Well I'm going to explain why less is indeed more as per the cliche, with 5 tips to improve your track - by lessening what's in it...
1. Removing Percussion for fills
Listen to any decent Hip Hop song and you'll find that the beat compliments the vocals on occasion by dropping out so the listener can focus on those all-important punchlines.
This applies to all genres - by removing small parts of the percussion, it can completely change the feel of the beat, giving more variety with nothing actually added to the track!
De-muddify your track by removing overlapping frequencies between different instruments, high pass a low pitched synth to get some cool fx as the note becomes difficult to distinguish and the tone takes over, remove notches of a sound to completely change where the focus lies within it. Frequencies are there for the taking... so take them!
3. Cutting elements for extra coolness
There's nothing like a cool little stutter in a vocal part or lead. Make hooks catchier with a repeating stutter and make a synth more interesting by giving it that gated effect.
4. Soloing elements to draw attention to them
Remove the wall of sound for a second and focus on an element that's really buried in the mix, then bring it all back in. It's such a cool effect and makes for a strong fill within your track!
5. Turn it down!
Perhaps the most important thing people leave too much of in their tracks is volume! Take it away from the vast majority of things, remember - the bigger the volume difference between the instrumentation and the percussion, the harder your beats will hit, since the listener will just turn up their speakers to compensate for the quietness! Although for dance music producers you might be fighting the loudness war to make your tunes stand out, maybe they'd stand out more with some of the above techniques and you can still retain clarity in your mix.
So stop thinking about what you can give your track and start working with what you already have - you've been far too generous lately! ;)
