subsekt

Working on a new track after a stretch of not making any techno


all feedback welcome

had a listen this morning either soundcloud really fucks up the sound of a track or I over drived my listening ears yesterday. Need to work on the mix on this.

Soundcloud does compress and mangle the sound quality but it's probably your ears, a good mix will still sound good even when streamed.

The bass seems too loud / unreigned. The synth are a bit thin and sound kind of ... choppy? Not sure if you made this on an MPC but it sounds like someone manually triggering pads.

dubdub wrote:Soundcloud does compress and mangle the sound quality but it's probably your ears, a good mix will still sound good even when streamed.

The bass seems too loud / unreigned. The synth are a bit thin and sound kind of ... choppy? Not sure if you made this on an MPC but it sounds like someone manually triggering pads.

Yeah my ears are burnt out Id say. The bass definitely too loud from what I heard this morning.

Yes I programmed in the synth manually on purpose I was going for that live dj manipulation sound.

Any suggestions on beefing up the synth make it thicker. I always have problems with that.

Thanks for listening.

the bass is a little loud

the choppy synth is ok but i think the track needs a bit more to push it along if its going to be like that

for synth thickness :

layering - a lost art these days
efx
eq/compression
and sound selection itself

for a thin choppy sort of sound i would use a bit of reverb and delay to add some space but that might not be the sound your looking for

TvSkY wrote:the bass is a little loud

the choppy synth is ok but i think the track needs a bit more to push it along if its going to be like that

for synth thickness :

layering - a lost art these days
efx
eq/compression
and sound selection itself

for a thin choppy sort of sound i would use a bit of reverb and delay to add some space but that might not be the sound your looking for

Fair play appreciate the feedback. My ears are wore out so I am going to take a few days break and then remix it and work on the synth. I will then repost.

I'd say the reason the pads sound thin is that there seems to be a lot of mids missing in the whole mix.

As the bass is too prominent, that leaves the thinness of the highs.

I can't recommend layering enough, have the same synth, but double it and pitch the second down an octave (and roll off some of the highs), see how that sounds.

Also the snares are really brittle, they could also have some weight behind them too. Did you use samples, or did you hp them?

thanks for your time, yes bass needs to come down. I will try thicken the synth.

I used a sample for the snare but I used effects to get the way I want

Personally I feel this track would work so much better if you ditched the kick and made a new one. A solid kick with much 150-300hz body and a saturated / distorted sound to fill the sound a bit. The synth that appears at the 1:50 break shouldn't have such a dimensional depth, it makes it thin. Get rid of the reverb on it, or back it down a lot and cut out the 3-6khz region of it by several dB.
Also try to duplicate the synths, put them one or two octaves under the main ones and filter out the highs and compress them quite a bit and turn them down in volume till you barely heard them anymore. Just feel the nuance of them.

While you're at it, drop the 5khz region a bit on the hats, dip it 1.5dB or 2 with a broad filter.

Finally, drop the tempo with 5 to 10 bpm and you'll get a totally different weight in the track.

Mattias wrote:Personally I feel this track would work so much better if you ditched the kick and made a new one. A solid kick with much 150-300hz body and a saturated / distorted sound to fill the sound a bit. The synth that appears at the 1:50 break shouldn't have such a dimensional depth, it makes it thin. Get rid of the reverb on it, or back it down a lot and cut out the 3-6khz region of it by several dB.
Also try to duplicate the synths, put them one or two octaves under the main ones and filter out the highs and compress them quite a bit and turn them down in volume till you barely heard them anymore. Just feel the nuance of them.

While you're at it, drop the 5khz region a bit on the hats, dip it 1.5dB or 2 with a broad filter.

Finally, drop the tempo with 5 to 10 bpm and you'll get a totally different weight in the track.

Thats very detailed advice thanks a lot. I am not sure of the tempo drop for my taste but ill give a listen

Appreciate the help I ll get back to working on this during the week

Curious to hear the outcome

Mattias wrote:Curious to hear the outcome

So am I cant wait to getting wrking again. I will try get back to this during the coming week and a post an updated version.

Agree about the kick. The hat / percussion programming is nice.

I think some stronger musical elements would be good. The sounds you've got at the moment are definitely too thin.

I can't add much that hasn't already been said to be honest

terryfalafel wrote:Agree about the kick. The hat / percussion programming is nice.

I think some stronger musical elements would be good. The sounds you've got at the moment are definitely too thin.

I can't add much that hasn't already been said to be honest

Thanks appreciate your words

Agree with Mattias on the kick. And the other points in fact...

There are some cool elements in here, but I think it needs more distortion all round and maybe dubbing-out at certain points to keep things interesting. Thats my taste though!

Gilgamesh wrote:Agree with Mattias on the kick. And the other points in fact...

There are some cool elements in here, but I think it needs more distortion all round and maybe dubbing-out at certain points to keep things interesting. Thats my taste though!

Cheers , I hope to work on this tonight, busy schedule don't get enough time to work on making music.
A few good pointers and I plan to explore a lot of them and see what results I get.

After a couple of listens when not feeling so attached to the track. The kick is definite must go. The bass line changed drastically before I finished it the last time and I didn't notice or decide to change my kick accordingly

I'm not the right person to give technical advice, but it sounded alright on my headphones.

Otherwise I mostly liked it. The first 1:50 especially. Didn't care about the synth melody introduced when the break begins. It sounded a bit naive or something? I'd get rid of that and make a new melody.

Barfunkel wrote:I'm not the right person to give technical advice, but it sounded alright on my headphones.

Otherwise I mostly liked it. The first 1:50 especially. Didn't care about the synth melody introduced when the break begins. It sounded a bit naive or something? I'd get rid of that and make a new melody.

Cheers Barfunkel.

I like the synth I'll try beef it up and see how it goes. You just don't like the automation

bergertron wrote:
I like the synth I'll try beef it up and see how it goes. You just don't like the automation

Lol, I never said automation is completely useless (I too have a bit of automation in my ITB tracks). I said (or at least tried to say) that it's not the most important thing in production, it's just a minor detail. I prefer to do things manually by riding the controls while recording, it's faster and gets better, more fluid results than drawing funny shapes with a mouse for hours.

Barfunkel wrote:

bergertron wrote:
I like the synth I'll try beef it up and see how it goes. You just don't like the automation

Lol, I never said automation is completely useless (I too have a bit of automation in my ITB tracks). I said (or at least tried to say) that it's not the most important thing in production, it's just a minor detail. I prefer to do things manually by riding the controls while recording, it's faster and gets better, more fluid results than drawing funny shapes with a mouse for hours.

Just messing with you. Yes I record in some movements and then tidy it up a little.

more fluid results than drawing funny shapes with a mouse for hours

This is true