It can be a hard thing to judge.

Some tracks have far too much percussion, but to me that can part of the charm - Dani Dimitri pres. Pop Porn - God Mode (Claudio Climaco & Frankie G remix) is a good example.

But on the flip side, Paolo Mojo said in an interview once that he spends most of his time in the studio removing things rather than adding things: a groove comes from the space between sounds, not the sounds themselves.

So if you've just added another layer and it sounds like too much, just try taking some of the hits out and take some of the hits out of the layers which are already there until they work well with each other. It's always tempting to add another layer to create a fuller sound - and that it does - but sometimes when you add a layer, something else has to go to make room.

Bear in mind that you can make it feel like there's more percussion there by adding a little bit of delay to some of the sounds to pad out the background a bit. The main hits are still the main hits, but you've got a bit more texture behind it. Same goes for reverb, but too much will smooth things out and take away some of the energy... which incidentally is quite a good way to make a groove feel more laid back.

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Stu Cox |