Everyone that works on music has secrets.

You, me, the guys down the street and across the country all have secrets. A lot of us agonize over how to figure out these secrets by trying to analyze every aspect of the sound until we feel we have pinpointed what that "secret" is. For many years, great producers have been idolized for their "secret" sound.

Guys like Joe Meek, Phil Spector (yes, THAT Phil Spector), Mutt Lange, Dr. Dre, etc... have all been looked upon by their respective generations as revolutionaries.

A big part of this was their "secret" sound that each one developed and unleashed upon the masses. It's not as much of a secret as you might think. You just have to ask yourself "What is it about the sound I like?" and you'll probably answer "The richness of the sound." That richness is layers upon layers creating a tone and character of sound that makes it very pleasing to our ears. It's called the "Wall of Sound" for a reason: instead of just putting in 1 violin, why not put in 12 violins?! We have the capability to utilize these techniques easier than ever before.

We, as music makers, have never before in history had the capabilities we now have in our laptops. So why not utilize this to your advantage. Most of us are using MIDI synthesizers in a huge chunk of our work nowadays. There are many advantages to MIDI for production, but I would like to focus on how easy it is to create rich layers. Pro Tools has a great feature called "Multiple Output Destinations." It's real easy to do -- just hold down the CNTRL Key (Mac) or START Key (PC), and select another output on any track.

When utilizing this with MIDI synthesizers, this enables you to utilize multiple Patches to create rich, layered sounds. For example: you have a Lead Piano part that was performed and assigned to channel 2 of your synth. Now, assign the MIDI output to another channel of your synthesizer. Find another piano patch on channel 2. You still only have to deal with single MIDI track in Pro Tools, but now you're triggering multiple channels of a synth simultaneously. Welcome to the wonderful world of layering. Rinse, brush, repeat process as many times as you wish.

If you want to layers 5 different snare sounds together, do it! These are the types of things that can make your sound your own. Mihai