Doubling synths

[globalbabylon]

I'm working on a track and I was having trouble getting the main synth to hit as hard as I wanted. I duplicated the track thinking I would change it up on one track and add more layers, but it sounded good just like that. My gut is telling me that this may be a production no no, mixing is an area I'm still trying to educate myself on. I did a search on the subject though and found a thread in the dubs section where someone had recommended that the person who made a track double the synth to give it more umph. So, to all of you with vast knowledge of the mixing process, what's the consensus?

[globalbabylon]

Just realized how many times I said track and think it confused the point a bit. I was working on a song and I duplicated the synth track in it.

[Attila]

Someone stop me if I'm wrong, but I'm pretty sure if you double the exact same track on top of itself you'll just raise the volume.

[globalbabylon]

That makes sense to me, and may be the case, but when I raised the volume on one and muted the other it didn't sound the same. Maybe my ears were playing tricks, I had been sitting with headphones on for a long time at that point.

[Mammoth]

Give your ears a rest and come back to it.
Goes for monitors too.

[daeMTHAFKNkim]

I wouldn't use the same exact synth twice for one part. I layer synths usually and it would be from 2-4 different synths playing the same notes at the same time. Each one having its own unique sound, usually the hard sounding lead/softer synths for the others. or hard sounding lead, and another hard sounding lead 1 octave below.

[globalbabylon]

Yeah, generally I would layer a bunch of different synths as well. Think this is likely a case of too many 12 hour shifts in a row and seriously over worked ears listening to the same song for far to long. Thanks for the responses.

[komanderkin]

i'm not sure i'm reading the first post right, but in case i am:

if you just layer the same exact part twice, the effect is the same as simply increasing the volume. however, if you take two same parts and detune them slightly apart from each other, you'll get the chorusing effect, which is often also regarded to as "phattening". you can also try slightly panning these two detuned parts (one to the left and the other one to the right, of course).

[bassinine]

i layer the fuck out of my basses. and my leads, and my pads, and my drums.

[knobgoblin]

Is your sound coming from a synth or is it rendered audio? If its rendered audio, turning the track up 6dB will accomplish the same thing as what you did. If its from a synth you may be getting comb filtering effects from slight phase offsets in oscillators and/or modulation sources, in which case you should lower the volume of both tracks by 6dB to keep the effect, but without the jump in volume

[Turnipish_Thoughts]

Instead of trying to bring the synth up. Think about bringing everything else down. If it's not hitting as hard as you want it to, look for frequency masking in it's pitch register and do some subtractive EQing or change the arrangement so it has room to breathe in the mix.

Alternatively alter it's amp envelope to give it more attack and look into things like compression or transient designers to enphasize the attack transient. Apply subbtle saturation/distortion to increase the harmonic content making it brighter. Apply subtle small room, quick reverb to other elements to push them backwardsi n the mix, bringing the synth forward... so on and so forth

Layering, at least to me has always been about timbrel management, as in changing the texture of a sound, i wouldn't ever use layering for technical reasons, there's far more effective techniques for that.

[globalbabylon]

Wow! Great tips guys, thank you. And not one person ripping on my for the question, which I'd kind of expected. I'll try these techniques and see what works, again, thank you all very much for the input.