dubdub - untitled500 (celebrating 500 shitty loops/trax)

[dubdub]

I just looked in my folder for finished loops/tracks and Untitled 001 was made on the 8th April 2015. By that rate I guess I'll hit 1000 shitty loops by 2019

Anyways, I'm pretty happy with the direction of this tracks, feels like I'm finally getting somewhere with my ultimate project of fusing Chain Reaction with progressive trance from 2004

As with some of my recent tracks, there's quite a bit going in the peak of the track, it took me a while to carve out some space in the mix but still might be too dense, not quite sure to be honest.

[Lost to the Void]

Okeedoo, downloaded and run through the gear.

First thing I notice is that there is a wonderful bassline under there, that clearly has potential to be spine rattling but sits too low in the mix (I`m not short on sub here, got 2.4kwatts of it) and so I was dying to be surrounded by deep dubby sub, and was left wanting. I would bring up the subs a little, that heavy kick has the room to take it, if you are careful.
I ended up boosting the lows (which started to roll off from 50hz originally, explaining the lack of sub weight), from 16 to 38, to get some more weight in there, but I really couldn`t do much to catch that lovely reese bassline.

The common problem are of 100 - 300 was super thick, so when I pulled this back, the mix really tightened up.

The 700hz to 5k region was a little too much, and was pulling all the weight away from the highs, making the tops seem a little week in comparison to the heavy kick that needed balancing against.
Pulling back some of the sounds here, and pushing some of the 5 - 12k, gave the mix more balance, and equalled the weight of the kick.

There was a lot of stuff going on at 20k, unecessary to have to much here, and nasty on a big soundsystem (and something that would not make it to vinyl, being rolled off massively), so you can afford to roll this off, which will give a smoother more defined sound at the top.

As it stands this could be mastered as it is, there are no "big" problems here, though I would say things would be better with that bassline having more centre stage. The mix could sound a little more lush overall for this type of music, it doesn`t sound quite as "analog" and harmonically thick as this kind of stuff usually sounds, and some of the pads verge a little close to sounding brittle. This could perhaps be solved with some EQ, saturation and "vintageisation" on the sounds.

Here is a clip of an example of how the minor changes can clean up the mix.

https://we.tl/r4GMITlAo5

[dubdub]

Okeedoo, downloaded and run through the gear.

Big thanks for listening and the mix!

Wow, your mix really highlights how shitty my monitoring is. Listening here, it sounds like it has a kind of exaggerated smile curve and is seriously lacking lower midrange. No wonder the mixes from us amateurs tend to have way too much lower mids - If I'd produce a mix like that it would sound like something is seriously wrong, listening here. It's better on my Sennheisers but still noticable. What I can still definitely hear tough is that it's much tighter mix overall, altough listening here it almost feels a little too tight, which is probably because my shitty KRKs can't reproduce anything resembling real space and dynamics

Anyways, I applied your feedback (it seems like half of the problems of the original mix were a result of me trying to fix the mix ) and made a v2 mix that still sounds good listening here. More saturation overall, way less HPF on the bass, gentle topend rolloffs with Satson, some gentle bell EQs in the problem areas you mentioned and some Clariphonic around 9k (holy crap, I boosted like a nanometer and the hihat instantly popped in the mix). Does it sound better than v1 for you?

[Root]

v2 is way more balanced and has more air to breathe, good one. Now the clap isn't that mushed anymore, what is a good sign i guess. Maybe try to double the bassline and transpose one an ocatve up. Then eq it, adjust levels, saturation and stuff and see what happens to bring the bassline up on stage?

[dubdub]

I tried transposing the bassline at some point, it sounds a bit too cheesy that high so I scrapped that

[Kromasome]

Congrats on the milestone! I thought the 200 I had was a fairly good effort...

Will have a listen tonight after work

[Will Frances]

Yeah, well done on the milestone thats alot of hours dedication! Ill try an check your track out this evening man

[dubdub]

Cheers guys, for the record, most of these are just shitty, unfinished loops I make in half an hour or so Maybe 20% are actual, finished tracks.