More is more (sometimes!)

Despite all of the advice here about how to strip things back, make overwhelming sounds smaller and generally weed out unnecessary notes and frequencies from your track, it is possible (though far less likely) that your track requires the opposite – a greater sense of weight and depth. Of course, how to achieve this could form the basis of an article in its own right, but remember that weight isn’t only achieved by greater volume.

Tempting as it might be simply to turn everything up, the level of detail and the range of tools we’ve looked at through these pages are often the same as those you’ll need if a bigger impression is required from your mix. Be similarly tactical; address each sound in turn and ensure that, with EQ, you’re only adding frequencies in areas where the sounds will benefit, such as a little extra low mid-range for extra snare drum punch, or extra air on a vocal to make it float more.

Compression on individual drum and percussion sounds can help give them more weight too (though compressors are also capable of the opposite, depending on your parameter choices) but if you’re looking for extra length in your drum sounds, transient designers can often prove more effective. Sometimes, some judicious delay can help smudge an over-exposed part by filling in some space between notes, while recording backing vocals or using a parallel compression treatment on a lead vocal can add extra power to the sung components of a track. The options are endless but don’t be in too much of a hurry to surrender all that space – you’ve done really well to create it in the first place!