this is sounding pretty good to me... which always makes me worried cause i KNOW there is things i could have done better. so tell me why it sucks! haha. ha. but in a funny way so my ego can handle it! any feedback on the mix, especially those blessed with subwoofers i would appreciate. I worry about my low-end, i listened to a couple of songs i thought were pretty close on a system with subs and it sounded like complete garbage. this one probably still has too much sub info, i'm considering eqing my sennheiser hd600s so there is a bass bump and i dont keep adding too much so it feels right on these phones. hell i worry about the high end and mids too though.

anywayyyy i think the song is decent enough, drums get too repetitive/static i'm sure. its a simple idea, i might still tweak the middle part with the organ but dunno how much time i'm gonna put into this one considering i'm not doing anything with it besides listening to it myself. and now sharing it with you all! ive been making faster tempo songs using lots of acapellas off the sister site lately so this was a bit different of a pace. i didn't compare it to any other tracks but i have a wav of viol by gesaffelstein, might be a good one to test it against.

i forget the synths i all used, can look them up if anyone cares. genesis childrens choir, royal albert organ, exhale for kontakt i remember, arturia acid is one of the basses, diva i'm sure. normally just use ostirus but been trying to avoid that as it inevitably will forget the preset ive selected and tweaked and revert it to the default, super annoying. unusable like that imo. effects are 90% nebula which means i tried to dial everything in myself, so who knows how that turned out. probably more harm than good but i had fun so mission accomplished! i used tim pethericks phaser and ms10 filter on the "bass solo" section, i love tims stuff. oh yeah used cupwise reverbs and strymons big sky pluygin for reverbs, they are my faves.

i hear ringing in some areas, not sure where thats coming from.... probably because i put too much shit on. or my ears are blown. also gets "too much" in the choir bit after the organ i think, not sure what i'll do about that. maybe just turn it down some? maybe it's fine and i'm just nitpicking?

thanks for checking it out if ya do! im always apprehensive about sharing stuff but this forum gives the best feedback i can find so cheers to everyone!

 

it sounds fine. I think I would move on to re-importing the bounce you already have, rather than going back into the session to endlessly make small tweaks . Check it against some good reference tracks and so on, like you mentioned. Sometimes that is a good way to see if you even really need to work backwards into the project at the stem mix level. Make a list of notes and go back only if you want to. See what you think a few days/weeks from now.

 

I like it, especially those detuned synths.
Soundwise I get exhausted quickly. There is like a wall of mids most of the time "screaming" at you, which is not a bad thing per se.
It is a bit too much for me, in the sub too. Kick is very loud. Needs a little more space for everything.

Compared it to Viol from Gesaffelstein. I see what you did there, reference wise.
Two things that come to my mind are:

(1) Viol sounds noticeably more cleaned up, because the mix is focussing more on the main elements (focus on main bass synth, other synth more in the background, way less and more subtle percussion elements). It lacks the wall of pad sounds your track contains. Compare it to how loud the organ sound is in your arrangement. And those are even stacked with more orchestral stuff. Not that it is forbidden though, but I believe those long lasting sounds are holding your track back from being more tight.
(2) Compare just the selection of the sounds of the kick and snare. In Viol the snare sits in a region (frequency and room wise) where nothing much else happened. In this case it could be mixed much quieter and doesn't blow up the lower mids. Kick is way tighter. Try to shorten the decay to the sweet spot where the kick is relatively short, without loosing it's sub characteristics too much.

Basically the two points containing the same concept: having shorter sounds and use the long sounds in a more subtle way.

 

thanks for the feedback! i am started messing with the kick to shorten it and filtering some lows out of the snare, but then started messing with the bass, then started to mess with the organ and ultimately decided clone was right and to just come back to it in a bit. but did tweak some things, think it sounds cleaner now not sure i like that i lost the high dirtiness of the bass.

was tweaking levels after listening to viol but started to go crazy because ultimately they're kinda close but also different enough i have trouble comparing the two. my shit just has way more stuff going on so its busier, doesn't sound as spacious. i think an arrangement issue, so im just gonna start on a new song sometime and try to keep that in mind while making it. thank you for checking it out and giving me your thoughts! here is the slightly different but not really that much version i came up with

 

Well, this sounds massive, I would just make the drums punch harder and it would be exactly like Gassefelstein

 

I think your song and the tempo are great, you can really make it work.

Keep this version on SoundCloud for now and then listen to it again with your ears rested and make a version 2 and a version 3. When you've mixed for an hour, go for a walk outside and then sit down again. In my opinion, you should turn down the reverb a bit. The synth should be emphasized more and brought more to the fore.

In this song you can hear exactly where the mistake lies, the snare is too high-pitched and there is either too much reverb or the wrong reverb.

 

well thanks guys! when i get hooked on a song i listen/work on it over and over then burn myself out on it, its been a while so maybe i'll reopen this and tweak it today. reverb to me is like a woman you know isnt the most healthy thing but you like her anyway ha, i'm always putting a little too much on. got hd 600s so pretty good cans but no speakers, verb and bass especially always needed a monitor check i felt like when i had them. feels like im guessing at a certain point. also im pretty bad about not letting my ears rest so good advice beat16/radio. so thanks for the lovely feedback, i appreciate it! ill keep working on it

 

Sounds pretty cool. As others noticed (including yourself) it definitely could use a bit less in parts to let your ears settle down and make the main parts maybe hit a bit more. At the very least, the first couple mins, are great though! I think you're well on your way to a pretty awesome track though.

 

To me this sounds you might want to adjust your approach or workflow a bit. One lesson I learned rather late regarding my own production process, is to get things done somehow stupid fast. I almost drilled my ears and my mindset to get things done really straight forward, with a clear intention (imagine the change of sound in my head, sometimes even mimic it with my mouth BEFORE applying it). The main thing is: trying to be precisely and tweaking back and forth for a long time to get the sound "almost perfect" never brought me to a point where I felt good with the results. To me there is a big benefit of learning to do things fast, because of that I got way more fearless and straightforward thinking. Too much reverb? Click the wet button, sweep around the sweet spot, listen what it does to your WHOLE MIX (not just the track itself), quick decision, finito. You might change it anytime in the mixing process (e.g. "there might be to much reverb", just change it with a few clicks and leave it there for now). As I said, thinking too much about my decisions almost never brought me "there". Of course there is a raison d'être for breaking this rule and a room for extensive experimentations.

Don't bother, if you either already have this "quick and dirty" mentality or if this approach is not yours!
In my process it was one of the biggest steps so far. Imagine the benefits of having 10 quick'n'dirty decisions against 1 how much reverb I want decision. It helped me a lot not loosing the focus about the big and whole.