Online Sequencer Forums

Here is one simple trick to instantly make your songs better.

Each instrument has a certain frequency range (xylophone has a lot of high end, jazz guitar has a lot of low, piano has a lot of mids). This is because every sound is actually made of sine waves. The idea is to fill up the frequency spectrum so nothing is competing with each other so everything sounds full and large. This means its probably best not to use piano in the low mids if other instruments are using the low mids, and probably best not to have more than one instrument filling the bass. This is where using counter melodies and rhythm parts become important, and why they can be so effective. 

Here is the frequency range of a piano (not OS piano, just some piano) 



Here is the frequency spectrum of a square wave (played at 1000hz)

As you can see, the piano fills out low mid energy and the square fills out high end more


THE BASS AND LOW MIDS are the MOST IMPORTANT to keep clean and orderly. A great way to fill out the low mids without stuff sounding empty is to use Smooth Synth as a pad. Turn its volume way down, so it is hardly noticeable, add reverb, and play chords with it. This gives a depth to the song that makes it come alive. You may also want to try acoustic guitar or jazz guitar to fill this area out. Be careful though, you really want to make sure the low mids are a balanced volume.

Grand piano has a lot of low midrange energy that can become muddy, especially with Reverb, so I like to avoid piano under C5.

What about the high end? The high end isn't as important as the low end, but still important. Eguitar, xylophone, and the snare drum can give you high mid energy, and cymbals give you the highs. Having a lot of high end can give your song a lot of energy, so use it strategically to build your song over time.

In the end, if you compose in a way that instruments don't compete with each other, your songs should sound amazing, unless they suck, and if they suck, you probably should practice more.



*VERY IMPORTANT*
Different headphones can make some frequencies sound louder than they should. Gaming headphones have boosted low end and highs which makes them less good for making music than studio headphones. Cheap headphones usually have a lot of low mids and reduced high end. Your laptop speakers have no low end and a lot of highs. Try and listen on the best sounding playback device you have, which in the case of most people will be high quality consumer headphones like Beats or Sony or something, but ideally would be pro audio headphones like Steinberg mixing headphone, so that you can get the most accurate representation of the song. This is why I stress using mixing headphones a lot for making music, they are designed to be as neutral as possible

however when you use smooth synth as a pad, don't just play chords in the bass, the low frequencies clash and it sounds a lot better when the chords are played in the mid register, with the tonic note in the bass

this is a good segue into my "don't use reverb" argument

using reverb will stretch the duration of every notes' frequencies so that they're even more bound to overlap, especially considering os's reverb which is wet as fuck

please don't use reverb in dense songs, especially grand piano, please don't

I like to use reverb on background stuff and delay on leads. I also like to keep most present, but not background, but not lead, stuff dry

Adding onto this:

Your composition also plays a key role in how clean or messy your song sounds. By adding more notes, you add other semitones, which are higher or lower-pitched than the previous sound. Adding notes on top of one another makes the audio waveform that's played back by your computer more complex, hence messier, sounding wobbly on a micro level. 

Here is an image of 3 sound waves. The top wave is just a sine wave at the note of C. If we add another note, (in this case E) on top of that note, we get a wave that is more condensed and moves up and down really fast. If we add a G note on top of that, the wave gets increasingly more complex.


This scenario is working with very low frequencies, hence you can see the waves better. This process is way less noticeable with higher frequencies since it happens at an even faster rate. So fast in fact, that you can't audibly hear these volume differences, which is why chords don't sound wobbly. The more you add, however, the more messy your sound will be. 

You can try this for yourself using the 8-bit sine. Add the lowest C note with a C# note on top of it and you can hear a wobbly effect when playing the sound. 



Here's another example in the higher registers. A chord with 4 different notes will sound better than a chord with 5 or 6 different notes. 



There is, however, a way to exploit this. If you move notes to a higher octave, you can make your chord sound clearer. Here's the 6 note chord that sounded terrible at first, but when spread out over the frequency spectrum, sounds way better. It's like the chord's hidden potential. 



What to learn from this: 

1. Limit your bass notes to 1 note at a time
2. Spread out notes to make your song sound clearer

delay is great, i like to use it situationally so i wanna push that off to the side

ideally its better to stack shallow melodies/support with instruments that have more release and blend with most frequencies (like jazz guitar), as opposed to using reverb on those shallow notes

most things that use OS reverb start to decrease in sound quality which is a no bueno, stacking things with jazz guitar allows the frequencies to mix, all the while retaining the attack of the original instrument

Adding to that, LucentTear, French Horn and smooth synth can by used as a reverb as well, at times I like to double everything with a low volume french horn and make the notes longer so it sounds less wet and can also sound longer or shorter depending on how you want it

anything can have reverb for more atmosphere as long as it's not overused, its all personal preference

Oh I should also mention that having a lot of high end can make things feel cold and brittle, while having a good amount of low end can make things feel warm. Having a lot of midrange can make things feel low quality. Keep this in mind when sculpting the atmosphere of the song, like a black metal song that is supposed to feel like freezing sorrow may have more mids and highs than a spacey trance song

But Lopyt! Why do I listen to death metal songs that only have a guitar drums and bass and it sounds so big? or lofi songs with only synthesizer and drums and it sound so big? Well some instruments, like a distorted guitar, fill out a large portion of the frequency spectrum. When something is distorted, it adds harmonics, which are extra notes that you can't really hear as individual notes, to the sound. In the case of the lofi synthesizer, synthesizers are incredibly versatile instruments and you can make a synthesizer fill out exactly what frequencies you want to that stuff sounds perfect. You can even fill out all the frequencies at once, which is literally white noise. When working on denser arrangements though, these instruments also work well if used correctly