This is "Eve of the Invasion." It was originally "Ignore Me, I'm Building an Army." I got some very helpful feedback on the first two versions of this song. Thanks so much particularly to Nem, Cybernetica, the Arizona Dragon, the Russian guy whose name I've forgotten, and anyone else who gave tips.

I think this has come a long ways, and I think I can say that now it's actually pretty good. Tell me what you think. It's possible that I smooshed it while "mastering." Still haven't figured that part out yet.

Link: Eve of the Invasion
Peace out, Agent Starchild

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Agent Starchild
Durham, NC, USA

Those who share the wealth of their knowledge will end up far wealthier and more loved. Those who use their knowledge as a throne from which to sneer at others will never have a true friend.

Tracks-in-progress (Please help me make these better):
Eve of the Invasion
The Realm of Possibility

Alright here goes round two.

So the atmospheric stuff in the beginning is still really nice. I think more stereo widening will make it sound better. Some thick reverb on that string will do wonders.

Kick is fine. It would be nice to have more oomph, but then again I suck at kicks.

I think the transition at 2:50 into the piano melody could be more clear. Instruments fade in and out but maybe a sweep or an effect will solidify the changeover. I wouldn't let the square arpeggio thing bleed into the break. Just some thoughts. I feel the piano could be louder.

All in all, it's quality improvement. I don't know what type of sound quality you are particularly going after because each producer has his or her own parameters to follow. I think though that any producer can benefit from preserving some highs to achieve crispiness to their sound, so try to low pass the sound not at 10 khz but more like 13 khz. Your song could benefit from reverb on some instruments as well.

Hope this is more comprehensive and helpful.

PS: I also made minor adjustments to the breakdown in my song. If it's worth your time, could you see if the changes are better?

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Life isn't about finding yourself. Life is about creating yourself

Thanks very much for the detailed feedback. You're very perceptive in noticing that I had cut a lot out of the highs. I've been trying to figure out how to deal with this problem I'm having where my speakers are distorting.

In any case, I'll try some of the things you're suggesting. I do think that transition with the piano part could have something in there to make it more intentional.

Additionally, I'll take another look at your song.

Peace, Agent Starchild

___________________
Agent Starchild
Durham, NC, USA

Those who share the wealth of their knowledge will end up far wealthier and more loved. Those who use their knowledge as a throne from which to sneer at others will never have a true friend.

Tracks-in-progress (Please help me make these better):
Eve of the Invasion
The Realm of Possibility

The distortion you are referring to is called clipping. It's when the audio signal compositely rises above 0 db. Those peaks can't be processed and become distorted. Cutting out highs can help eliminate the problem but then it doesn't help your sound. What you want to try is compression on your bassline/kick or other instruments. Proper eqing usually helps too. Some things aren't audible when they are played but could make a big difference. For example, I cut out the lows on my leads because not only does it interfere with the bass but it also frees up room for the bass. Anything that's isn't heard in the mix but is still playing will take away headroom. From looking at your song, it's heavy in the mid range (1000-5000) So work there. You can always try hardlimiting as well. :-) As a last resort, lower the volume of your song.

___________________
Life isn't about finding yourself. Life is about creating yourself

Hey,

azndragon pretty much covered the most important stuff.
I see you have way more highs now in your mix, which is good. Probably its a bit too much upper mid frequencies here now. I think its all about finding the proper balance of elements. Its a little trial and error, I know. I always suggest you compare your tracks to professional releases and see how things are balanced. Maybe use a frequency analyzer to compare the frequencies used.
Oh, and still try to find better hihat samples, the ones you have used are a little simple and repetitive. In the offbeat I would use an open hihat that has a longer sustain and less ticking, it usually sounds better and feels more "real".
I suggest you bring down the levels of your hihat and bring up the leads a little more. I think that your lead melody is pretty cool, I dig it!
The kick is pretty nice, but the bass needs a little more mid range frequencies. There are several ways to proceed. One is to split your bass into mid bass and sub bass with corresponding highpass and lowpass filters. One is to use a more present type of bassline, I recommend audiorealism Bassline or Steinberg VB-1 for creating a rich Psytrance bassline covering a wide frequency spectrum. Then you should use short notes to make sure your bass is crisp. The other way to help making your bassline more dominant is compression. On my basslines I usually use quite a hard level of compression, bringing the bassline as much to the limit as possible.

Songwriting-wise, the breakdown is pretty uninteresting, and the piano is almost not noticeable. Some more action than fading out and fading stuff back in would be nice.

As for the clipping, to prevent that its usually a good idea to use a limiter set to 0.0dB on the master channel which will prevent all frequencies above from clipping through. But be careful, if your levels are way too high above the 0.0dB mark, the limiter will induce a pumping effect, especially on good systems and with louder volume you will notice that your track is lacking a lot of energy.
So if you are planning a professionally mastered release, the label will sometimes demand that your max peaks of your final mix are below -3dB, to make a good mastering possible. So I always suggest you turn up your speakers and start off with lower overall channel levels. First of all its easier to balance things against each other, second you can make sure you dont make things clipping.

I suggest you dont try to fix your track too much, its usually making things worse instead of improving. instead you better start a new track keeping the advice you got in mind. I would say thats usually a better way to improve.

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Cybernetika albums (free DL): Atropos (2009) | Nanospheric (2008) | Neural Network Expansion (2007) | Promo #1 (2006) | Paralysis (2005)

homepage: http://www.cybernetika.de

Thanks so much, guys. I really appreciate all the tips. I can see your point Cybernetica about applying the advice to a future song rather than tweaking this particular one to death. I'm not going to sweat too much over this one but I'm going to try to be more conscious of the overlapping use of mid frequencies by my different instruments. I think I may have brought the kick up too much around 5 KHz for instance since somewhere I read that that's where the "slap" on the kick occurs. I don't know if either of you will read this response but I do have one question about EQ that I could probably also figure out by digging around.

I tend to raise and lower things up to 6-8 dB or so at the points where I've read that I'm supposed to raise and lower them. Is that way too much? Should I be raising and lowering things more like 1 dB for instance? I just don't feel like I can hear any change when it's a much smaller amount like that.

Anyway, thanks for your help.

Agent Starchild

___________________
Agent Starchild
Durham, NC, USA

Those who share the wealth of their knowledge will end up far wealthier and more loved. Those who use their knowledge as a throne from which to sneer at others will never have a true friend.

Tracks-in-progress (Please help me make these better):
Eve of the Invasion
The Realm of Possibility

Yo Agent -

I took a listen to your tune. The melody is really nice, the order of everything is pretty smooth. I like the intro, it flows well with how the kick and everything else comes in.

I think the bass should be brought out a bit. The volume on the bass is good but some frequencies on the bass channel should be increased it sounds like, maybe around 100-200 hertz.

Maybe change up that main crash that hits at 5:13 for example. Or maybe just roll off some lower frequencies, it doesnt sound very natural but its not bad.

Nice white noise effects. Lead sounds good. Your transitions are pretty smooth also, there was never a point where I was sort of surprised or anything.

One thing is to maybe work on your build during the break. This is REALLY hard i think, well it is for me but I think its essential. Something to get the listeners excited about the drop that is coming up.

Overall its a good track, with some improvements it would be a great track.

And by the way a 7-8 DB increase on an EQ is quite a big increase, The reason that you dont hear a difference with using smaller increases i believe is because that frequency range is so cluttered and has a lot of sound going on there. I would say to try a 3-4 DB increase (which is still kind of big) or a 1-2 DB increase. If you cant hear a difference then maybe you should work on the sounds that are in that same frequency range and decrease there 'precense' a bit. Thats my non-professional opinion