Hi, I tried to make future bass music but the power of my synth drop is not that powerful compared to a reference song.

I think the reference music is more 3 dimensional than mine.

I think my synth bass sounds little flat.

How can I fix it?

In my soundcloud, the first one is a reference song and the second one is mine.

 

Last edited: Nov 17, 2022

You need to keep making music, and keep pushing the boundaries of your knowledge.

There is more than one issue that needs to be fixed, studied and understood, before your sound can be as loud as the reference on your soundcloud.

Learn and play around with Compressors, EQ's .. understand sound frequencies.

Also, there are loads fo tutorials out there (YouTube) that will help you understand where you have to focus on.

Do a few tutorials, follow what they say, understand what tweaks have to be made where, and continue to develop your signature sound as you go along the process.

OR

Pay and send your track to a Mastering Engineer and take it from there!

 

Here's a skill that's helped me grow as a producer: Listen.

You need to tell me what's on the reference (not copying, but paying attention to the sonic information that makes it sound full) that is missing from yours. Really break it down, something like this:

The drop has a noise splash and cymbal in the beginning of the drop, the sidechain on the saws when the kick hits, the layered snare and splashy reverb tail on it, synths are layered with that classic OTT/upward compression sound with that air boost that you hear in a lot of Future bass music. Buzzy low saw bass, layer it with a sub and learn how to eq these elements together so they sound glued and full. Listen to the use of reverb on the reference, especially on the synth and the vocal chops. Future bass is all about layers, layers, layers. Do take note that the reference is clearly already limited so it's gonna sound more consistent to your ears.

All of these elements are what make it 3D. My advice is to learn how to use your EQ and some basic mixing skills. But most importantly, train your ear to pay attention to these things. It will speed up your learning process as you will be working towards a standard instead of mindlessly playing around. I used to do a lot of future bass music when I was just starting out and would spend hours really analyzing and understanding what I was listening to. Much of electronic music is also sound design so you will find yourself doing some interesting EQs to mangle sounds creatively.

 

This is so good that I've forgotten what I was going to write...

On the Master I find a Glue Compressor like SSL tickling the sound up to -1dB, going into a Smiley Face EQ, going into a Limiter gives me a nice sound that I like to my taste. I sit that in a Group in Ableton so that I can turn it on with a single button when I want to quickly compare.

Their Snare has a lot more power and that's adding a lot of the energy. The dynamic energy between that and everything else plays a big role. It has an attitude that yours lacks. Yours sounds nice and it has a bit of power, but it isn't driving in the same way... Adding a Saturator might lift that but you'd have to shape the whole sound different for more power/attitude, possibly in the Reverb... Also adding a Saturator to just the Reverb on the Snare might be better

 

I had some spare time so I made a quick, roughly mixed sample based on the reference you sent. I haven't made future bass in years but here is my shot at a bare demo. If you use Logic Pro I can send you the project file and you can deconstruct it yourself.

 

Last edited by a moderator: Nov 17, 2022

to give you a straight answer
the keys you playing is not too powerful even though it sounded similar

if you pay attention to the ref track you will hear the lead has more brightness and has good amount of release

add EQ first on your lead and the vox vocals ,feel where the energy of the lead picks up

you can use mastering in the mix 'animate on the lead to give it a powerful charterer (and detect whats lead
the lead to spike/power up ..and and also you can use the panning trick to wow the listeners with another support lead
that hits on the panning sides

there are alot of ways to get it going ,im not in to your genre ,im more in to 80s

on the 80s there always chords keys and guitar to be panned and toms to get listeners attention

so when you approach your track try to find what make the track intresting (not necessary referencing a track )

i dont use reference tracks unless its classic song i want to replicate its drums
and that means dont depend completely on reference track , its better to be more creative on your own knowledge of music

good luck

 

I tried this:


No, it didn´t help, at all.

 

Because it lacks hall reverb. Your reference has more of it. And maybe reduce 200-500Hz a bit on some synths.

 

Compare the kick & bass sounds of both pieces:
In the first example they don't hit at the same time so they made the kick fatter and it worked without much effort spent, while in the second example, I assume it's yours, the kick and bass hit at the same time and you didn't do enough to compensate for it.

If you lower the overall volume by EQ cuts trying to demask then try to compensate somewhere else like in more airy bands for kick, bass or both and perhaps also saturate.

 

After the headline, I only thought :
Distortion Distortion Distortion
Distortion everywhere
Ok enough meme


When I listen to, I believe that the overall loudness is the biggest problem, too much dynamics. Maybe a compressor on your master bus or if there is one with other setting would help. But that's my amateurish mastering thinking here, not my strongest side.

For the Kick and Bass I have to agree with Valnar

 

midrange is weak,
it's a common problem people spend too much effort on lows and highs and neglect core of the music in midrange frequency spectrum

 

@tzzsmk said it already your midrange & also your sub is weak.
This is really important because if you dont get this right your track will lose energy and will not sound "full".
So mix the kick right with sub & mid bass first. After that its really easy to layer the other elements on top of it. Like Chords, Leads etc.

Next thing are your chords. They are also really thin and weak. Normaly you have 2-3 Layers it really depends how you play them and give them also some Saturation/Overdrive and youre good. There are alot of youtube tutorials for future bass.

You should also take another kick, yours in comparison to the ref track is really weak. If you are not experinced with making kicks check out some future bass sample packs, there are already really good ones in it you can work with.

Also a really good thing for reference (not only reference) is check the tonal balance (iZotope Tonal Balance). You will learn alot about dynamics and what they do for example in comparison lowend vs. high end.

And pls dont say something like "send it to a mastering service etc.". If your track doesnt sound before the mastering already powerfull something is wrong with your mix. I mean sure you can fix alot in mastering but why would do that when you can "fix" it already in the mix.

Last but not least what i can tell you is, try to fix one problem not the whole track at once. Sounds simple but alot of ppl try to fix everything at the same time and thats just stupid on will not work. Keep it simple and you will get there.

So first get the kick with your sub & mid bass right first.
Then work on the Chrods.

 

Look into how they differ in the mids and low-mids.

 

+1 for that.
In addition to that take a look at the choice of samples. For example: your kick has a really different colour. Maybe you thought it is a cool kick sound and choose it. But if you just focus on the decision which kick you want to use to sound like a reference, you should choose another sample, that is way closer to your goal. Take your time... everybody has got thousands of kick samples, so I guess you also have. If you loose focus, listen to your goal kick again. Maybe you could even cut out a sample of the kick from your reference for better comparison. Doing this again and again in the future will train your ears to pay attention to the sonic details and differences - at first it can be rough and frustrating to find the right sample, but it gets better and better over the time.

I don't know how much attention you paid to find a "right" (close enough to your reference) kick sample ... but if you want to sound close, you should not choose that kick. Your's sound more like a kind of boom bap sample with much high frequencies, like those kicks sampled from disco records, when the hat and the kick hit the same time.
Listen again to executioner's kick choice. It shares many sonic qualities with your reference track. It has much "ooomph" with just a tiny amount of high frequencies. It's crucial in your case, 'cause you want that "I fall into a deep deep hole, whenever the kick hits"-feeling which you can find in many future bass tracks.