Hey, YoungProdigy here. I want to eventually start composing for commercial games and I was wondering? What do you guys think is holding me back? Is it my composition skills? My mixing skills? My samples?

You can listen to my stuff here by the way:

https://soundcloud.com/youngprodigymusic/

What do you guys think is holding me back?

What do you think is holding you back? Sounds like you're writing music and doing a good job.

Your compositions are fine but your mixing could use some work in general. Beyond that it would depend on what your goals are. If you're looking to make a living as a music producer, you'll need to branch out beyond MIDI. For games straight MIDI is fine, but the games market is beyond capacity with people who make MIDI only music. In the advertising/television/movies side of things you'll have to incorporate as much live instrumentation as you can, and utilize only high quality MIDI patches. I'm not saying it's impossible to make a living doing only game music, but it's very unlikely. To see what you're up against in the industry in general I would browse around Firstcom and APM.

Your harmonies, orchestration, mixing don't support the emotion of your songs. Like if you have an epic melody in the strings and harmonize it with some playful brass notes, it may sound technically perfectly fine, but you now have conflicting emotions in the same section. Your melodies are definitely your strengths, so I would go all out with that, and make sure every note and every sound in your music supports exactly the emotion that you want in this or that phrase of the melody.

Your production can use a lot of work. If you want realism, get much better samples (e.g., from 8dio) and/or high-quality recordings. If you want a synthetic or perhaps retro sound, you can use what you have. But in either case, really really work on your mixing, or perhaps find a mixing engineer that you want to work with.

In summary: Your melodies are very good. Your compositions are technically fine, but emotionally unfocused. What's holding you back is emotion, orchestration, mixing.

Your compositions are fine but your mixing could use some work in general. Beyond that it would depend on what your goals are. If you're looking to make a living as a music producer, you'll need to branch out beyond MIDI. For games straight MIDI is fine, but the games market is beyond capacity with people who make MIDI only music. In the advertising/television/movies side of things you'll have to incorporate as much live instrumentation as you can, and utilize only high quality MIDI patches. I'm not saying it's impossible to make a living doing only game music, but it's very unlikely. To see what you're up against in the industry in general I would browse around Firstcom and APM.

Well in your opinion, what would you say is wrong with my mixing? I think the mixing on my more recent tracks is fine. But for right now; I'm not trying to become a full-on music producer; however, just a composer for indie games. I would like to get my music to a point where I could at least charge $250 a song; since that's how much the software I use costs.

Your harmonies, orchestration, mixing don't support the emotion of your songs. Like if you have an epic melody in the strings and harmonize it with some playful brass notes, it may sound technically perfectly fine, but you now have conflicting emotions in the same section. Your melodies are definitely your strengths, so I would go all out with that, and make sure every note and every sound in your music supports exactly the emotion that you want in this or that phrase of the melody.

Your production can use a lot of work. If you want realism, get much better samples (e.g., from 8dio) and/or high-quality recordings. If you want a synthetic or perhaps retro sound, you can use what you have. But in either case, really really work on your mixing, or perhaps find a mixing engineer that you want to work with.

In summary: Your melodies are very good. Your compositions are technically fine, but emotionally unfocused. What's holding you back is emotion, orchestration, mixing.

Well as far as samples go; I use Sampletank 3 SE, which has pretty high quality samples. But I think it has less to do with samples and more to do with how the samples are sequenced. You could have the highest quality guitar samples or string samples; but if you don't know how to realistically program them, they won't sound good.

As for my mixing; what could be improved? The EQ? The panning? I would like to know that as well.

Well in your opinion, what would you say is wrong with my mixing? I think the mixing on my more recent tracks is fine

The newest 3 or so tracks you have on soundcloud are fine. Most of the older tracks have some serious mixing issues. For instance 'mystical journey' is very flat. It sounds over-compressed. There are also a lot of conflicting sounds that need to be EQed better. Whenever you EQ make sure you're taking an individual instrument sound good in the mix, not on it's own. You need to highlight and de-emphasize frequencies for each instrument so that they are working together and not against each other. It could also benefit from some harmonic effects, maybe some tape-warmth and an aural exciter would add some life into it. Then there's panning, volume automation, and reverb to give it some space. Also in just about all of your tracks it looks like you're hard quantizing your midi data which makes things a little too exact. When everything is perfect and exact you lose the natural feel of the music and from a psycho-aucoustic standpoint your ears get tired of it very quickly. I also noticed on a lot of the tracks some of the high end chip-tune synth patches are very high and grating. Make sure you're using some very neutral headphones for your final mix.

All in all your stuff is good and I like a lot of the tracks. Lot of really fun retro game tracks in there. Spend some more time on the mixing and I think they would be sale ready.

Well as far as samples go; I use Sampletank 3 SE, which has pretty high quality samples. But I think it has less to do with samples and more to do with how the samples are sequenced. You could have the highest quality guitar samples or string samples; but if you don't know how to realistically program them, they won't sound good.

It's not either or; it's both. You do want to know how to get the most out of your libraries, but you can also only take cheap libraries so far. As far as orchestra libraries go, Sampletank 3 SE is more on the entry level. There's just a huge difference between a 6.5GB orchestra library, and a library that requires 26GB for the violins alone—or between a library that costs $99 for the full orchestra, and a library that costs $399 for the violins alone, to put it in another perspective. If you want realism, the sooner you start to use such high level libraries, the sooner you get to practice using them. They also tend to sound better out of the box compared to cheaper alternatives, so that's another benefit. :)

As for my mixing; what could be improved? The EQ? The panning? I would like to know that as well.

There isn't much to add to what CCH Audio said. Focus on the fundamentals: levels, pan, EQ, compression, reverb. This is not where a good mix starts, though. Understand this production flow:

Composition -> Orchestration -> Recording -> Mixing -> Mastering

A good mix begins with the composition itself. The better your composition, orchestration, and recording; the less you will need to fix in the mix. You may be aware of that, but I think it's always good to have a reminder.

You also used like a pan effect on one or two tracks that I thought distracted more than anything else.

Again for emphasis: Music is an emotional experience. Composition is drawing the emotional curve (tension, release, etc.) of your song. Orchestration is enhancing the emotional curve with instrument choices, adding harmonies, and so on. Recording/performing is interpreting the emotional curve and bringing it all to life. Mixing is making the emotional curve perfectly clear and possibly enhancing it with some effects. Mastering is the last check to see if the emotional curve is perfectly clear and everything is as it should be.

This is probably the best advice I can give. Composition in this context I consider more or less what you would play if you played your song with one hand on the piano (in most cases that's the melody).

What we are both saying is that your orchestration is not 100% doing that (in some songs taking away from it even), your recording/performance can be improved to bring it better to life—with better programming and more realistic samples (perhaps live recording?)—and you can make everything still more clear in your mix.

When you start to really focus on the emotional curve in your music, I think you can really see yourself where you can improve this or improve that. You definitely have far more potential than you are currently showing. You can easily charge the kind of rates you're looking for, but you have a lot more potential than that.

It's not either or; it's both. You do want to know how to get the most out of your libraries, but you can also only take cheap libraries so far. As far as orchestra libraries go, Sampletank 3 SE is more on the entry level.

Yeah Sampletank is good for some things but you can only take it so far. You don't have to drop 6 grand on Vienna, but Symphobia and East West are both very good for the price.

The best thing to do, repeatedly, is A/B comparisons. Get some books for subscribe to some online tutorials for mastering by really good pros. Consider taking private lessons from someone who is great at the production side of things.

Even decent samples can sound amazing when produced right.

I just listened to your Startropics track, and what's holding you back is both money and yourself. Yeah, like other people said, you could do with higher quality samples, but like... this Startropics track is kind of a disaster because you held yourself back. You have what sounds like live guitar (or a sampled guitar performance), and then you use this really crap shaker sample and crap bongo sample when those would probably be like the cheapest instruments in the world to record yourself. The flute performance you could probably hire some student to play from a nearby school or music program.

You tend to rely on the original instrument production to mix for you, leaving you a bit in the dark as to what to do when you record your own instruments--that's where Nathan's recommendation for A/Bing is helpful. Use a reference track--say to yourself, it has to sound like THIS, then work hard to make it happen.