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Says it's over for him. Hooks me from the first chord.

While there are some gripes I know I'm going to have here, like a low master level, I'm excited to hear what you bring to the table as I write.

Things are getting a little sibilant by 50 seconds. I would watch that you don't get too sucked into the "everything must be crispy" bait as you mix. Often without realizing it, we can go ear dead and not realize we are adding too much high end to compensate for levels being off elsewhere. For instance, the sub throughout is quite low imo; I'm not hearing much of it in the center channel, but rather bass synths spread out left and right, which are over balancing it (I know you're there, sub line, because I can hear you at 3:01!)

The kick, bass, and snare should be very present in the mix, in that order. Hi-hats as virtually the only thing in their frequency range can afford to be much quieter than we think. Here, they are louder than the leads and bass at times. This is where having professional references in your genre can really help. Take one and pull it down to the same volume as your finished track. Strive to emulate the balance you hear in every way possible.

Beyond that, this is a great, driving track. I'd put it on a cyberpunk/midtempo playlist in a heartbeat. Keep doing EVERYTHING you are doing in that arena, composition and sound design. You are absolutely on point there. And don't get me twisted. This is a bop!

MrMusterd responds:

heck yeah!!! thank you a lot man! ill keep the sub thing in mind as I mix with VERY bass heavy cans.... though I should have used more reference tracks to compensate. thanks for the advice, as I've said this stuffs gold to me! always good to have another ear! :>

Interesting choice of synths and arrangement, though it is a slowburner in terms of development!

I think your cymbals could afford to come down just slightly. As the only thing in that space, they are taking my focus away from other elements of the track. The bass consequently can afford to come up. The levels in the sparse arrangement at 1:31 are slightly mid heavy.

Your overall production is alien and ethereal, owing to that distorted theremin line. I would have appreciated a bit more wetness and splash here. It sounds comparatively dry and empty, despite the clear use of distortion, saturation, and delays elsewhere.

Certainly very interesting sound design and bold choices all around though. Nice work!

mjattie responds:

Thanks, I was going for a weird vibe. Agree with your feedback, appreciate it!

Great FX on that opening guitar, and nice spread. Wide without feeling inorganic. Synth choice is also great.

I have a little bit of gripes on hihat and cymbal eq/FX. The cymbals jump in and out, particularly in the right channel. I would apply more compression or otherwise manually control for slightly less dynamic range on the cymbals. The big crashes are too loud on the right, and the rest are about appropriate. You could also roll off a small amount of highs or alternatively, bring them up BUT turn the cymbal volume down.

I would also prefer a bit of stereo slapback on the hat and a bit more of a far-off feel. In general, the drums are quite up front, while the composition, synths, and vocal performance lend themselves to a bit of bombastic, epic, far off percussion. You might take a reference of something like Opeth, Nightwish, etc. -- particularly Nightwish, and see if you can experiment with emulating that balance.

I'd also like a louder and less dynamic master. The peaks of the waveform make for a lot of dynamic jumping around, particularly on heavy percussion sections with a lot of drive. The kick stands out well, perhaps a bit too well, as it sounds to be the lead instrument at 1:20 or so. The bass could stand to come up on larger sections and give some more fullness here. If you were to manage the kick and cymbals, you could probably afford to push the master harder.

Overall, you are improving by leaps and bounds each time I hear you. Wonderful vocal delivery, strong songwriting, and playing that is tight and controlled. Great work!

Mischa-head responds:

Thank you for the really helpful feedback! I was definitely trying to channel a bit of Nightwish with this one.

28 seconds in that downlifter or static sample is a bit high in the mix for me, but once you hit the drop, everything sits really nice in its place. I still might take it down a little but this tells me that it's got to be the master compression doing levels a little dirty. Under time constraints I definitely understand a little rough around the edges.

Great bass design. I probably would not stereo spread out your basses so low in the register. Generally 120 hz is where I cut off due to phasing issues that chorus and widening causes.

The switch at 2:17 is beautifully executed and that sound design is quite interesting.

How many basses did you layer on the drop?

Kz-N responds:

on both drops there are 6 unique basses, although it honestly mostly sounds like 3 or 4 because most of the time theyre stacked, also im not sure if maybe its an mp3 encoding issue but i everything <=115hz should be mono, but anyway thank you very much for your feedback, i really appreciate it!

I really enjoy the arrangement, choice of FX, and lyrical composition of this piece.

Something is off on the vocal mix. It has some very harsh T and S sounds, which, while tamed for the most part, still stick out against the instrumental. Also, there are some boomy plosives not tamed -- a manual hi-pass on those syllables of p, b, and so on will help rid the vocal of these; they are causing it not to sit as well as it could. In general, I think balancing away from the low end of the vocal, pushing it back a bit and actually giving more to the wet signal on it (sidechaining ofc to the vox) will help enmesh them.

In short, I would further de-ess the vocal, and to compensate also thin it out on the EQ. Performing at a quieter volume at this intimate mic distance, aiming for airy, scratchy, vocal fry may also assist.

The swallow and mouth noises also took me out of my element pre-drop.

I was disappointed that the song only lasted 3 minutes. I would have liked to hear that final drop repeat. However I would pull the key synths down slightly, as well as the organ/sustained pads, and again add a bit more air on the vocal. Some tonal separation on those EQs would do much good.

Otherwise I enjoyed it. Good work!

kiiri responds:

will keep working on my vocals! thanks for the detailed review :D

The section at 1:31 gave me chills. Or that was my fever. I don't rightly know which.

I appreciate the nostalgia of this soundfont, the creative arrangement, and the approach to panning, which reminded me of the N64 days, ironically.

Where I think you could improve -- volume of bass, and some tweaks to percussion EQ for better readability in the wider composition; this will lend to perceived fullness. The Emerald soundfont was never known for having very defined drums, due to limitations of its native sound system.

Interloping responds:

I think it may have been a combination of your fever and my subtle tones :P

In this piece there wasnt much of a bassline to be honest, more so just a tuba to fill in the low frequency while the french horns and trumpets dominated their roles, but I know what you mean. I often hesitate to bring up the volume of both the drums and the bass lines because Im worried that they will add too much gain, or simply overpower something else in the mix. Peer review has definitely taught me this is not the case, and maybe on my next piece I will take this into consideration.

I have tried using "Real" drumkits before but honestly, on FL Studio soundfonts, they tend to sound really fake, and noticeably so. Im still seeking out drums that can replace my current ones that maybe have their own cymbals instead of me having to make a separate track for the crashes all the time :P

Thank you for your input once again, I enjoy seeing familiar faces coming back to watch me grow as a composer <3

These days we take classical music for granted. It's a bold move to compete with it in a competition that favors cinematic, dubstep, and other electronic genres.

Not only have you woven a completely believable orchestra with expertly crafted movements. You've made one that evokes feeling of its own, without anything to look at, without any external stimuli. I hope and pray you get hired by a big studio, because this would make about anyone weep.

5:08 was mixed so beautifully, I felt as if I were a binaural stage mic.

HollandAlbright responds:

That means so much, thank you! I didn't know what to expect from the competition, but I did it for fun and to have a bit of a challenge (and now I have two new songs, so that's a win).

I really want to work in animation and games, but it's hard to find the way in to those industries. Someday soon, I hope.

Thank you again!

(P.S. - "I felt as if I were a binaural stage mic" - I love this)

This track had me sit down and say "what the fuck"

I am in awe. I'll leave it at that. I would prefer a bit more volume or perhaps distortion on the sub in the latter section, but beyond that, this track is just, chef's kiss.

GameBoyFireworks responds:

Thank you so much!! That means so much coming from you!

Loving all the modulations, synths chosen, FX and mixing decisions through this piece, with the exception of one. The bass should have some dedicated space! I can hear it, but it's pretty quiet throughout. My setup emphasizes these frequencies, so I know they will be near non-existent on other systems.

Are you using a pure sine for your sub? You may consider a slightly distorted waveform for it, or applying distortion.

The problem is less pronounced at 2:09, but I worry that stray reverb low frequencies or delays would stick out if you were to emphasize the low register much more. Something to think about in future mixes.

Overall great mix, good looking levels on the master, controlling for dynamic range, just a bit sibilant. I wonder if alternatively, you could roll off some highs OR take down your hi-hats and so on, adjust your master accordingly, and the perception of tinniness would go away.

I've been reading up on psychoacoustics, or the science of sound perception in layman's terms, and what I've discovered confirms my every day observation. The higher a sound is in pitch, to a certain extent, the louder it seems; the highest extremes of course suffer the opposite -- fading into silence like a YouTube hearing test for the partially deaf. Somewhere in the middle hi-hats and cymbals make their entrance, high-pitched and almost universally loud, such that they are easy to over-crisp and over-pump. A nice balanced EQ I've found for dealing with them is EZQ, a light touch in any direction will gently roll off the volcume of some of these offending frequencies for you, with minimal effort!

DefectiveSmile responds:

Thank you for the feedback! I appreciate the very direct and straightforward paths to make mixing just that much better. ♥️

Great writing -- I think your piano might be a bit too wet in your intro. It feels quite spaced out, and not in a dreamy way. Check your tail lengths, your low frequencies, and so on. The shoe-gaze feel is hard to nail down; I hear the same issue with your pads and keys throughout.

The vocal is a bit boomy and plosive. This may have to do with distance to the mic, too high of a volume going into the interface, or saturation and compression in post. Experiment with pulling back from the mic a bit -- or singing at lower volume, particularly for such a laid back piece, and putting a filter or two between the mic and your mouth. Recording at a 45 degree angle from the mic is also an option.

It may simply be that the EQ is tilted toward the low mids as well, leading to the PA-system feeling I'm getting.

I also recommend a little less aggressive autotune. The attack on some more variable notes was noticeable.

Your breaths are not too distracting, but your S and T's across the board are quite loud. I recommend opening your vocal in another editor and manually de-essing, OR hand-ducking the volume. Once that is done, you can safely use an EQ like EZQ to gently shape the tone of the vocal to be a little tinnier, brighter, warmer -- whatever it is you feel is balanced.

There are some issues before the master. I think I hear clipping at 1:34, on though, show, find my, home, sure, fire, find my, oh, promise, strong, find, and so on. Take a look at your lyrics and follow along, keeping an eye out for these downbeats.

If you are not mixing in 32-bit floating point and the highest sample rates your PC will stand, I recommend switching to it.

If this causes latency issues for you as it did for me, a solution is to print your track to mp3, load up in audacity, and punch in your recordings on a new audio track. Mute newly recorded tracks as you go. After you have normalized the resulting takes and edited as you please, you can then export all your takes separately using Audacity's native functions. Life hack right there.

The master itself is also somewhat quiet and could theoretically be pushed harder, but I think the track was too hot going into the compressor.

Moving onto the instrument balance, the vocals are a bit loud relative to the rest of the track. Perhaps consider taking down by .3 dB. The hi-hats could stand to come down similarly, and the snare up by the same amount. I would reduce the volume of all wet FX by around 25% and shorten reverb and delay tails, hi-passing the wet signals up to 170 hz; you have a perfectly pleasant soft bass in the bottom register, which is hard to hear under the wash!

That's really all I have to say technically for this piece, mix and master being the primary things I look for critically.

As far as songwriting, it's intimate, warm, and there is not one single element I dislike. Your chords are good, your structure is very strong. Your transitions are simple and even abrupt, but they suit the composition totally.

I know I wrote a LOT of critique, but overall, I really enjoyed it and think you did a great job!

AveragePhoe responds:

Hi, so, there's a lot here. Thank you so so much for taking the time to analyze the song so thoroughly and provide such priceless feedback! Mixing is always the hardest step for me in music production (you might notice that if you listen to some of my other songs), and this was only worsened by the tight deadline. While I had more time to work on it, I chose to stop the moment I felt it was good enough to be submitted. The alternative was endlessly obsessing over every detail, and probably going a few nights without sleep. This way, I can go back to it with a clear mind and calmly work on a Spotify release. Still, I'm proud of the song I submitted, and I'm really happy you enjoyed it! Constructive criticism is one of the greatest gifts a creative can receive, so again, thank you so much!

I make beats, metal, samples, patches, dnb, original game soundtracks, RVC voice models, and Russian/ English translation covers. Follow for monthly music producer freebies! Рада помочь русскоговорящим. Семплы вложены в ссылках вниз)))

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