From its origins in orchestral and choral composition to its ubiquitous implementation in electronic music production, layering has long been the key to unlocking a world of original and characterful sounds – and if you’re not bringing it into your non-electronic, band-based projects you’re missing out. Here are some ways in which you can do just that.
Layering Fundamentals
The idea with layering is to mix the best, most interesting and/or complimentary aspects of multiple audio signals into a final sound that adds up aesthetically to more than the sum of its parts – ie, it sounds awesome. The practical application of layering ranges in complexity from the simple partnering of, say, an environmental sample (running water, wind, crowd noise, etc) with a synth pad for an electro-organic vibe, or mixing a white noise generator with a snare sample for added sizzle, to the merging of carefully modulated synth parts for an ear-catching bass or lead sound, or piling up all manner of synths, noise and samples to build a riser or other FX. Successful layering requires an understanding of the parameters that can manipulated to get the layers dovetailing effectively without fighting for space – envelope shaping, EQ and filtering, detuning, modulation – and knowing when to give up on a particular combination that just isn’t working. As with everything else in music production, practise makes perfect, and experimentation should always be encouraged, so don’t be afraid to try the wildest layering combinations – you never know what might happen.
Bigger, Badder Drums
In electronic music production, layering is absolutely central to getting stylistically authentic drum sounds, with transient, body and sustain components often Frankensteined together from a variety of sources to create unique hybrid kicks and snares. While, of course, there’s nothing quite like a beautifully recorded and mixed drum kit in its purest form, if your acoustic beats appear to be lacking in power, depth, tone or personality, you should never be shy about layering in a well produced sample or two to bolster the sound without compromising its essential ‘real drums’ nature.
However, beyond simply underpinning drum sounds with samples of the same type in order to correct for their shortcomings, you can also radically alter the character of the kit by sticking a low-level noise oscillator or handclap sample under a snare, appending a kick drum with a sine wave sub, merging quiet shaker or tambourine hits into hi-hat lines, and so on. Any drum replacement plugin (XLN Audio’s Addictive Trigger or Toontrack’s Superior Drummer 3, to give but two examples) will provide the tools required for this, making the process of lining said samples and synths up with your drum multitracks automatic and effortless.
Loop Layering
Layering isn’t only about blending simultaneous sounds to conjure up new individual instrumental elements – it can also be called on to combine rhythmic loops into seemingly singular performances. Percussion is the most obvious candidate here: grab a handful of loops from a sample library all made using the same instrument (congas, bongos, timbales, shaker etc), layer two or three of them up on multiple tracks, then thin each one out in the arrange page to craft your own composite patterns. And taking that a step further, try resizing the loops so that each one cycles to a different time signature – one in 4/4, one in 3/4 and another in 7/8, for example – to generate crazy polyrhythms, if the track in which the part resides is viable for such groovy adventures, obvs.
Double Tracking
The most formally codified of layering tactics – although in this case the layers are sort of next to each other, rather than stacked up ‘vertically’ – double tracking is a frequently used technique for making guitar and vocal tracks sound larger than life. The part in question is recorded twice (or more) and laid out in parallel on separate tracks, which are then panned in opposite directions to create a widening, thickening effect akin to chorusing, enhanced by the subtle differences between takes. You can do it manually (ie, actually recording each double track separately) or using an automatic double tracking plugin, and there’s no reason at all that double tracking can’t be used with synths (vary the modulation a little between each take), percussion (high performer accuracy required), piano (ditto!) or any other instrument. Take care not to go too wide, though, as you don’t want to draw too much attention away from the focal centre of the mix.
Vocal Trickery
Double tracking vocals is a great way to get them sounding spacious and ‘produced’, but the human voice is also highly amenable to layering with synth sounds, it turns out, as evidenced by the enduring popularity of vocoder, talkbox and vocal synthesis plugins. Again, such transformative wizardry needn’t be the sole preserve of electronic producers: any modern vocal can potentially benefit from the gentle working in of a dynamically responsive, pitch-tracking textural synth layer or low-mixed vocoder. Or for a very different kind of vocal layering that can be hugely effective in the right musical context, try tightly doubling a fast, relatively non-sustaining sung line with a similarly staccato instrument of some sort, a la the great George Benson, who makes guitar/vocal ‘chasing’ a defining element of his sound. Niche, certainly, but very ear-catching if done well!
Bringing It All Together
When layering any combination of disparate sounds with the goal of ultimately boiling them all down to a single aggregate whole, there are two stages of processing and shaping to consider. First, each individual layer will need to be edited and EQ’d to fit around the other layers, be that clearing the very lowest frequencies out of a bass guitar to prevent collision with its accompanying synth bass layer, cutting the transient out of one snare drum to replace it with that of another, softening or ducking the attack of a synth pluck layer to sit it under a picked guitar, or whatever. And once that’s done, you may well then want to group the layers on a bus to glue them all together using EQ, compression, saturation and whatever other effects prove helpful. Ultimately, the goal is to end up with something that sounds like a single sonic entity, so listen out for frequency clashes, holes and resonances, dynamic inconsistencies (dips or peaks in level), and phase issues.
How do you bring layering techniques into your music production workflow? Let us know in the comments.