Why Your Songs Sound BAD (Fix This Big Mistake!)

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What’s up people?

 How's life? How we doing? This week I wanted to tap into something I’ve mentioned before—something I think is important enough to revisit. Over the past few weeks, months, even years, I’ve had to give a lot of notes to composers. One note in particular keeps coming up: managing your mix.

Especially your low end, and making space for those frequencies.

You can get away with more layering in the mids and highs, but in the low end, things start to fall apart fast—especially once your track is at a mastered volume. So let’s get into it.

Mixing Issues

A lot of composers write solid cues but haven’t always delivered mixed and mastered versions. In the sync and trailer space, cues need to be mixed and mastered. They’re not mastered the same way they would be for film—once you crank up that limiter on the master, it brings out everything. You can't get away with stacking tons of layers anymore. There’s just no room.

What often happens is I’ll get a track loaded with low-end elements—deep hits, sub drops, sub-heavy percussion, a pulse, maybe brass brams, a pad, or a synth. All in the same frequency region. And suddenly there’s no space.

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Low End Management

In electronic music, you learn quickly that your sub region needs to be clearly defined. You might high-pass everything below, say, 50 Hz—or 70 Hz, maybe even 100 Hz—depending on the style. That way, your sub (usually a sine wave or 808) owns that space. If your kick lives there too, you might sidechain the sub to the kick so they don’t conflict and cause distortion.

The same concept applies to cinematic tracks. As more layers come in and you start cranking the master up, things can get muddy fast. It might sound okay at first, but as the track builds, it becomes muffled. And that’s because people are stacking layers without making room.

So how do you make space?

Start by being mindful of what’s in your low end. If you’ve got a pulsing synth with a sub, cool. But once you start adding more elements, you need to be intentional. I often see composers throwing deep hits under every big hit. But if you've already got a big hit, adding another deep layer doesn't help—it just creates clutter. There’s no space for the sub drop, and now you’ve got everything distorting once that limiter kicks in.

You can’t just crank a limiter and expect your track to get louder. If there’s no space, it’ll just sound worse.

The Process

Step one: Figure out what’s taking up space in the sub region. Maybe your pulse hits around 40 Hz—cool, then EQ everything else to cut below 50 Hz. Or, use sidechain plugins to dynamically duck sub frequencies when other elements (like hits) come in. It takes a bit of setup, but once you’ve done it a few times, it gets quicker.

For example, maybe the track starts with a deep hit and a pad, but no sub yet. When the pulse comes in, maybe it avoids the sub region and lets the hit breathe. Then later, you introduce percussion with a lot of low end—cool, let that take over. If I want the synth pulse to continue, I might duplicate it, cut the lows, and let it ride above the percussion. That way, the percussion owns the low end in that section.

Managing Layers

As more layers come in—brass, synths, etc.—cut the lows out of those elements too. You can get away with a little overlap in cinematic music, but if your low end is slapping, embrace it. And when it drops out? Bring it back in with intention.

This same idea applies to the midrange too. If you’ve got strings, brass, synths, and a vocal all at once, something’s gotta give. Try EQ dipping the mids slightly across your instruments when the vocal is present. Watch how the vocal suddenly shines through.

You can even use sidechaining here. Send all instruments to a bus, and use the vocal to duck that bus slightly in the mids when it plays. When the vocal drops out, the mids come back up.

Bottom line:

you can’t infinitely layer your low end. Decide what’s leading—percussion, bass, hits—and let it own that space. I’ve been hearing a lot of tracks lately with pulses, deep hits, percussion, synths, brams, and signature sounds all crowding the low end. And it’s not working. We’ve got to cut some of that out and decide what we want to shine.

I’ve mentioned this before, but felt it was worth repeating. Hope this helps some of you composers out there be more intentional with your mixes, especially when it comes to making space for what really matters.

-Nathan

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