New track in progress

[Soundsource]

Hi all.

 

First, allow me to introduce myself to the forum. My name is David. I'm a 30 year old trance producer from Scotland, living in London.

 

My setup is Apple Powerbook G4, Logic Pro 7, Novation Remote 25 and Access Virus B.

 

I worked on this little psytrance preview a couple of nights ago and I would love a little bit of feedback on it. It has changed quite a lot over the past, for example, the bass was very tight with just a little decay on it and nothing else. That sounded good...but thought the bass needed to be a bit more prominent, so I put a little sustain and release on it. The kick was also very flabby, but I've tightened it and compressed/eq the hell out of it so I'm happy with it.

 

The kick and the bass come from 2 Logic synths (Ultrabeat and ES2)

 

I find it quite a dark track, also very hypnotic.

 

Please let me know what you think..

 

http://www.soundsourcemusic.net/preview2.mp3

 

Thanks in advance

Dave

[snowball]

the bassline is hard on the brain man,it doesnt let you enjoy the track.

 

maybe try to make it less of 16th bass line?it will be easier to appreciate the other aspects of the track,right now all i hear is a bomobombombombombom

everything else is just backgound

.pads and fx's are nice,but the bassline is killing it.at around 2.50min it gets better than the start of the track.

 

thats MY opinion though,and i dont listen to a lot of dark psy .am more in the melodic goa side of trance!

 

but the track has a nice atmospheric touch to it,quite gloomy.

 

if i were you i d do somethin about the bassline

 

btw i dont make music,i only listen to it.

[Soundsource]

Hi, thanks for the comment.

 

I like the bassline...I'll maybe do some variation on it later on in the track...but the 16th bassline is what I was looking for.

[Jikkenteki]

I checked this out earlier, but I'm giving it a proper listen in my headphones now. The following suggestions are a basically just what comes to mind as I listen and are based on how I would make a track so take them or leave them as you will. I suspect that this post may come off as negative sounding, but that's not my intent as I think there is some nice potential here and if it was simply just crap, I wouldn't bother writting anything at all. Anyways, lets begin.

 

Overall there are some nice ideas and sounds here. In my headphones the mix sounds fairly balanced, although I'd personally like to see the leads a bit more up front. While this is a solid effort, I keep thinking of the cameraman in Boogie Nights directing the two women in the hottub.... "Well that's technically good, but it lacks passion".

 

I think the leads could benefit from some more automation. The leads are all a of a class of good flowing repeating loops, but I think they could benefit from some serious knob turning automation to keep the subconscious mind interested. I think this is especially important because there aren't any obvious "big melody" leads that are obviously the main hook for the ear, so these looping 16th note leads, I feel, need some more "realtime" feeling tweaking in the filters and such rather than letting them just run more or less on auto-pilot.

 

One thing I feel that definately needs to be fixed are the kick rolls. Whenever they occur they are just too loud. I'm not sure if you compressed the kick and then made a clean sample of that which you are using, or you have the compressor running in realtime on the kick channel, but it almost sounds a bit like the later and the compressor is being overloaded during the rolls (or it could just be too much overlap in the kick samples during the rolls too). Eitherway, I'd try and get that worked out. I usually lower the velocity on my kick rolls to help keep them feeling smooth and to keep them from peaking out.

 

The intro isn't doing much for me (simply because there really isn't one) and I'd have to agree that the 16th note bass is a problem, although not in the same way that Snowball mentions. I personally think the 16th note bass line is a great tool and very effective when used right, but for me, and this is just my opinion based on how I like to make music and the music I enjoy listening to, the 16th note bassline is something that needs to be worked up to. Nothing turns me off as a listener faster than a track that just drops straight into such a bassline and I know when I DJ and am scanning a disc for tracks, and track that starts that way I almost always skip over it. Why you ask? Case by case exceptions granted, its because once you have the bass pumping that hard and fast, there simply isn't anywhere else for it to go. You're running at full speed from square one and building up anything higher than that is very difficult. (also as a DJ I noticed with these types of tracks usually the crowd is into it for about a minute and then they get bored and start to wander off). Now once the track gets going a bit and you have some leads chugging along I think this sort of bass works fine. The bass sound itself is pretty nice in my headphones here and I dig it but for me, the 16th note, same velocity, no variation bassline straight from square one just seems like hitting someone over the head with a hammer for no real useful reason.

 

As I said, I like a lot of the lead ideas and sounds, the bass sounds is fairly good and once things get moving there is a lot of potential here. More than anything I'd take a look at the intro and figure out how to make it a bit more building and dramatic, so that when the hard pumping action begins, its like a release, rather than someone just busting into the room and mowing everyone down from the first sound. Adding some addition percussion loops and variations might be a good idea as well.

 

Anywho keep up the good work

[Soundsource]

Hi Jikkenteki,

 

Thanks for the very constructive feedback. As for the intro, I always put that in afterwards, so yeah, that will be going in. Maybe work on that this weekend.

 

As for the bassline. I like the sound of the bass, so I'll keep that. But I do agree that it jumps into it a bit too early, so I'll maybe go for the ^bb^bb^bb type bassline (the B being the bass and the ^ being the kick, then work up to the 16th bass.

 

As for leads. I'm trying to keep out some of the more melodic leads you find in some psytrance and going for the more psychedelic, weird type sounds.

 

I checked this out earlier, but I'm giving it a proper listen in my headphones now. The following suggestions are a basically just what comes to mind as I listen and are based on how I would make a track so take them or leave them as you will. I suspect that this post may come off as negative sounding, but that's not my intent as I think there is some nice potential here and if it was simply just crap, I wouldn't bother writting anything at all. Anyways, lets begin.

 

Overall there are some nice ideas and sounds here. In my headphones the mix sounds fairly balanced, although I'd personally like to see the leads a bit more up front. While this is a solid effort, I keep thinking of the cameraman in Boogie Nights directing the two women in the hottub.... "Well that's technically good, but it lacks passion".

 

I think the leads could benefit from some more automation. The leads are all a of a class of good flowing repeating loops, but I think they could benefit from some serious knob turning automation to keep the subconscious mind interested. I think this is especially important because there aren't any obvious "big melody" leads that are obviously the main hook for the ear, so these looping 16th note leads, I feel, need some more "realtime" feeling tweaking in the filters and such rather than letting them just run more or less on auto-pilot.

 

One thing I feel that definately needs to be fixed are the kick rolls. Whenever they occur they are just too loud. I'm not sure if you compressed the kick and then made a clean sample of that which you are using, or you have the compressor running in realtime on the kick channel, but it almost sounds a bit like the later and the compressor is being overloaded during the rolls (or it could just be too much overlap in the kick samples during the rolls too). Eitherway, I'd try and get that worked out. I usually lower the velocity on my kick rolls to help keep them feeling smooth and to keep them from peaking out.

 

The intro isn't doing much for me (simply because there really isn't one) and I'd have to agree that the 16th note bass is a problem, although not in the same way that Snowball mentions. I personally think the 16th note bass line is a great tool and very effective when used right, but for me, and this is just my opinion based on how I like to make music and the music I enjoy listening to, the 16th note bassline is something that needs to be worked up to. Nothing turns me off as a listener faster than a track that just drops straight into such a bassline and I know when I DJ and am scanning a disc for tracks, and track that starts that way I almost always skip over it. Why you ask? Case by case exceptions granted, its because once you have the bass pumping that hard and fast, there simply isn't anywhere else for it to go. You're running at full speed from square one and building up anything higher than that is very difficult. (also as a DJ I noticed with these types of tracks usually the crowd is into it for about a minute and then they get bored and start to wander off). Now once the track gets going a bit and you have some leads chugging along I think this sort of bass works fine. The bass sound itself is pretty nice in my headphones here and I dig it but for me, the 16th note, same velocity, no variation bassline straight from square one just seems like hitting someone over the head with a hammer for no real useful reason.

 

As I said, I like a lot of the lead ideas and sounds, the bass sounds is fairly good and once things get moving there is a lot of potential here. More than anything I'd take a look at the intro and figure out how to make it a bit more building and dramatic, so that when the hard pumping action begins, its like a release, rather than someone just busting into the room and mowing everyone down from the first sound. Adding some addition percussion loops and variations might be a good idea as well.

 

Anywho keep up the good work 

544566[/snapback]