THICKENING EFFECTS
One of the ironies of the effectively unlimited track count of modern DAWs is that the more parts you add to a track, the ‘smaller’ the sonic footprint of those sounds will have to be. If you’ve got 25 sounds contributing to the mix at the same time, it’s inevitable that you’ll find yourself reaching for EQ to get rid of over-busy frequency content, or turning volume faders down for some parts to lessen their impact in the mix. Imagine you were limited to making sounds with just a couple of hardware synths instead; you might find yourself with the inverse problem: instead of having loads of sounds which you need to reduce in impact, instead you’ve got just a handful that you need to ‘inflate in intensity’. This technique was common through the ’70s and ’80s, and it’s a contributing factor in the soundtracks referenced throughout this article.
There are a number of ways to take classic synth pads, lead lines and basses to inflate their role in a mix. We’ve looked at detuning as one example – big, fat slabs of ‘chorused’ oscillators which sound thicker for a little pitch widening. But you can go further: Chorus, Ensemble, Phasing and Flanging effects are all ‘doublers’, as they create detuned or phase-offset ‘copies’ of the input signal to make the ‘impression’ of those sounds larger. Compression of more percussive sound sources (like running sequenced lines and basses) can help too. Try a low Threshold with high Ratio, to ensure that most of the signal is being compressed quite hard. Adjust Attack Time to be quite fast, with a longer Release Time, so the compressor doesn’t recover too quickly. Then turn up the Make-Up Gain – your sequences will sound significantly bigger.