The Importance of adding Background sounds & FX in your tracks

Adding background elements to your tracks or adding in some FX to make the transitions more interesting can sometimes be the deciding factor that keeps the listener engaged while listening to your track. This article will go through some tips and tricks on how to make your tracks sound more interesting with FX and background sounds.

Background sounds

Background sounds can be made of pretty much anything and often sit a little bit further back in the mix, that is also one of the reasons they are called “background sounds”. A background sound can be anything from vinyl crackers, tape hiss, a sheering crowd, vocal drones, or a synth tweaked the right way. The best tip here is to experiment with whatever floats in your mind and try to make it fit into the background your way. For example, you can make a duplicate of the channel you’re working with and experiment with reverbs, delays, phasers, flangers, and pitching, either up or down an octave, etc. You can also scroll through your plugin’s library and look for some interesting sounds that might be a perfect fit in the background. The main task with background sounds is to make these sit further back in the mix as mentioned above, this can be done by pushing the wet knob on your reverb and you’ll hear that the sound is going further back in the mix. There are a lot of samples that are perfect for this also, go to Splice for example, and search for “background sounds” “atmospheric sounds” or “synth drone” and experiment with whats fits your track the best. In case you don’t have a Splice subscription there are plenty of free sample packs available online that can help you achieve a similar result.

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FX

FX stands for “effects” and is often associated with risers, down sweeps and impacts, etc. This type of effect is often used during a transition to introduce another part of the song to make it more interesting and glue the parts together. By using an fx riser before a new part is introduced in a song, you’ll get the listener to feel that “something interesting is happening” and by using an impact right after the riser when the new part is introduced the listener is going to get excited and feel more connected to the track.
One way to make your FX sound more interesting and stand out among all the others is to use various effects on these channels. Try using phasers and flangers on your down risers for the “never-ending effect” as well as you can experiment with automation on the low and highpass filtering as well as on the reverb parameters for the risers for a more interesting effect. Almost, all sample packs come with some FX sounds. There are a lot of high-quality sample packs that are dedicated to FX sounds.

Some good Sample Packs for Background & FX Sounds

Summary

If you feel like there is something missing in your tracks, you should definitely experiment with these kinds of techniques in your tracks. When you’ve found the effects that work for you, make sure to save them so they are ready to be used in your other projects as well, this is a great way to prove your signature sound in all of your tracks.

Next article: Best plugins for enhancing stereo width in 2021

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