something for the weekend? electronica

ok first tune in a while. uptempo house with a early 90's feel

been working on this for a little while now but have hit a wall with where it could go production wise.

I,m looking for feedback on the production side of things mostly, hows the low end? is the kick to loud, what about the bass line too loud - too quiet, is the change in the second half workable or too different?

how are the highs to brittle or too quiet?

what about the main synth sound, is it too loud , too over powering or OK and what if anything can i do do get things a little clearer overall?

and if you feel like commenting on the track itself please feel free to let it rip.

house call

cheers
kieran

I was not able to get into it. Something is missing, for me anyways. I need somekind of theme or line I can relate too. Well I could be wrong but I think it is too minimalist?

i think there are too many elements pulling it apart. The seal barks stop the flow. The synth is gated -- a lot of things that stop the forward movement -- except that kick which is not all that compelling.
I liked it much more once the seals stopped barking. I liked the sound of that synth. If those barks were phased, so there was some variation when they pop up. Mostly I feel some high and varied cymbal/hat work may help a lot to keep moving things forward.

The seal barks stop the flow.

Yes, music for seal hunting on the ice flows.

I find the seal noise most annoying, at least have it come and go, not be there all the time...or vary in volume.

Oh, they stopped, this part is great. Nice breakdown.

Oh, wait, there, he's clubbing them again. That sound could happen every 4 bars maybe, at most, and much quieter, please.

If the seals weren't there it would be quite listenable. That's quite the kick drum you got there. It needs to come and go too, or at least vary in level, maybe throw an effect on it every once in a while, or vary the eq. The rest of the sounds are nice enough.

I have to admit that I am out of my element reviewing this type of music, it is not a genre with which I am familiar. perhaps your kick use is "club friendly".

I think there is something there that just needs some mixing, keep at it. My key word would be variation, turning on and off, occasional sparse FX, each bar needs to have a slight difference. Volume is form of variation, as is EQ.

Try copying individual beats from a track to a new track and EQ'ing and/or effecting them heavily, but only use the effected sound maybe twice over 8 or 16 bars, that kind of thing. Occasional DDL is always cool. As is reversed audio, but it's only cool if you use, like, twice in the same song, not all the time. Just keep the effects subtle, just audible in the mix.

Is the H/H heavily compressed? Or is it just programmed to have no dynamics? It needs to have a less squashed sound.

IMHO

R

people cheers!!

i think thats the best reviews I,ve had for a track so far obviously not because you all loved it but because all the feed back was honest helpful and too the point.

my problem i find these days is i start composing and then after a short time i'm locked into a left side, right side battle in my brain between the creativity of music and technical aspects of production until it all seems to seize up, both aspects suffer as a result and I,m left with what i shared with you...hopefully i will be able to addresss this in time

so the seal barks (is that what you meant by lower pitched talking drums ed?) are an issue obviously, although they were one of my favorite sounds in this something that probaly lead to this problem in the first place.

but its true theres just too much fighting to be heard. I really can understand what kev said though about subtle use of sounds Its something i had been experimenting with in earlier mixes and really enjoyed the results. i guess i'm just too involved in the process to make reasoned desicions.

lord please send me a enginneer/producer!

and jan you're right its an uninspiring kick, theres three things I,m really having trouble with in my mixes these days.

kick drums

high hats

everything sonically in between

ed your right i was really kicking the arse out of the erdiol VSC jazz drum kit I love that brazillian sound and rythm if only i could capture it in my work.

nprime thanks for the feedback and humor I,m not sure what to make of the kick drum comments as i aways felt it was something that really needed to be firm and solid in this genre but you have given me food for thought and experimentation, the high hats aren't compressed but introducing dynamic range into my work is something i,ve been pondering over alot lately, still haven't figured it out yet.

and i can,t forget blipp I always appriciate your opinions.

EDIT: but i did forget kiwi sorry, i think your right however there is something more that could be added, i kinda just fell apart mentally with this track before getting all the feedback.

anyway i think thats the kick up the butt i needed to shake my perceptions up back to the drawing(mixing) board and really thanks for all the feedback

kieran

Kieran, There's just one question i wanna ask you. When are you gonna release your back catalogue on CD? Cause i want it.

lots of self doubt about my talent.....

Join the club. I've always had that and always will. Putting your tracks on a cd is a way of drawing a line under them and then you can start afresh. Plus you'll have something concrete to show for it.

I'm going for it as well as i have enough tracks now. I've got someone down to do the artwork for me and i'll most likely use cafepress to make them. I'll have to do the best i can to master them as it's not my strong point.

But, (I was surprised no-one else mentioned this) the kick drum timing feels off every time it does anything other than the straight quarter notes. It almost sounds like someone was trying to play the off-beat stuff in manually, or else there's some odd choice of swing values going on in the quantizing. That distracted me every time it started happening. It just didn't sound in-time.

thanks for the encouragment M

now reagrds the kick drums well it could be a couple of things... i had placed a 1/8 delay on the kick drum to give it bounce and body but when i had the little alternate kick beats it would send the delay off beat I thought i had managed to hide it but perhaps not eh? still good ears there M.

maybe if i bounce those extra kicks to another track, less the delay i might get away with it I,m currently reworking the track so we,re gonna see.....

i 'm listening to your lex2 track as i write this, funky stuff, shame you can,t get a real big band to play those horns and strings for you then it would be awsome. And a rather more subtle use of the talking drums going on there

cheers kieran