The Art of Layering

Written in collaboration with Google Bard. While I do appreciate the existence of such tools, it’s important to understand their limits and function. For this article I asked it to write me an article on “how important layering is in sound design and how it can be used creatively to create new sounds,” and used that response as the basis for this article. I’ve fact-checked, corrected, and added information based on my personal experience, and added more in-depth information regarding technical and specific tool information which tools like GPT aren’t really capable of handling properly.

Layering is an essential aspect of sound design. It involves combining multiple sounds to create a unique and complex sonic texture. Basically every sound you’ve heard in a movie or game involved layers, and realistically almost every natural sound you hear involves layers to some degree. In this article, we will explore the importance of layering in sound design and how it can be used creatively to create new sounds.

To create rich and complex sounds, you need to combining various timbres, textures, and frequencies. By layering multiple sounds, sound designers can create new sounds that are not possible with a single sound source. A simple example is layering a saw wave with a square to create a unique wave with its own timbre. Or, think of a gunshot, and all the noises that go into that. Break down the sound, create each part separately, then layer. And I mean every aspect. The dead zone of the trigger, the trigger mechanism, the hammer hitting the charge, the explosion, the sound of air rushing and heating through the barrel, the blowback, the reloading, the muzzle, everything. There is overlap with all those sounds, and they all happen so fast that with natural reverb they turn into a cohesive noise.

In terms of music, layering is also known as mixing. Much like a mix engineer would combine guitars, drums, vocals, and bass to create a cohesive mix, so do we sound designers combine samples and synths to create whatever it is we want to create. Roland once made a series of synths that used Linear Algorithm Synthesis which used the power of mixing a sample and a synth to make a new sound, so this isn’t a new concept. By timing layered sounds correctly, such as playing the sound of rubble during, but after the start of, an explosion, you get a fuller, more dynamic sound with more realism than if you’d simply mixed the two samples together from their start times. For any experienced sound designer, this is obvious, but if you’re just starting out this is massively important. Take the gunshot breakdown from above and apply it to any sound, and you’ll learn to hear the different parts of a sound and how they’re timed. You can also use the layering of different frequency ranges to great effect in building or releasing tension: if a sound feels like it’s going up in frequency, you build tension (think of a plucked then stretched rubber band), if it goes down it’s more of a release in tension (think of the gunshot, which is loud and bright at first but dull and quiet later), and you can always just fill the spectrum entirely for a wall of sound.

Moreover, layering can help us to create a sense of space and environment in their sounds. By layering sounds recorded in different locations, such as different distances from the source, we can create a sense of depth and distance that can help to enhance the realism of the sound. For example, again using gunshots because they’re just really useful for explaining topics, if you were to record a gunshot you would likely have at least 3 mics: one near the gun, one a safe distance away, and one much further away or facing away from the gun entirely. You can combine these three to create a large, full gun sound like you’d hear in Call of Duty, or use them individually for first and third person sounds as well as distant gunshots like in a war scene.

Layering can also be used creatively to create new sounds that are not present in the original sound sources. By layering sounds with different characteristics, we can create sounds that are unique and unexpected. A great plugin for this is Tonsturm Whoosh, which will effectively turn any (up to 4 at once) samples into a whoosh sound by layering them, altering phase, timing, panning, and more. More simply, if you layer the modulator with a modulated carrier in an FM synth (or better yet, Korg Opsix), you get a mix of the two signals which can be used for anything from adding a sub-bass to tinnitus ringing during or after a sound.

Another creative use of layering is to create morphing sounds. By layering sounds with different characteristics and using automation to control volume, filters, and other parameters, we can create morphing sounds that evolve and change over time. Wavetable synthesizer users will be used to this concept, but it can be applied to any synth, sampler, etc. Phaseplant is an excellent tool for playing with this concept, but is bad at altering timing of things. For those using a more modular environment, this is also incredibly useful for modulation. Waldorf’s Iridium has a Komplex moduator which is two custom-shape LFO/envelopes that you can morph between. Mutable Instruments Frames allows you to morph between 4 sources to create a unique modulator or sound. Stages does as well, but I mean… what doesn’t Stages do?

Layering is an essential aspect of sound design that allows us sound designers to create rich, complex, and unique sounds by combining multiple sound sources, altering their timing and timbre, and adding depth, dimension, and environment to our sounds. It’s just as easy to do with samples as it is synths, and works amazingly if you combine them. Yes, Roland, we still do that. With awesome results.