If you're talking about layering a piano to give it presence. I would say a good piano sound is the most important thing up front, and then what you use to process it can go way farther than any layering. I tend to use a combination of eq, compression, saturation, and overdrive on my pianos

Hello everyone, I've been trying to figure out how to make the lead that Ghastly uses in his track Get On This at 0:30. I think its a really cool lead but I am struggling with making it myself. Thanks for the help!

Do you have Serum by any chance?

Yeah I agree with vince. A really great way to understand synthesis concepts is to study presets that are similar to the kinds of sounds you want to make. That's the biggest advantage of presets, just make sure you actually are learning from them instead of dropping them in a track without knowing why they sound the way they do! 

Just recently learned about parallel compression as a mixing technique. I was watching a video with Steve Duda saying he likes to  mix in a very heavily compressed version of the mix with a non-compressed version. Out of curiosity wouldn't mixing in the compressed signal produce lots of phase problems from the two mixes sounding the same? Or is that not an issue at all? 

Honestly, I feel like toms are one of those things people rule out very often. I've been looking like crazy for a good sample library to work with for tom sounds, but I'm always dissatisfied with everything. Does anyone have any favorites for toms? The best luck I've had is in the battery library, but even then I'm having to put tremendous time into processing to get the sound I want.

Here's the closest example - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sax-MOJNt3o

This was such a helpful topic. Doing wonders for my time management already!

Anyone know where to find a really good acoustic kit? I'm looking for heavier samples than what Ableton and Native Instruments have.