Enhance Your Music with a Subtlety Layer

In conversations with student composers I regularly hear concerns that their music just doesn't seem as polished and alive as the professional music they are listening to. It seems like they have good themes, interesting chord progressions and solid orchestration, but there's still some extra magic missing.

This led to the idea of a "subtlety layer".

Just like that extra little garnish a gourmet chef adds to a meal to make it more presentable and appealing, the subtlety layer is a final pass over your music that adds the extra spice to put it over the edge.

The subtlety layer can give your music more life, more interest and a more organic touch, and in this tutorial we're going to learn how.

What Is the Subtlety Layer

The subtlety layer is not an excuse to throw everything and the kitchen sink into your track. Just like you wouldn't pour an entire shaker full of salt into your soup, the whole idea behind the word subtle is that it's a gentle touch.

One of the reasons we call it a layer is because it helps to think of only one extra line of things happening. In this world of limitless samples and ample RAM, it can be easy to keeping adding more and more junk onto your track.

If you have a tendency to overdo it, imagine that you have one guy inside your DAW who is responsible for playing the subtlety layer. He can switch from any instrument to any other instantly, but he can only play one instrument at a time. That way you keep yourself from having seventeen "subtlety layers" all trying to add a gross amount of spice at once!

Up Is Down

My absolute favorite listening example to demonstrate the subtlety layer is the track "Up is Down" from Hans Zimmer's score to Pirate of the Caribbean: At World's End. You could spend an hour listening to the first thirty seconds alone and still not pick up every tiny little thing happening that adds up to a very rich and complex texture.

Grab a decent pair of headphones, crank the volume and listen closely:

Here are some of the things to notice happening in the opening section:

Tiny background percussion parts that are not prominently featured; they are almost more felt than heard.

A fill reliably every four bars, but it's always unique and usually from a different section of the orchestra than the previous fill.

Fresh and interesting colors that appear once and never return.

Melody lines doubled on multiple instruments, sometimes only playing a few notes of the melody at a time.

Percussion parts that play a consistent groove with variety. In other words the same one bar rhythm isn't simply copy-pasted over and over but actually changes in small ways each time through.

What to Put in the Subtlety Layer

Now that we have an idea of what the layer is, what kinds of things are appropriate to put in it?

The idea is that your main dish is already complete, the "meat and potatoes" of your melody, harmony, groove, and so on.

What we want to use the subtlety layer for is extra elements. Textures, fills and colours that are not necessarily essential to the integrity of the music but add life and interest to the overall presentation.

Here is a simple mellow track that we'll use for our example. It already consists of a guitar-esque synth, strings and percussion, and in many respects we could call it "done" and ship it off.

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