Hey everyone,

I would like to share a beat with you all and i ask for your comments and opinions.

http://soundcloud.com/robert-mazurkiewicz/odd-bit

 

It's nice. But the arpeggio there just kills me. Along the whole track it's playing exactly the same as the beggining and it becomes TOO much repetitive.
I'd drop it, and then bring it back with some variations or something.

There you go, that's my opinion

 

Thanks for your opinion. It is definitely appreciated. I tried dropping the arp but the beat felt dead without it. Maybe a change in progression as well as duration would help?

 

Arp is nice, though gets repetitive like the above mentioned. The glitchy part I love, anything glitchy, I love
Try a subtle pad or even a thick sustained lead line, detuned OSCs, thick, tight delay.

You can DEFINITELY drop the arp at 2min mark. Try some cascading crashes, delayed and panned to fill the void at 2mins.

GREAT drum pattern, except the sounds themselves need a bit of beefing up.

The actual crash that hits with the drum pattern bugs me. It decays too quickly and is too dry. Stands out like a sore thumb I think.


This has a lot of potential, with some more work and a few changes it could be something great. Keep at it

 

Thanks Paus! Your input is much appreciated. How would you recommend beefing up the drum sounds? Perhaps stacking kicks, snares or maybe effects such as tape saturation?

 

No problem!

Stacking kicks is messy business for me, too much can go wrong with the low end. Sometimes ill get a kick and layer it veeeery subtly with a hihat and snare. These are EQ'd to death so only the real snap and whack are retained (if that makes sense?). Compress these (I do heavily) and then add to the kick. Just go with a suitable volume so it doesnt actually sound like snare/hh, more like a thick, punchy upper-end to the kick.

Tape saturation often does the trick but you gotta play with the settings. You dont want to saturate below 60Hz cos again, it just gets too messy.

Layered snares are much easier to work with you can take your main "hit", slightly boost the appropriate freqs, cut the lows until it you hear it getting thin, then back up a bit. For the layers add more snares or claps and be a bit more vigorous with the EQing, Try to leave only the freqs that you need from these extra layers. Your main "hit" will boost at freq "X" so the other layered ones can be cut a few dB so it doesnt interfere too much.

I like to pan maybe 10% for one stacked/layered snare and 10% right for the other stacked/layered snare.

Add some tape sat, compression and tight reverb.

This track isnt heavy electro so you dont need to go too crazy with the layering and distortion. Subtlety is key here.

Almost forgot... If the layering isnt working out how you think it sould, reverse the phase on one (or more) of the sounds.

Theres no magic formula, keep at it and see what works!