I want to post a little about controlling what part of the song the audience should focus on. Now, of course, you could say that control is bad. We don’t need control. Down with the controllers. BUT, when you want to lead the audience from one part of a song to another in a way that’s cohesive and doesn’t just sound like a mish-mash of sound, there are tricks.
I have to admit to using one that I’m putting up for consideration. Basically, you selectively drown out other tracks with whatever you’re trying to put the focus on.
Yes, you drown out the sound. It turns the background tracks into kind of an ambient wash. This is actually exclusively how I compose. Some tracks come in, and they sort of drown out other tracks. I don’t low-pass anything or hi-pass or bandpass anything, I just make sure what comes in sounds good and holds the attention, and let it drown out what’s not supposed to hold the atttention. Then when I silence certain tracks it causes other tracks to stand out, and so on.
I know that this could be considered a cheap trick, amateurish, but dammit I come from a DIY background originally and cheap production is the name of the game in genres influenced by that ethos. Not so much in electronic music though…
ALTHOUGH, when I compose I do tend to keep different octaves separate, like I don’t practice “close” harmony, I tend to put the harmonizing note on another octave. So there is that…
What do other producers think of this technique/idea?