Life's a bitch

Post your work here - Ask for feedback or just show it off
Post Reply
User avatar
tsaro
Lifer
Posts: 737
Joined: Sat Nov 07, 2015 7:05 pm
Life's a bitch

Post by tsaro »

So I just thrown together an oldschool style beat on headphones after I came home around 3am, totally forgot I promised to send it over tomorrow (well, today), can't check it on my system in time. Could someone take a quick listen and check whether the bass is poking out too much, or whether the rhythm is a bit over compressed, probably went a bit wild with it... Can't really hear it anymore tbh.

Built it around an acapella of Nas - Life's a bitch, left that in here to make it less tedious to listen to, and as a bonus it also works in the context.

https://soundcloud.com/vo0doo/lifesabitch/s-mEl0l
how far do you want to go

dubdub
Asphyxiwank
Posts: 2454
Joined: Wed Nov 18, 2015 1:49 pm
Re: Life's a bitch

Post by dubdub »

I like the beat, the bass feels a bit undefined and wool-y, could be a bit more defined and punchy. Kick could probably use a touch more in the lows. The track is lacking some kind of extra element sitting the highs IMO, maybe a string/pad or something. Some subtle crackle and tape hiss could be cool aswell.

And yeah, it does sound a bit overcompressed, feels very constrained overal.

User avatar
tsaro
Lifer
Posts: 737
Joined: Sat Nov 07, 2015 7:05 pm
Re: Life's a bitch

Post by tsaro »

Yeah, the low end appears to be a bit undefined, probably oversaturated it and then sidechained it to shit. And I think throwing 3 compressors total on the rhythm section wasn't so great either, the kick and snare layer have compression, theres a parallel comp on a send and then I bussed everything together and compressed that as well..Oh and also 'gentle' master buss compression :P Haven't heard back yet, may just be because of this. Ah well, I can always fix it up and throw it on the pile.
how far do you want to go

User avatar
jordanneke
subsekt
subsekt
Posts: 4166
Joined: Sat Nov 03, 2012 2:16 pm
Re: Life's a bitch

Post by jordanneke »

I've listened to this several times. It's good, but not quite 'there' in terms of production. I fear you may have over-reached in terms of tracks. I mean it's busy, plus with a vocal and I think any amateur would struggle to get a great sound.

Where did you get the vocal from?

I agree with wubbalubba-dub-dub. The bass is kinda lumping along, rather than hitting cleanly I can hear the wobble of the side-chaining. Isn't hip hop all about the bass? I mean I listen to a lot of it, but have never tried to make it. What did you do to make the low end? I mean don't they STILL use just 808 samples (like old jungle) cos that sounds boss?

My advice would be to strip it back to the bass, kick, snare and get that all working without resorting to devices to fix it, compress the drums so they hit with enough punch. Sure perhaps use parallel compression to get that 'big' hip hop drum sound, but get those elements sweet.

But I must add, I could be talking shit.

User avatar
tsaro
Lifer
Posts: 737
Joined: Sat Nov 07, 2015 7:05 pm
Re: Life's a bitch

Post by tsaro »

jordanneke wrote:I've listened to this several times. It's good, but not quite 'there' in terms of production. I fear you may have over-reached in terms of tracks. I mean it's busy, plus with a vocal and I think any amateur would struggle to get a great sound.

Where did you get the vocal from?

I agree with wubbalubba-dub-dub. The bass is kinda lumping along, rather than hitting cleanly I can hear the wobble of the side-chaining. Isn't hip hop all about the bass? I mean I listen to a lot of it, but have never tried to make it. What did you do to make the low end? I mean don't they STILL use just 808 samples (like old jungle) cos that sounds boss?

My advice would be to strip it back to the bass, kick, snare and get that all working without resorting to devices to fix it, compress the drums so they hit with enough punch. Sure perhaps use parallel compression to get that 'big' hip hop drum sound, but get those elements sweet.

But I must add, I could be talking shit.
Makes perfect sense here, quite the opposite of shit actually.

It's from some acapella pack I downloaded (at least) a couple of years ago, found them floating around on my backup drive. I think it was from some blogspot site, so not much help at all there I'm afraid... It's all fairly low quality mp3s anyway, so I doubt it would be of any use other than for a mockup unless you go mad with fx. With a quick search you can probably find much better quality ones nowadays.

The bass is a self oscillating filter, didn't bother to resample it so I just whacked a sidechain on to 'make it fit', but then the saturation killed off some of the lows again...Might indeed try to replace it with an 808. The distorted bass stab is actually an 808, so I could have just used that sample in the first place :P

As far as mixing goes, I only did some volume balancing and a few eq cuts to make space for the vocals, don't think there's too many elements tbh, just needs a better mix... And I like to create busy tracks as you might have noticed, so I'll just stick with it for better or worse..

When I get around to fixing it up a bit I'll post the updated version here.
how far do you want to go

User avatar
Lost to the Void
subsekt
subsekt
Posts: 13518
Joined: Sat Feb 18, 2012 1:31 pm
Re: Life's a bitch

Post by Lost to the Void »

The bass is completely overpowering the kick, it could come down in level by about 3db at least.
Offbeat hat is a little thin and therefore weak fighting against that huge low end.
It all gets a little too cramped when everything builds as all the sounds are really fighting in the centre, so some panning or mid/side separation would help a lot.
Mix feels like it needs a little more dynamic overall.
It`s quite hypnotic and manic, which I like.
Mastering Engineer @ Black Monolith Studio
New Shit
Techno is dead. Long live Techno.


Post Reply