acid being Posted February 6 Share Posted February 6 (edited) I've been learning to use my DAW. Here's my very incomplete early attempt at a Goa Trance track, aiming for a slightly tribal feel and lowish tempo (143 bpm at the moment). I'd love any comments and suggestions, even to tell me it's dreadful. The drums need some work I think. The ones at the start are supposed to be 808 style tom toms, but I think the kick maybe interferes with them a bit and they get sort of clicky so I may change them. I like my melody but I'm not totally sure if it matches up that well with the percussion and bass in terms of the timing. If I don't end up abandoning the whole thing I'll probably make some acid lines next and maybe another layer or two, pads and other samples. Edited February 7 by acid being Improved quality, delay, reverb. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CosmicEquilibrium Posted February 6 Share Posted February 6 We both are pretty amateur at least you got some melody, what DAW you use? What synths?, do you any compressor in bass with sidechain in the kick and at the master channel any compressor to glue the tracks? you should too add some delay and reverb in the synths, if you want your sound good you need every single sound to have sound quality, the tom toms, hihats and the crash seems good, maybe some reverb in the drums except the kick leave it without any delay and reverb, I think you need a more standard kick and bass sound, there are no rules but a more standard kick and bass is what defines a Goa track, I think you need to work in the kick and bass. The way I make my bass is sawtooth in one oscillator a sine wave half the intensity, the filter low pass at 250 hertz max the a little resonance or none, the I experiment with one envelope at cutoff filter and other at the amplitude/Volume leave this one with a small attack and release. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
acid being Posted February 6 Author Share Posted February 6 10 hours ago, CosmicEquilibrium said: We both are pretty amateur at least you got some melody, what DAW you use? What synths?, do you any compressor in bass with sidechain in the kick and at the master channel any compressor to glue the tracks? you should too add some delay and reverb in the synths, if you want your sound good you need every single sound to have sound quality, the tom toms, hihats and the crash seems good, maybe some reverb in the drums except the kick leave it without any delay and reverb, I think you need a more standard kick and bass sound, there are no rules but a more standard kick and bass is what defines a Goa track, I think you need to work in the kick and bass. The way I make my bass is sawtooth in one oscillator a sine wave half the intensity, the filter low pass at 250 hertz max the a little resonance or none, the I experiment with one envelope at cutoff filter and other at the amplitude/Volume leave this one with a small attack and release. I use Ardour. The lead is an Alpha Juno emulator. You're right about the kick and bass not sounding very Goa yet. Those were just presets I found in the Xhip synthesizer plugin until I can replace them with something better. No I've not used sidechain compression before - I'll have a play with that. I've not done any mastering yet, only basic adjustments to the levels and stereo positions in the mixer. It's a topic I have a lot to learn about. At this stage I am a lot more focused on getting better at writing melodies and harmonies, and experimenting with synths and effects. There is delay on the lead synth at the moment but I definitely want to make the delay more noticeable as I think it will help a lot. You only really notice it when you stop the track playing at the moment, because there aren't very long gaps between the synth notes, so I think I need a stereo or ping pong delay. None of the delay plugins I have at the moment offer stereo but maybe I can route each stereo channel through a different delay plugin to do it, more stuff I need to learn. I played with reverb on another track but all the reverb plugins I had seemed to just make the sounds go kind of metallic and a bit messed up, so where I use it at the moment I would only put a tiny bit on, unless I'm after a very particular sound. I want things to sound like they are playing floating in outer space but I think better delay is the key to that. Anyway, I really appreciate the comments, thanks! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
acid being Posted February 7 Author Share Posted February 7 There's a new version of the track now in the original post above. On 2/6/2024 at 9:52 AM, CosmicEquilibrium said: do you any compressor in bass with sidechain in the kick and at the master channel any compressor to glue the tracks? you should too add some delay and reverb in the synths, if you want your sound good you need every single sound to have sound quality, the tom toms, hihats and the crash seems good, maybe some reverb in the drums except the kick leave it without any delay and reverb Yep I learned all about sidechain compression and I'm using it on the bass and tom toms now to slightly lower them when the kick plays. I've done the same thing to very slightly lower the lead synth when the flute is playing as well. There's a tiny bit of reverb now and loads of delay. Does the delay on the lead synth sound OK or is it overdone? I still can't get a true ping pong delay but it has different delays for left and right and I had to manually calculate the timing to match the bpm! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CosmicEquilibrium Posted February 8 Share Posted February 8 Seems alright it is a question of taste too doing what you want, you seem in a good way keep learning and evolving. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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