Pretty much every day, the question of how to achieve space in a production comes up. How does reverb work? What is pre-delay? Should I just Compress this? Maybe I just need new plug ins that sound ultra good and louder and stuff.
Changing the way you write music will help you more than any mixing will.
You need to give elements “space” as is commonly said, but it needs to be through decent (or at least passable) Voice leading.
The easiest way to do this, is by following 2 rules, and only breaking them in a deliberate Fashion. I truly subscribe to the belief that there are no rules in making music, but there are definitely guide lines, and deviation from them should be intentional, because it will allow you to better communicate the emotion in your music, rather than accidentally stumbling upon something cool, never to be heard again in your productions.
1- Don’t cross voices. Essentially, every time you do this (your melody plays below your bass line, or your 808 kick or bass plays higher than your melody) Your voices begin to lose their independence, which in EDM music (Where the tonality and upper harmonics of your sounds are changing constantly via randomization and/or filter changes) can cause your song to lose direction, even if the groove is on point.
2- Retain Sonority. Going the opposite way, by having more than an octave in between voices, you risk losing the unity of your piece. If you only have a bass and a really high voice (like a bell or chime) make sure you throw a lower octave on it within the patch, or add a sine wave in a new layer an octave down to help fill out the spectrum.
If you have no music theory, or you are still learning, just following these rules will set your compositions miles ahead of where they are currently. Always look up any lessons you can take on music theory, arrangement, and composition in as many styles as possible. You WILL be better off for it, even if you only learn 1 thing every lesson.
Submitted September 25, 2016 at 01:01AM by Indigo_8k13 https://www.reddit.com/r/edmproduction/comments/54dn6e/what_is_sonority_what_is_voicecrossing_and_why_do/?utm_source=ifttt