JPF Home Page Forums General Messages General Message Forum Layering Tracks

Hi Guys and Gals,

Could any of you lovely people explain your particlular way of layering tracks, is it costly if you are doing say a demo for a customer , also what is the point on a Song Demo,?

I can understand it being needed if the song is for sale to the public. Years ago we called it Multi tracking or is todays Layering something completely different.

I's sure there are lots of writers here that would like it explained properly, including myself.

Thanking you all in anticipation

Using modern digital recording methods, you can easily record one track over another, over another and so on until one person can sound like an entire band. Each track can be easily modified independent of the others. You can cut and paste pieces of music and edit out mistakes easily.

You can download a free program from the web called Audacity which can do all of these things. All you need is a computer, some devices to connect microphones or instruments to the computer, and the skill to use all the stuff. You could probably do it almost free if you already have a decent computer, microphone and a mixer. At worst it takes a few hundred dollars to get a decent system going.

Here is a link to a song of mine which is comprised of layers of me playing various instruments and singing.

Colors

On a song demo, the point would be to make the song as close to the sound of the final artist as possible. If you were demoing the song to an artist who would use harmonies and a full band, a layered demo could show off your song in its best light so that that she would relate to it. There is so much competition that you have to pull out all the stops to get heard.

Hope this helps.

I take it when you say layering you mean building up a song using muti tracks.

Gone are the days when most songs were recorded as live performances. Nowadays each instrument is recorded seperately on a multitrack recorder (Colin has given you some useful tips) the various tracks are edited and combined to form the MASTER.

The song is built up adding a track at a time. Most people use a click track to get the timing right. A click track is like a metronome it just clicks out the tempo....click click click clunk click click click clunk etc etc. This is played during recording and removed later to let the musician hear the beats so he plays in time.
Each instrument is then recorded one a time and allocated to a different track on the multi track recorder. If mistakes are made it is easy to re-record that bit and "punch in" another recording covering the mistake. Most times a few recordings usually three of the same parts are made and the best bits used.

EG
track 1. piano
track 2. lead vocal
track 3. guitar
track 5. bass
track 6-9 vocal harmonies
track 10. horns

You can add or remove tracks anytime. Each track although part of the song can be independantly edited, balanced and EQed, have FX added, muted, moved or cut and diced to fit different parts etc etc. It is a very complicated and interesting process.

In theory one person can record a whole song singing and playing all the parts and instruments. The sky is the limit if you have the talent time and money to do it.

Why record a demo? Well it is a way of showing how your song can sound given the "treatment" rather than just showing lyrics and a melody.
Most producers want to hear the finished article (how it will sound on the radio) before they will commit to having someone record it so DEMOS are now as much a part of the business as writing lyrics and tunes. Most songwriters who are serious about their songs want to produce a good quality demo even for their own uses that is the best it can be.....given their experience and time and money restraints. Yes it can be done in your own living room with one cheap mic and a PC but most serious people have a studio that they use or in some cases have created their own studio.

Hi Guys thankyou for that Big Jim and Colin Ward

Most helpfull as you say got to put that song over at it's best when you consider all the top competition

Colin will go and listen

Thanks Once again most helpfull

Lamorna

Hi Colin

Could not listen so much guff and adds, cant get to your link

What is happening to theese sights, Yes I have a slow connection but it's getting hopeless to listen to anything.

Cheers anyhow

Oh Jim I have done demos before and had songs published my query was why with regards to Layering, but thanks anyhow.



Lamorna

Hi Colin

Could not listen so much guff and adds, cant get to your link

What is happening to theese sights, Yes I have a slow connection but it's getting hopeless to listen to anything.

Cheers anyhow

Oh Jim I have done demos before and had songs published my query was why with regards to Layering, but thanks anyhow.



Lamorna

Lamorna, these guys have given you the basics and all quite correctly...personally i'd post this over in the recording forum...if you get an answer from sub, lwilliam, or jody i would say it is from the horses mouth, guys who live it and do it at a professional level. i layer tracks all the time but am not nearly as accomplished as i wish at the mixing of those layers. In todays competitive songwriting landscape, writers are having to become gifted in recording their works as well to be competitive. If i have a great layered recording of something i've written it is because i hired out the studio engineeing, i don't have the gear or skills in that department i wish i did. A properly layered song pitched appropriately to an artist in their key and style could be called the vehicle in which 90% of cuts ride in on.

Hi Lamorna Sorry for misunderstanding. If you mean duplicating and overlaying the vocal track into the mix then this can be done easily and cheaply. Audacity is a free program and has this facility plus many others. If you mean layering MIDI (using the same midi track to play two different instruments)then that again is simple but you need a MIDI editing program like Cubase or reaper or something similar.

Hey there,
We own and operate a very successful recording studio. Layering is multi-tracking as has been explained.

As others have also explained, the song demo needs to compete against other well-produced song demos. I've recently been able to listen to several of the top songs being plugged in Nashville by Tim McGraw's manager. Boy, they were so very well produced. The biggest thing which impressed me though, was the talent of the vocalists. They really made the songs. In some cases, the performances by the singers and musicians made the song sound stronger than it was written!

I've learned that to make a song magical, it's not just the writing. It's the arrangement, production and performers who bring the entire thing to light.

Best of luck,
Heidi

Yes Heidi, Some people could sing the contents of the telephone directory and it would sound great.

I know that Brian May (Queen guitarist) would multitrack overdubbed guitar to get a symphonic guitar sound.
Used in a lot of today's numetal.
I went crazy with layering when I first started recording.
I do a bit of it on the internet with keyboard when I do new wave oriented post punk and on guitar solos and synths.
But I like to only gradually apply it to meat up the sound and mimic something on an instrument I added.
I am trying to master a basic song with my own type of artistic ideas and then add later.

But layering to me has always been represented as something to accentuate a basic recording, not for the sake of doing it.
I have heard a lot of ambient and noise acts that did nothing but hodgepodging sounds together.
Like The Cure and Kraftwrerk and a genre known as shoegazer.
But I can not explain about it as eloquently as these other posts have.
I am intrigued by the concept though.

Someone that is good enough with multitracking software can do stuff with layering that is pretty boundless.
I know that Audacity is leaps and bounds above what I had with having to deal with an outside playback device with the sound loss.