Author: Computer Music (Computer Music, Future Music, Musicians) November 2, 2021

Become a skilled stacker and stack multiple sounds to create thicker and cleaner works

When you are looking for a richer, more "professional" track, you may have stumbled upon the concept of layered sound.

Fundamentally speaking, this is the basic principle: Combine (or superimpose) two or more sounds of the same type together to obtain a more powerful or better-listening result than a single sound source can achieve alone, creating a denser, A fuller feeling sound.

How to create a brand new beat from layered drum samples

The idea is as old as the music itself—imagine a choir combining multiple singers in unison to create more power and depth, and produce more complex and interesting sounds for the audience.

It should be noted that mixing multiple sound sources can easily make a mess, especially when they have similar characteristics. Frequency conflicts and masking can easily make your mix messy, especially at mid frequencies; transients can compete for attention and cause dynamic inconsistencies; lack of precision or forward planning can lead to phase cancellation, slack results, and overall An amateur mix that sounds very weak.

These 12 tips and tricks should help you avoid these pitfalls and ensure that your stratification does not do more harm than good.

Stacking layers is more than just putting sounds together as fast as possible. Use each element to contribute to the overall "big picture" and don't like a particular part too much. Be prepared to throw away or replace things that don’t work in your search for superior sound.

When fading in and out in the stereo layer to provide a wide presence on both sides of the mix, make sure to sometimes use any standard "mononoise" or width reduction plug-in to sum your overall output to mono. If your final result falls apart or disappears, consider revisiting each section and adjusting its width to prevent excessive cancellations.

Try to reduce the number of layers to be combined. We are not saying that you should never layer five sounds together, but make sure you mute each channel regularly to see how it contributes. If there is one layer that can do the work of two layers, please replace them with it.

Many modern commercial packages contain dense, ready-made layered sounds that will give you a "wow" feeling when you audition them. Although they sound impressive alone, if you want to use them for layering, you may need to do a lot of processing on them to make them fit. Put thinner sounds and layering (old hip-hop or drum machine percussion) in the folder handy, for example) for specific layering tasks.

Modern software samplers and drum machines include features that make it easier for you to combine two or more sounds. The transpose function allows you to adjust the sound quickly and easily. The onboard high-pass and low-pass filters allow you to quickly remove unwanted frequencies and make everything run instantly. Most also have multiple outputs, so if you need to process them further, you can route separate layers to separate DAW channels.

If you create powerful drums from two or more layers, please be aware that your transients may peak, depleting valuable headroom. To monitor these, we recommend using a real-time oscilloscope-type waveform analyzer, such as the free s(M)exoscope or WaveShaper CM.

But what if these transients peak in mixing? How should you reduce them without destroying your carefully stacked sounds? The obvious solution is to reduce the gain with a transparent limiter plugin, but you can also get more creativity. The subtle application of tape saturation tools, a bit of distortion or a transient shaper can all help reduce peaks.

When layering sounds (especially drums) together, make sure that the transposition or tuning parameters in your sampler. Before you add any other effects, accents can often really help the two sounds blend together!

Whether it's a recorded texture or basic white noise from a synthesizer plug-in, reliable noise will be produced when the sound sources are mixed together. It can add brightness to the snare drum, add texture to the soundscape, or a realistic "glue" that can glue the sounds together. Likewise, keep an interesting library of beds and textures when designing samples.

Sending and returning are great for creative layered journeys. Load some crazy effect chains on the return track, send part of the source sound signal to the return track, and then try plug-in settings and effects. Export the return track separately, then re-import and layer it with the source sound for more editing and processing.

Once your layering skills improve, it would be great to have a specific folder dedicated to this layering task in your sample library, so you can quickly switch to "Tops", "Snap", "Body" or " Release" element. Packages such as Goldbaby's Dirt and Layers have been integrated into this workflow and provide this method in a useful pre-prepared format.

Layering can be troublesome, so when working quickly, save a dedicated layering or sound design template to focus more on stacking. You can prepare your channels, returns, groups, and processing chain. Once you like some layered actions, you are in trouble, but don't forget to export your work for later use!

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