In Paradise - Work in progress (Now Includes New Track- Love Stimulation Pure Passion Mix)

Hey everyone
 
So this is my latest track, it's called In Paradise.
 
http://soundcloud.com/user9603240/ali-price-in-paradise-draft-1
 
It's still very much a work in progress so any feedback or comments would be greatly appreciated.
 
Thanks for listening
 
Ali
 
EDIT: Hey everyone, this is my new track, it's also a trance song, but this is a remix of the classic Love Stimulation By Humate. http://soundcloud.com/user9603240/love-stimulation-humate-and

Thanks blipp, I'm glad that you found it engaging even though you're not a fan of trance. I will definitely take that as a good sign :)

I agree, I would tone down the pad that comes in at 1:57 because it gets in the way of that killer bass tone....in fact I would center the mix around that bass because it drives the tune, but it gets a bit lost in the pad. In terms of mixing, have you tried the free TP Basslane plug on the bass and the kick? It can really help to solidify the low end in a track like this, by centering all frequencies below a certain threshold. I find it works very well on the default setting of 300Hz. Put it last in the chain on those tracks. Then, I would perhaps try to widen that pad and move it back somewhat, to make way for the bass and the vocal samples. 

Don't know if it's your thing, but you could also try ducking the pad with the kick, by putting it through a compressor sidechained with the kick as the key input. Wouldn't have to be full-on Daft Punk style, but just enough to give the track a little more bounce for the clubs. Lots of potential in this track. 

First thing is that I wouldn't worry about the overall level being too quiet when you're mixing and trying to get the track levels balanced. You can always raise everything later. With this style of music you can get away with using a lot more compression and limiting than you would on, say, a blues recording. Especially with the bass. 

You have to think of your tracks in order of importance when mixing the levels. In this type of music the bass and the kick drive everything, so I would get those solidified and work the rest of your mix around them. Listen to the bass and kick on their own from 1:34 to 1:57, that's a great sound and they already work very well together. The bass and kick should account for most of the energy of a tune like this. But you can see from the shape of the Soundcloud waveform, that the introduction of the pad brings your overall levels up considerably. And with it, the kick and the bass kind of lose a lot of their impact. I can't really hear the bass very well after 1:57, which is a shame because I can tell that you have some nice filter sweeps going on. In my opinion, the introduction of the pad shouldn't really bring with it a lot more volume. 

I think there's also some frequency clash going on between the bass and the pad. The bass has a lot of high end on it too, so you might want to think about hi-passing the pad some more to give the bass some more space. Try soloing the bass and looking at what the frequencies are doing in a frequency analyzer like Vonexgo Span. You'll get a good sense of its frequency range, and you might try cutting some of those frequencies in the pad so that they don't get in each other's way. How about, for instance, putting a low shelf on the pad, to reduce some of its lower frequencies?  

Also, are you putting TP Basslane on the master bus as well? I avoid doing this because of what it does to the sound, I just use it on tracks that have low frequencies.   

So in summary, I would work on getting the bass and kick sounding as good as possible together, then introduce the pad and the other stuff with the philosophy that the bass and the kick shouldn't lose any of their impact.