CipherBeta Posted December 1, 2015 Share Posted December 1, 2015 Hey guys, lil bit of background before I post the track. Background in a lil bit of music, my mom was a piano teacher, so got started on that at an early age. Tought myself guitar. Still kinda suck at that. Bought FL Studio about a year ago, dabbled in it, picked up a old Yamaha keyboard with MIDI out to try to make some tunes, as well as a Blue Yeti for the aforementioned terrible guitar playing. Finally decided earlier this week that I would suck it up and make use of the $200 I threw at FL Studio, and make something I would be proud of showing off, and possibly sell if people thought it would be worth it. That being said, I've been stalking OCR for years now, just never posted anything. Sixto was the entire reason why I wanted to learn guitar (The Passing of the Blue Crown was and still is one of the most-played tracks on my iTunes. :L), and Zircon was the reason I bought FL12 in the first place. Got a ton of respect for you guys, and the community here in general. So, for that reason, I'm asking anybody who's willing to take a listen to a track I'm re-starting work on that I originally slapped together in about a week 5 months ago. Loaded up the file earlier this week and made it a point to start trying to get it perfected, as this was one of the only tracks out of the 300-some I've made since the FL purchase that I've felt had some decent mixing/sound/balancing to it. Streamed/downloaded from Soundcloud - https://soundcloud.com/isaac-doud/infectious Please blow the crap out of it. Anything that can help the mix, I'd greatly appreciate. Anything that stands out with progression, flow, overall mixing (I don't have a pair of studio headphones, using my HyperX Clouds for it, not the best, not the worst), please, if you could take a second of your time to let me know or explain the reasons behind it, I would greatly appreciate it. I know the vocals are sketchy. Probably going to remove them. Using all free stuff that came with FL Studio / can be aquired on teh interwebs so the strings are a bit off (YAY FREE VSTS, QUALITY FTW), working on those right now. Anywho - thanks in advance. Cheers! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DjjD Posted December 1, 2015 Share Posted December 1, 2015 Hey man, this is actually a pretty sweet idea. The general direction and progression seems very clear but production values are holding the song back. I downloaded it, played it in FL Studio, and came to the conclusion that the instruments seem to be colliding. Try cutting your low end on the pluck sounding instrument that comes in at the beginning of the song. At 0:14 there's a screeching synth, possibly add some reverb to it? It sounds kinda dry. It might be a good idea to look into sidechaining, a very useful technique for "ducking". You can find it in all sorts of electronic music where the bass ducks underneath the kick drum in order to make the song feel more dynamic. Example: https://soundcloud.com/au5/au5-fractal-ison-1(If nothing else, listen closely at 3:55) Yeeeah, the vocals are a tad cheesy but the song reminds me of early 90's trance...so, it could go either way? Production crits is all I got, otherwise this is great. Give the instruments more room and you're golden! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CipherBeta Posted December 1, 2015 Author Share Posted December 1, 2015 Heard of sidechaining, never looked into it. Will check it out, thanks! And alrighty on the starts - question on EQ ducking though. With the starting pluck, I had bass frequencies ducked to about 50% - is it beneficial or sketchy to cut them completely? Kind of had a gradual slope from low bass up to normal EQ on the highs. Is it better to do full cuts vs. a sloping EQ? (Using FL Parametric EQ 2, if I'm not explaining it right, the little slope on there with the freqs). Kind of trying to do that with parts of the mix, cutting a little bit of mid and a lot of high end on the basses, lightly ducking low and high on the mids, and ducking low end on the highs. I thought it was a kind of crude way to do it - is there a better/more efficient way? And yeaaaaaa.... Vocals. :L I'm probably going to just try to build a little bit better, but then that ties in with trying to make more room for the instruments. Thinking on that one. But yea, thanks a ton man! I appreciate it. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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