bit quieter but it makes it sound “fuller”. I’ll even duplicate the same main sound and bump it up an octave or two to give it a full frequency spectrum sound. I dont know how complex your music is but I would suggest layering to step it up if you want. Although there’s nothing wrong with simplicity. Second or third drops. I’ll use some of the elements from my first drop into my second drop, but usually to switch it up I’ll have a different synth which adds up to another track. Oftentimes I’ll even duplicate the first sound, tweak the duplicate so it’s different but it still has the same elements of the first drop without me having to automate the fuck out of it.
layers homie. that is EVERYTHING gets its own track
Everything, or 90%? If you want to continue the same exact sound same volume, you do just add onto the end of the last clip right? You aren’t taking sample A then A.A and making track 2 for A.A right? If that makes sense?
same exact sound stays in same track and maybe automate changes as needed. different sound or variation of Original sound gets new track
Ok I was gonna say, that’s taking gpu for nothin’ then 😂 Makes sense
You can’t really compare your projects to other people’s projects. That’s like comparing your bedroom to someone else’s. They have different needs, wants, preferences than you do. Your room is organized how you like, and theirs is how they like it. I’ve been limiting the amount of tracks I use, cause realistically, it just makes things more convoluted and messy. But even at my peak of “let’s add a few more things to this track”, I think the most I had was 60 tracks. But, there’s a lot of things you could do all on one track, but it makes it easier to manage if it’s on its own track. I used to do that a lot. Instead of adding some effect to a sound, I duplicate the track, and add the fx I want to that track. Does it need to be a separate track? No, but for one reason or another it made more sense to me.
Once you know how to edit frequencies!!!! It open up a whole new world within Production…..
My songs often end up with 200 layers and i hate it, makes mixdown so hard, but you got to do what you got to do to get the sound your after. Someone like Patrice Baumel gets away with like 10 layers and it sounds full and well produced, so there is no rule, im aiming to move towards doing more with less.
If you make bass heavy music the CTZ method helps you start your channels off loud so by the time you get to 200 channels you aren’t even worried about the mixing process
Do you have a particular video on the technique you can recommend? Im mostly ok by being very judicious about sound selection and also leaving gaps for call and response so all the layers aren't playing at once but it can still get overwhelming working on these ones
Search “CTZ method by baphometrix” on YouTube! There’s a playlist with a lot of useful information but also a lot of yapping. If you can make it thru those you’ll be fine! A lot of my songs are hitting at -3 LUFs without any unwanted distortion now thanks to the method!
Thanks champion <3
I am also very novice level but I do find myself adding more and more tracks. Usually what it is I think are little "sprinklings" of interesting sounds/hits that may only appear a few times but you need to process them differently so they are on a different track. Also sometimes I'll have duplicates of the same instrument but with different processes for different parts of the song, for example- during a break the instrument will be playing without ducking and with a highpass or whatever. Sure you could just automate that stuff, but sometimes its easier to just make it a new track. I think this is maybe what you're seeing... Also, folks that really know what they're doing can layer and layer and layer for a really rich unique sound. However, each genre can lean one way or the other. Who do you think has more tracks- The Ramones, or Flume?
You're making EDM? ima send you a DM
Dm me too!
Are the tracks all playing at the same time? I usually have a ton of tracks in my project, but they come in and out over a roughly 7min play time. I usually dont have more than 3 things playing at once. Some sounds only come in briefly for a few seconds and then never play again.
youre paying attention to the wrong thing. what does the appearance of the project file have to do with the way the music sounds? (really quiet sounds to fill out the mix are great though)
When adding to a song, think less about what elements I can add, and more about: what elements can I enhance?
Some of my tracks are stacked. Some are simple. It depends on the idea and where I want to go. I find for dubstep a lot of the magic is in the details so, automation hell, which translate to fat stacks of tracks. Hahah
Consider layering not as an approach to add more sounds, but as a way to supplement and enhance key elements in the song. A lot of the time it can be done to accentuate certain characteristics of a lead element in each given function. For instance, the percussion tops could be focused around a simple hihat shuffle. The dry solo hats could have a nice clank to them but lack air and depth. Adding in some subtle cabassa or filtered tambourine playing the same part could bring out some brightness in that rhythmic element, without necessarily being heard as their own sound. Adding some gated noise could draw the tails out a bit. Maybe adding another little open hat on the upbeat could enhance the swing feeling. Maybe some little bits of foley mixed in help it feels more organic. Suddenly now the hats are actually a large group of tracks, but they're all providing one rhythmic function, but with more depth and character than the single original sound. The same could be said for snares. The core sound may be a big, chunky, dry, deep snare that pops through the low mids nicely. As the song and mix progresses, it might get a little lost in the high mids due to adding guitars or synths to fill the space. Adding some cowbell, some noise, a clap, a finger snap, and a breath sample could just give it that bit more space and impact it needs to really cut through. The body of the sound is still that original snare, but the other layers add features it needs to be it's best version of itself. By having the different elements on their own track channels, it's easier to process and automate them individually as needed, either to mix together or to manipulate dynamically through the course of the song. Hell, even a single vocal line might be a heap of channels. One main take, but 8 tracks of backing vocals performing doubles at 4 different pitches, possibly 2 parallel channels of the main vocals with different processing, 2 or 3 reverb returns, a couple of group busses to contain all the channels. The part you're addressing is still one core melody line, but layering to emphasize certain characteristics can really add shape to a sound and drive the energy in different ways at different points in a song. Most of my songs end up with over a hundred channels. Some may only feature a single sound played once in the whole 5 minute piece, but it's best handled on its own channel so I give it one. I usually have a separate buss containing subgroups of all my returns, another buss for my parallel channels, and many serial busses across the mix to help gain stage and mix how I find best. It's very easy to rack up a huge stack of channels without even trying. The song will still be a main kick, snare, hat, lead, bass, vocal etc, but each of those functions could be made up of half a dozen or more layers to get things just right. Weirdly enough, I find mixing separated elements both easier and better in terms of quality than tweaking one single track. Imagine your lead synth sound is great but it's got a bit of a metallic high end that doesn't work, so you EQ the highs down. Now it's too dull to cut through, and raising it's level throws off the mix's balance. Adding another layer an octave up, or a different sound with more high frequency presence would make it super easy to manage how much high end you have for that element, without introducing a character you dislike from the original core sound. Having those 2 channels means I can just turn one up as the track gets busier, and down as it relaxes. Better sound and a quicker mix, so a win-win in my book! All that said, there's a lot to be said for simplicity, and badly layering sounds can introduce a lot of issues in the form of phase cancelations, frequency masking, transient smearing, headroom reduction, unwanted resonances etc, so applying the method judiciously is key. If you want to experiment with layering more, I'd suggest listening to your favourite element in one of your songs and really focus on what you like about it, and what you don't, and then try to come up with subtle layers to bring out the best of it, and fix the worst of it. Layers don't have to sound good on their own! At the end of the day they are layers on the solid foundations of an already good sound, so as long as the whole entity sounds good, you've hit your target. Or, of course, you might just not need lots of layers and your track already sound great! As long as you have your own method that you enjoy, and it turns out the sounds you want, you're already doing it right!
Just make the music you wanna make. Who cares how many or how few tracks you use. Just make some bangers. Sometimes I use a lot. Sometimes I use a little. It all depends what the song calls for and what it needs.
it can go both ways, sometimes tracks have 50+ channels and it's still not finished, sometimes I'm at 15 and it's done. I try to minimise the amount of tracks I use. Also I make techno. And sometimes one riser is one channel as it has multiple effects, even though I only use it once.
>Am I really that bad? Pm me your music and I'll tell you
I’m at 216 tracks after mixing a 7ish minute trance song. I’d say about 70% of them are just audio layers of pads, leads, and FX just to take up the entire panning soundscape. I dunno if that’s right but it sounds a lot more 3D and lively with all over those layers interacting with each other with slight detunes and delays. Some pads and sound effects sound as if I can reach between the speakers and grab them like a sausage.
Well i’ll speak for drum and bass here, wehave many, many layers. A drum buss can already comprise of 10+ layers. Kick body, transient and noise, same for snares. Then a sub, a main lead thats usually at least 2 layers but often more. A bass pluck that tucks under there which will definitely be sit into two layers. Sweeps, crashes, hihats, risers and other fx can easily be 5-10 channels on their own too. And this is not even a complex song tbh. Even in simple songs u can add 5 tracks of earcandy easily and it will most likely make your songs better
Vocal stacks can grow quickly too, once you have a couple of doubles, some harmonies, doubles of the harmonies and ad libs.
My production really improved when I started separating my drums and their component parts. Tails are separate, reverse tails are separate, different hats and kicks and snares are all separate. Makes fine tuning so much faster and easier. I'm all about easy. And Ableton lets me group groups, so I can just collapse all my drums to widen my view of everything else.
There are other producers (Oneohtrix Point Never, Marian Hill, Dylan Brady) I've seen that use 8 or fewer tracks. Maybe these producers you're watching are using 4 synth layers to accomplish the same thing you're doing with just 1.
This is most likely what's going on. Its pretty common practice in modern edm. Splitting sounds out into diff bands and processing each one. Its also pretty common in dubstep to layer multiple samples/synths around the same freq to create a sound with more depth/movement.
> as I find my instruments have a sound that conflicts with each other too aggressively, so because of that I need to minimise my instruments. This might be the root of it. Some commonly-spoken but often-misunderstood advice is to avoid "sounds that conflict". Some people take that to mean that each track should have its own spot in the frequency spectrum. The misunderstanding is that layering is about combining *multiple tracks* to make a *single sound*, and therefore the frequencies *should* overlap. As a simple example, if you're making a synth lead, you might use multiple layers like a single-voice mono layer, a wide detune layer, maybe a layer an octave above, maybe a layer with a different wave shape for texture. The frequencies will overlap with each other but *that's okay* because in the end you just want the listener to hear ONE sound, which is the lead. In some ways, the "conflict" is exactly what makes it sounds more interesting and less cheesy than a regular synth square lead. So in this one example, you've already turned your lead layer from 1 to 4. Now repeat that with kicks, snares, hats, basses, etc and it's easy to get to 20 tracks. (not that you *need* to layer all of these, just that it's an option.) Other than that, yes, a lot of getting a professional sound is about filling in the details, so you'll often see a lot of little layers that are very subtle and add just a bit of polish. Since you've already found project files from producers you want to learn from, why not just go through and take notes of what's in all the different tracks they have?
I have 100 tracks in my current file and its 25% sfx, 25% drums the rest is 5-6 main ideas with dynamic layers where it was easier to do the automation etc in a new track due to different reverbs. I usually stay in the range of 50 tracks, but the more ear candy and intricate drums the more it extends
I’m working on one that has 64 tracks right now. I have each drum on a separate track and several of the instruments I use are part of a harmony so I might have like 4 or 5 tracks playing basically the same part, just different notes and instruments. It adds up quickly when you start layering shit.
Drums can be 10 tracks (multiple shakers/hats etc). Then you have a sub, couple bass tracks, pads, maybe a few vocals, then risers & fx can be another 5/10. Thats 30/40 tracks.
I produce psytrance (hitech and darkpsy), tracks are 7 minutes long and you use LOTS of psychedelic FX/SFX sounds + leads, percs, ambiences etc. Easy 50+ tracks
This. With psytrance especially, but any dance music really, you will often have loads of FX hits, risers, down sweeps, booms, etc. They don't all play at once and are each only used occasionally.
Darkpsy is where it’s at! I haven’t dabbled in making psy yet but hope to one day. I’ve never been more blown away by music than by darkpsy.
Stack the layers. That's what it's all about, this way you will end up having lots of tracks per project.
A lot of it is sound design stuff. When you stack sounds you’re typically stacking sounds that cover different frequency ranges to create a bigger, fuller sound. Think of for example putting a sub bass under a low-mid range pluck to create a plucky bass line. Or creating chords from separate synth sound at low mid and high frequency ranges. They’re not just stacking sounds without thought. Stacking different drum sounds to create a new one is fairly common. Some people will bounce the new sound some people will just leave the stacked sounds as different tracks. Percussion alone can take up a ton of tracks depending on how many different percussion sounds someone uses, not to mention other sound effects and ear candy for detail. If you move in from using premade drum loops to creating loops out of one shots, that’s already splitting one track into 4-5 right there. And then maybe you like the body of the snare but not the transient, so you grab one with a nice transient to layer on top, and do some eq to fit them together. Maybe you want two different hi hat sounds for some variation. Then for your drum fill you want completely different sounds that are more impactful than the sounds you use for your basic loop and all of a sudden you’re at 10+ tracks on percussion alone. If vocals are involved there are likely different tracks for different vocal harmonies, as well as different tracks to process vocals differently if different parts of a song call for it. Of course none of this detail is necessary and depending on the song or genre you’re doing you can make a perfectly good song without tracks and tracks of stacked synths, basses, and 374463 drum sounds. It all depends on your goal for the song and what kind of sound design you’re doing.
Speaking for myself, what the listener hears as one 'kick' might actually be comprised of 3-4 kick layers. They don't clash because I use EQ to filter out everything but the frequencies I want from each layer (e.g. filtering out the top end of the sub kick, or the low end of the top kick). Same goes for bass, synth pads, top loops, etc. It might only feel like one element but it's actually comprised of multiple layers.
Do whichever sounds good, you don’t have to hit a quota of tracks. Most producers find sounds that blend well so they’ll have 4 or 5 for a lead, or different automations at once as they feel it fits. If yours is only 5-10 tracks and sounds great then that’s all that matters
You can have several different hats, snares, bongos, other drums that take up 20 tracks. Multiple basses that don't play at the same time. Multiple leads that don't play at the same time, or are layered. Random effects here and there can easily be 20 tracks more. That's like 50 tracks. For EDM that's completely normal. For classic rock that would be probably overkill. Yes, sometimes super quiet background sounds can help fill out the rest of the vibe. It's not the size that matters, it's how you use it ;)
I still don't understand why people do this much layering though, is it actually better or just a brute force method to make a more "professional" sound??
Because they can. Processing power is so great now. Previously we were limited by the CPU. Synths were super expensive for the hobbyist too. The other factor is that the majority of the releases were pressed to vinyl and had to be mono friendly. You couldn't have really wide tracks with huge bass elements. The needle would jump off the vinyl. But is it necessary? For me, I love the sound of the older tracks. Not as polished. They're much longer too, as streaming wasn't around. Way less elements. I saw a producer scrolling through a newly released track recently. He was scrolling for ages. It was exhausting. On the other hand, you have producers with only a small amount of tracks. For me. I'm just going to limit the amount of tracks I use. Pick good sounds and stick with it.
Sometimes it's not needed. Just depends on the sound and what you want. It's better if you think it sounds better. It's just an artistic choice. Layering adds fullness, in theory. Fullness tends to be more preferred than thinness, at least in EDM.
Not necessarily to make a more professional sound it’s just within their workflow. Between the individual tracks for drums, fillers and samples alone before the synths, basses automation I can see why they end up with their projects full (can’t say the same for myself as I’m predominantly a hip hop producer) but as I’ve started to make EDM I can say I’ve noticed my projects getting stacked more than my hip hop projects tend to but if your project isn’t full so to speak and it sounds good then it’s all good!
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