Avoiding being messy

[ehbes]

We've read it everywhere - If you wanna get a good kick you can layer samples together to make the kick you want.

Do that - but for your entire mix.

That's a great way to increase your chances of a muddy mix which is exactly what the op doesn't want

[Trichome]

Lol, things can easily sound better in the mix than when they are solo'd
take eptics kicks for example, they sound pretty thin on their own (not bad, but they aren't what i'd call heavy kicks, most of them hit at like 100hz)
but when the main basses and sub kicks in it makes them sound weighty as fuck..
Soundcloud

the whole point of mixing is to make everything fit together, it doesnt matter if things sound weird on their own.
think of it like a jigsaw, when completed its a perfect square, but each individual piece has holes and things sticking out.

[Python-]

Yes, the EQing on the track is pretty much what determines the "messyness" of the sound. Lets say you have a sub and a bass playing at the same time, listen to the intro of my new track on soundscloud. Its the perfect example because without good eqing the frequencys would clash making it sound muddy. Mastering also helps alot too. Another thing that I would suggest is mixing your track at a low volume and question what u can hear and if you can hear everything at low volume. Then u can start tweaking what u want to hear and so forth.

[Burgeamon]

We've read it everywhere - If you wanna get a good kick you can layer samples together to make the kick you want.

Do that - but for your entire mix.

That's a great way to increase your chances of a muddy mix which is exactly what the op doesn't want

The point I was trying to make is that you need to EQ the layers together correctly else you will get muddyness.

[Attila]

We've read it everywhere - If you wanna get a good kick you can layer samples together to make the kick you want.

Do that - but for your entire mix.

its a good trick, take your final mix and layer it with a few genre classics.

[alpz]

We've read it everywhere - If you wanna get a good kick you can layer samples together to make the kick you want.

Do that - but for your entire mix.

its a good trick, take your final mix and layer it with a few genre classics.

[dublerium]

How do you avoid making the track too messy, but still not empty feeling? I mean, i have like drum loop and some attmosphere+ pad and some other background sounds and the track sounds kinda full, but maybe a bit messy. But if i erase some of those background sounds the track starts to feel empty.
I think eq is the key, but how should i eq a pad or attmosphere for example?

The following things should be a few things to consider regarding what you're asking:

-Thought out choice of elements considering frequency content and where they are in your tracks arrangement.

-If you've selected elements that naturally work well together in the context of the mix then EQing the track will be an 'easier' process when approaching your mix as a whole. Use EQ to get elements sitting in the mix the way you want them to sit.

- Next I would look to filtering, especially relevant to what your asking about how to have elements making the track sound full, yet not cluttered and muddy. Having elements that are there to fill sections of the freq. range (if that's what your intending on doing) filtered with some thought behind it can go along way and make your mix cleaner and fuller, for example for a lot of atmospheric noises I use I will fairly heavily bandpass them so that they are present in the mix but not dominating. That's just one example though there's obviously endless ways of using different filtering methods with various sound sources!

-For depth in your mix, and for elements to create a full mix whilst not being messy a thought out use of reverb is where to look. Again there's endless ways of applying this within a mix so I won't explain, there's already a load online to read up on.

-Lastly panning, stereo placement and width of elements and how they are effecting eachother/the mix as a whole is another major factor to be thinking about.

Anyway that's all pretty obvious things i've suggested and there's a lot more that could be said, but they are some of the main things to be thinking about when approaching a track when your wanting it to be full but not messy and cluttered. Though I don't know how much you know, so this might be a help out!