First finished piece of electronic music

[ambinate]

I just recently started working on making music with my laptop and I'm still only at a really basic level with it, but yesterday I finished a rough version of my first track. It's pretty amateur-ish and the mixing isn't so hot (I didn't equalize anything so the bass just rumbles and has no clarity, for one), but I'd really appreciate it if you guys took a listen to it and gave me some criticism.

It's on the sidebar here, called "Exhale."

http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1342530069&ref=profile#/pages/Adam-Boffa/55751230107

Thanks a lot!

[Nubioso]

I dig it man. You got a nice sound going on here, nice and chill and musically it makes sense which is always nice.

I would work a little more on arrangement. Specifically meaning which instruments happen when, for how long, when they pop back in, etc..etc..

For example, the arpeggiating "twinkly stars" I guess I'll call them that starts with the bass in the beginning goes throughout the entire song. After a while it starts to annoy the ears when it continues for too long. I would suggest taking that part out, letting the beat and bass carry the song a little earlier, then sprinkle the song with it again later. That'll add some more dynamics to the song as far as lulls and climaxes go.

So yeah, basically work on arrangement of your pieces, but overall I do like the sound of this one and would love to hear you continue progress on this one.

What program are you using by the way?

[ambinate]

Thanks a lot for checking it out, I really appreciate it.

I'm using all free programs right now, so I'm sequencing everything in Reaper and most of the synth sounds were made in DreamStation. The "twinkly star" sound is actually from a free demo of Reaktor that expires at the end of month, haha. I rendered and mixed it in Audacity. Because I'm still so new to this, I haven't figured out which program I want to end up spending money on (FL Studio, Reason, etc.), so I'm trying to learn the basics on free stuff before I commit.

I appreciate the comments on the arrangement, those are some really good points. I'm gonna look into all of that when I go back to work on it later.