How to "fill out" a song

Music Production Music Tech Discussion
1

So i’m working on a song and the “drop” is similar to the drop in:




But I can't seem to get my drop to sound "filled out"...to my ears it just sounds empty and, as a result, weak. The purpose of the section is to invoke either dancing or jumping but as it is I don't see that happening.

What's your advice on making a song sound fuller? You can listen to my version here:



Your thoughts? I'm probably missing something very basic and elemental so don't leave those suggestions out :P
2

Just noticed the reverb on avicii’s bass and it made a huge difference. Still looking for suggestions though

3

Well if you listen carefully its a layered sound.

The bottom has a sort of driven (distorted) bass stab, prolly a simple sine wave driven plenty.

The top sound is gonna be the difficult to get, prolly some unison? Get two voices and pitch one down or up by about 0.1-0.3



Finally he’s using ambience, I dont think thats reverb on something but reverb set to freeze and sidechained off the kick. It really fills it out. It seems to stagnant/similair sounding throughout to actually be reverbed from something. Though you are gonna have to freeze it at the right moment cause it sounds like it captured a bit of the lead sound and the bass sound, but not the attack?



Anyways thats what I hear, I may be off as my ears arent trained as some others. Hope it helps!





EDIT: I take the freeze comment back, it sorta sounds more like a delayed (no/very little feedback) short reverb to fill the in-betweens.

Obviously my ears arent that trained after all :stuck_out_tongue:



Also for the bass and the lead maybe its just me but I think the lead hits slightly before the bass?



Anyways, maybe someone with more skill can help.

4

Jeez…your ears are WAY more trained than mine…I didn’t even come close to hearing all of that.



Thanks a ton, when I added the reverb it helped a lot but I set the decay time up and the dry/wet to 100% (it’s in a return track) so that it’s not picking up the individual notes, rather it’s just a sustained ambiance.



I’m gonna mess around with a few of your ideas, it doesn’t need to sound exactly like it since I am not trying to remake the sound, I just want to create the same “driving” feeling and so far I am just getting a hollow sound.



Any more ideas?



PS: My terminology may be horrible off haha, I don’t really know the legitimate terms, I just sort of describe things how they make sense to me =/

5

agree with the earlier comment about layering. would help to have a deep sub bass (sine probably) with a mid bass and even a distorted higher bassline all playing in unison. reverb can be applied to the top two layers but prob not the sub, alternatively make sure to HPF the reverb to avoid muddying up your bass sound.



I’d prob say to use the reverb as an insert effect before the sidechain compressor, if you do it with a send effect then your reverb return won’t be sidechained and you lose the pumping effect that gives it the energy.



Also the kick drum needs to be bigger, maybe use a different sample? A bit of high end click on the kick drum helps to fill out the top end when there are no high percussion instruments there…



Bit of a ramble but hope it helps a bit…

6

And add the sausage fatner!

Avicii is crancking it up with limiters and compressors as well to get that full sound.