Friends tell me my tracks don't sound glued together and random

Discussion in 'Mixing and Mastering' started by Tjakje, Apr 9, 2024.

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  1. Skaunker

    Skaunker Kapellmeister

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    It's a quite precise critique because it ain't obvious at the start and for the average hear. The samples and sound choices are catchy good job for it ! The composition is pulsative and entertaining.

    But after the bass drum kicks in, effectively, there is a "distanciation of energy" (the kick seem to be overdeveloping) like "distending" the composition; the kick certainly have some too much frequency popping out in a particular bass region (I won't tell it because I did not listen to it in the studio but on a simple sound bar), making a "discrepancy" effect after a certain amount of time. The more the loops are rotating the more "disjointed" the overall will sound, effectively. This "dislocated" effect piles with time until becoming eventually an annoyance for "ignorant" hears.

    I am unable to guess if you already did it but it is a perfectly suitable example for buss compression. Try it, or try it more. It will bring a global movement to all your elements, bring everything - perc, tonal, ambiance composants - to a slight closer level (with a gentle knee for ex) and restrain kick low end energy, which are by default first choice treatments candidates for a glue effect (this is why bus comp is so efficient).

    To be on the more artificial and surgical side, if you really like your kick low end swell you could use a dyn eq on the "too much" resonating content of the kick, controlling only the part of the waveform "pulling the wave thread" excessively.

    To follow the comrades advice :

    - Multiband can be a very effective way to control the bass but as a mater of safety maybe just use it on your kick; it can ruin mixes so easily, but a the same time its color can bring a kind of glue effect;

    - A good clipper can indeed work as well as introduce some shitty hollowing distortion annihilating the "roundness" of your kick (ugly "boomy" clipped kick sound). It can make a comp/bus comp work in an even relaxed way. I would try it to safely shave what I can invisibly and discard it if it colors in an unintentional way;

    - Buss comp could make the hats dance with the kick thus duck them eventually;
    quote

    This.

    Going into the more creative color/lofi/dirty route is an excellent advice to produce cohesiveness and identity but to my sense may not fix the kick overflow problem (it still depends, like if you use tape sat or semblable waveshaping) and ain't necessary to my taste.

    Finally, there is one simple all rounder processing after this long paragraph : soft limiting. I think it may magically fix your problem but yeah it may be too lazy. That's why I mentioned it in the end.

    That's more or less what tape machines do (instantaneous compression with knee and ratio relative to input level) and I always felt like soft limiting sounded more like tape more than traditional wave shaping with tape knee curves.

    The more I wrote and read what was suggested and the more I realize most those are generally fine-tuning, mastering-grade tasks. Like the master reverb trick for exemple, this is a very subtle method to have record sound extremely "professional" and "finished". In any case we are in the subtlety zone and your track is already a great base. Same with resonance taming or multiband comp.

    One thing though :
    Try to compose you artistic proposition with both your emotional/artistic decisions and your technical diagnostic / other people "technical" feedback.

    If you like some features like exaggerated or oddly sounding stuff, just keep them.
    My approach is just to identify problems to iron, grind any necessary and "blindsight" problems of the productions I have in hand (the "annoyance"), grind a layer of pollution between the auditory perception and what is meant to be expressed.

    Too much perfect music is morbid and lifeless and (appart if its part of an intention) and ain't a goal when perfecting a production; in another hand neglected features (like uncontrolled dynamics) can just be dommageable for your artistic expression.
    All those pieces of advice are more to be taken as trajectories than absolute ends.

    Just noticed your edit, this is way better, and the bass is more controlled in a good way, good job, and to correct myself, bass synth was overflowing more than the kick and you exactly corrected that :wink:
     
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