Often, when we finish the bare bones of a song, and play it for others, you might hear someone say that it sounds "too raw." To many, that is their way of saying it doesn't have that "full" sound they hear on radio music. Here are a few simple ways you can create a thicker sound for your music without going to too much trouble.
BEEF UP THE BASS
If you are the sole instrumentalist, this can be as simple as adding a clear bass note and letting it sound while you do all that fun stuff with the upper registers. This means learning to play clear barre chords if you are a guitarist, and not damping the bottom strings, or at least taking one finger and holding it down on a lower note if you are a keyboardist. It often is easy to find some note that sounds good with the other notes you are playing. You can just hit it and forget about it rather than make things more difficult by playing some complex counterpart while trying to sing at the same time-let's not make it too tough for ourselves.
If you are in a band, often you can just take the bass part and just add a little sustain, or add another part. Many bassists use foot pedals so they can fill in those gaps and still play some cool call-and-response parts to the other instruments. A keyboardist or other instrument can also provide some substance to connect all the bits of the song into a whole using lower register notes. If you find that this is all making your music too dark sounding, there are some other methods.
PERCUSSION IDEAS
Sometimes, the percussion instruments can provide the gravy you need to keep your soup together. Tambourines are popular for this, as are any other cymbal-type instruments, because they have a ring that sounds beyond the initial hit or shake. Longer drum rolls, rather than basic hits, can also help create this continual sound, as can any percussion instrument that has good sustain, such as bells.
COUNTERPOINT
Sometimes, just adding parts that aren't doing the same thing as the main part, that fill in all the little gaps between notes, sounds just great. Think of a barbershop quartet, or the full sound of a good classic solo piano piece, or the cute rounds we all learned to sing as children. If you listen to a lot of classical music, the bass instruments rarely just play long notes, and yet you would never call the music "raw." Look at walking bass lines, and listen to songs where there are voices doing different things-Led Zeppelin's "Ramble On" and "Battle of Evermore" or Simon and Garfunkle's "Scarborough Fair/Canticle" come to mind, but there are lots of newer examples. If two band members individually think their way of playing a new song you've written sounds best, try putting them together - I did that with one of my band's songs, and it made for a much more interesting guitar part once I practiced it enough times to play it on one guitar. This tune sounds even better played with two guitars, as a lead playing long sustained notes over my complex fingerpicking. I use a walking bass line with my thumb, but we added a bouncy, Rush-inspired bass line added on top of that, rather than just copying what I am doing with the rhythm guitar part. Add some chimes and a Celtic-sounding drum part, and it is far from a boring folk tune. It's still one of my most requested songs, and I wrote it over 15 years ago.
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