Hey guys, just showing some stuff I did last week. Would love to get critiscm on anything (mixing, composition etc...)
I have another 3 tracks to go so I may post those later






I'm not fond of the mix on the last link, too much ride cymbal and wayyy too much high end, will have to remix it...

Hello,

You've got some interesting ideas there. Not exactly my cup o' tea, but you sound individual, that's a good thing.

One thing you can improve a lot on is your drum programming, to me it sounds very mechanical. What plugin did you use for that? You can breathe more life into drums by using ghost notes and applying different velocity values with more care.
Also, a common mistake is to do too much. Sometimes a simple beat sounds much more sophisticated than filling every 16th gap with a snare or kick drum. Watch some drum videos, maybe even get a lesson or two yourself. Helped me an awful lot with my programming skills!

On your overall mix: I can tell you really tried to get the most volume out of the tracks by using heavy limiting. This can kill the dynamics of a song if it isn't done properly. As the result, your tracks sound mushy and will probably tire players out pretty quick. (although listening habits have changed a lot during the last years - most people are quite accustomed to digital clipping nowadays) That aside, YouTube will also reduce the audio quality during conversion. You may want to upload your songs to SoundCloud or something similar next time!
All in all, I can recommend reading the mastering guide on my friend Tarekith's website.

Cheers and good luck with your music,
Moritz

Hello,

You've got some interesting ideas there. Not exactly my cup o' tea, but you sound individual, that's a good thing.

One thing you can improve a lot on is your drum programming, to me it sounds very mechanical. What plugin did you use for that? You can breathe more life into drums by using ghost notes and applying different velocity values with more care.
Also, a common mistake is to do too much. Sometimes a simple beat sounds much more sophisticated than filling every 16th gap with a snare or kick drum. Watch some drum videos, maybe even get a lesson or two yourself. Helped me an awful lot with my programming skills!

On your overall mix: I can tell you really tried to get the most volume out of the tracks by using heavy limiting. This can kill the dynamics of a song if it isn't done properly. As the result, your tracks sound mushy and will probably tire players out pretty quick. (although listening habits have changed a lot during the last years - most people are quite accustomed to digital clipping nowadays) That aside, YouTube will also reduce the audio quality during conversion. You may want to upload your songs to SoundCloud or something similar next time!
All in all, I can recommend reading the mastering guide on my friend Tarekith's website.

Cheers and good luck with your music,
Moritz

Thanks for the reply, this is my first time ever mixing sub bass, which ate heavily into my headroom and pushed the master compressor more than I would have liked. I used Addictive drums for the drums. I would've liked more dynamic drums but the ghost notes kep getting easily lost under some of the busier parts and I'm not one to tinker with automation for hours on end.

I'll check out your article

Addictive Drums happens to be my drum tool of choice too. You can make it sound pretty realistic, but it will require a lot of time at first. Time that will pay off, you'll get quicker at it the more you do it.
Tinkering with the clips in the library can help a lot to get a feel for how the velocities work and where to apply the ghostings.

And sure, most of the time you don't really hear the ghost notes, but if I took 'em away in this track, it would suddenly sound a lot less realistic:
http://soundcloud.com/mpgk/rough-and-tumble - the drums here took about an hour to program.

In terms of compositional ideas, I found the second link more compelling.
It is also not necessarily my style but these are good drum-driven with some energy to them!


I definitely agree about the drums sounding quite mechanical and robotic and considering they are a key element of these pieces, they ought to be on the money! Moritz's soundcloud link is making me want to shell out some cash for this.
But as with most things the more you work on them the better they will sound - it may seem like a tiny thing in the grand scheme of things but spending that hour or two just focusing on making the drums sound real and great will keep anyone from having any criticisms!

I imagine this game was a driving/action game? Perhaps i'm just being influence by the image on youtube. Although youtube is good for getting yourself out there - it does seem unnecessary as you just have a still image - definitely think about uploading things elsewhere - perhaps soundcloud!

Calum

In terms of compositional ideas, I found the second link more compelling.
It is also not necessarily my style but these are good drum-driven with some energy to them!


I definitely agree about the drums sounding quite mechanical and robotic and considering they are a key element of these pieces, they ought to be on the money! Moritz's soundcloud link is making me want to shell out some cash for this.
But as with most things the more you work on them the better they will sound - it may seem like a tiny thing in the grand scheme of things but spending that hour or two just focusing on making the drums sound real and great will keep anyone from having any criticisms!

I imagine this game was a driving/action game? Perhaps i'm just being influence by the image on youtube. Although youtube is good for getting yourself out there - it does seem unnecessary as you just have a still image - definitely think about uploading things elsewhere - perhaps soundcloud!

Calum

hmm maybe I will reconsider re-programming the drums. As for youtube, I use it as free storage for all my crap because I am terrible at storing stuff, I usually end up deleting/losing it accidentally and youtube prevernts that