Layer your recordings like a pro!

check out this riff now watch what happens when we add bass acoustic guitar strings Bells slide guitar distorted guitar and drums this is layering and today I'm going to show you how you can do it to make your recordings shot the history of layering goes back to before music was even recorded when Orga shows would have entire string sections play the same part so the part would sound bigger and Fuller and more powerful to the audience this same technique was applied to recordings in the 1960s when Phil Spector developed his famous wall of sound approach to recordings Specter would often have four bass players two drummers five guitar players and a horn section all playing together in the same room and sometimes he would hold people at gunpoint until he got the result he wanted and through this technique he made some of the most acclaimed and commercially successful albums of the 20th century that whole holding a gunpoint thing isn't a joke by the way Spector was charged and found guilty of murder in 2009 and he died in prison in 2021 but boy if he didn't know how to make some great sounding records the wall of sound technique is very warm and nostalgic but admittedly by today's production standards it does sound a bit dated that being said the art of adding various layers to make your recording shine is definitely something we can learn from him and it's what we're going to explore today let's get to it so first things first you need to have an idea for your song I like to keep my ideas relatively simple seeing as the goal of this production technique is to make the most of what's already there and if it's too complicated it could get muddy I like to break my ideas down into the core elements and in this case there are three the main guitar riff the vocal Melody and the slide Melody standing at the crossroads and you don't know how to choose if you're always afraid of change why can't things just stay the same everything we record is going to serve those three parts and we're going to start with a backing track so the first thing I'm going to record today is the drums the reason I start with the drums is it's easier to play guitar to a drum beat in the past when I've recorded guitar to a click track and then try to add in Drums afterwards the guitar wasn't as on time as I'd want it to be we've got the stock Logic kit East Bay all ready to go we got our click set to 125 beats per minute during this take notice how I add hand claps on the primary snare hits these will go a long way in giving us the big sound that we're looking for now we're ready to add in the main riff and since this riff is clean we're going to be using my brand new Fender Stratocaster in sea foam green oh Lexi so a Stratocaster with single coil pickups has one of the most iconic clean sounds that you can get which is the reason I bought it and the reason we're going to use it today a lot of people ask me about my amp software and I use pod farm for this I'm using the blackface Lux amp with these settings any clean guitar you've heard on this channel uses those settings hmm ings now let's add in some bass so the role of the base is to provide the low end Groove complement the drum beat and connect the chords whatever you play should serve the song for this I'm using the stock logic amp modern stack I'm going to crank the compression all the way up put the mix setting so it's just the amp I'm going to boost the bass a bit and shave off some high end since we're going to be layering in a bunch of instruments I don't want the high end of the bass to conflict with future layers foreign next we're going to add in the slide guitar Melody for this I'm actually going to be using the Stratocaster again because again the tone is phenomenal and it blows my hundred dollar slide guitar out of the water I'm going to be using the exact same clean tone for this but I'm going to turn up the Reverb quite a bit this will help the slide sound bigger and Fuller all right all right so we have a really solid backing beat some would just add vocals and call it a day but we're not done we're going to add in layers to maximize the parts we have and make it sound as big as possible and we're going to start by adding to the slide guitar we just recorded I want to add in a couple layers of bells plucks and vocals to accentuate that slide Melody I'm going to do this by using logic stock glockenspiel however you say it seems like the most German word ever glockenspiel we're also going to add in the 16 millimeter dream sequence synth that is also stock in logic these work well because the Glockenspiel has a very sharp attack the 16 millimeter dream sequence has a very long sustain and the vocals will just tie it all together to make this sound big and wide I'm going to use some panning to start off I'm going to pan the slide guitar to the left the 16 millimeter synth a bit to the right I'll keep the Glockenspiel centered and I'll record the background vocal part twice one take will be panned all the way to the left and the other all the way to the right notice how all of these layers really accentuate that slide Melody thank you you see how with a few layers we've taken that simple slide Melody and made it sound huge that's what it's all about and next I want to revisit the main riff and give it another layer of love oh for this take I'm going to be using my Fender Telecaster with the humbucker pickups because distorted tones on this guitar are the bomb I'm going to be using a quite abrasive tone for this because I think it'll blend in nicely with the clean tone we recorded earlier to achieve this tone all I did was add a classic distortion pedal to the same clean tone we've been using lastly I'm going to pan the clean tank we did earlier all the way to the left and the distorted take were about to record I'm gonna pan far to the right let's do it foreign we're not done yet because there's a few extra layers I want to add to finish this thing off I'm going to add in some acoustic guitar chords All I'm going to be playing are the chords nothing fancy the tone I'm using is just a preset in logic pro and to make it sound wide I'm going to put it through a stereo imager and I'm going to keep it panned dead center I'm also going to add in some strings from a string pack I bought a few years ago called nucleus your orchestral core these are going to be panned dead center and again I'm just playing the chords last thing I'm adding on this round is the tambourine this will just tighten up the Rhythm and give a nice texture to the higher frequencies down and just like that we took a simple idea and we've made it sound big and huge with just a few layers what we've recorded today is the chorus of a song I recently wrote about dealing with unexpected change sometimes life will throw you a curveball and you have to react and the way you choose to react defines your character and over time it becomes your destiny some changes in life are big and some are small some parts of a recording are at the Forefront While others are far in the background not even noticed but just as a recording is enriched by every layer we too are enriched by the layers of experience and adaptation that shape the symphony we call life and now here's a song that uses layering to make a simple idea sound huge standing at usroads and you don't know why to choose but you're never gonna grow if you're always turn and go back to the Stars take a ride and play a part you know everyone is afraid of change why can't things just stay safe stumbled down remembering the good of days why can't things just stay that way you're off the deep and so pretend and everything's all right it's just a test behind are you scared from what you can't control I'll take a look inside and you'll find your soul thank you standing at the crossroads is what if I told you you could make an awesome hip-hop song based around a one second sample will you believe me well I recently gave it a try and the result was absolutely sick you can check that out by watching this video here and until next time this has been songs by Spencer signing out