new tune done all with ableton

[jeskola]

please have a listen, feedback really appreciated please...

http://www.stevenfoulds.co.uk/nascent/shifter.mp3

its breaks, moody stuff!
its a remix , its also my first full track with ableton, so any help with mastering or advice on flow etc appreciated.

[tekkers]

hiya ... not bad for a first effort (far better than mine!!)

i would say the main thing for me is its about 3 mins too long with the sounds u have in it.. i feel it should either build more quicky OR there be more sonic elements in there to catch ya ear... try changing the size of the revberb,delay feedback etc on the sounds so they dont loop so much exactly the same..

and add about half a dozen squelching 303s! lol

[fmass]

pretty flat and dull ...

[jeskola]

anyone else take a listen?

ive just realised that the supertrigga has been left on the baseline ( i hate how supertrigga resets its settings, als o cant save em cause it crashes live!!)... so that shouldnt be in there (the supertrigga slow effect)_!!

[jeskola]

pretty flat and dull ...

cool, could you give me a bit more info, still learning and need to know where im going wrong...

[fmass]

1) too long / no groove / no ear-worm / nothing innovative
2) who wud pay 99p for this song from itunes or bleep.com ? nobody
3) bass and drums levels too dark

[jeskola]

cheers, will have a rethink and another stab.

[forge]

personally I think you could do alot for this track with some proper mastering then I dont reckon it would be a bad track at all - there are some nice sounds in there and listening through headphones it's easier to hear where your head was at when you wrote it - so in other words a decent multiband compressor and limiter to bring the ideas out - you would probably do well to have another mix with them on so you re-adjust to the mastered levels as I personally find once you get the mix thorough someting like waves C4+L2 or PSP vintage warmer you notice things alot more and usually want to change the mix again.

In response to the dull and flat comments - I reckon the things that make that true is the total lack of any variation in the drum programming and the track is WAAAAY too long (probably twice as long as it should be ) - but I do think there were some good ides in there, just a case of figuring out which ones deserve the limelight and which ones are just extras that boost it up and give atmosphere.

[Former Pharaoh]

I agree, it's too repetitive/long. Speed up the track to get some motivation going in a different direction.

[randyh]

First off, I really don't advise trying to master your stuff at this point. You should be working on your mixing/production skills at this point, not trying to master anything. It'll just frustrate you and stifle your growth as a producer (I know because I focused on mastering for a LONG time before figuring out that it was my production skills that were lacking). I can't deny that it would help, but I don't advise going there yet.

The most glaring issue (production wise) is your levels are just way askew. You need to emphasize the important parts so we know what to focus on. The drum loop is right out front and everything else is like background stuff. There are a few effect-like parts that come out every once in a while, but it's not enough. Try listening to the track *really* quietly and see if you can hear everything you intend to be important. If you can't hear it, it needs to be louder.

Song-writing-wise, I think my best advice would be to load up a song you like and try to recreate it with your own synths. It doesn't have to sound the same, just make the arrangement the same (you can try to make it sound the same too but that's a different lesson). You will learn a BOATLOAD of stuff really quickly this way. I can't emphasize that enough. It is the BEST way I've seen to get someone off the ground with song writing. It's how everyone learns to play an instrument, so why shouldn't we use this time-proven technique on electronic music? I know it sounds like a hassle but I promise you'll thank me if you go through with it. Also, Live's warping makes it much easier now than ever before.

-r

[LOFA]

I'm not yet a high end techy god of all knowledge, but I am still a good listener.

Your beats are repetetive. Perhaps try playing your minimal loop through supatrigga a couple times, set to record audio. Find a couple parts you like and either cut and paste them in audio, or use them as a model with which to recreate them in midi.

If you choose to recreate them in midi, I would suggest (for now) using the Ableton tutorial song's layout (or something similiar-it's very logical,) and giving your self accentuated grooves and breakdowns to work with.

As far as the darkness of the drums I agree. they are way too prominent, and although they do remind me of being a twelve year old skinny puppy freak, they hard to dance to.

I really like all of the textural sci-fi shit going on in the background a lot. It is right up my alley. I think you set yourself up though, like I do all of the time. You have this really complicated, bad ass texture going on, but there is a direct proportion to have bad ass it is and how hard it is going to be to bring from 2D to 3D (with actual song structured dynamics.) It's like trying to do limits in calculus without the easy formula. Everythone has their own easy formula, but you have to either understand someone elses, or figure out your own.

As a comparison to Fine Art (where I have estabished technical knowledge,) there a infinite ways of conveying information in an abstract way, but somehow the masters, as highbrow as they get, can still paint a classical portrait in a photorealistic manner.

I included this, because I have noticed a propensity in electronic musicians
(myself included) to avoid realizing a great component, in lew of obscuring it with another unfinished idea.

I think if you took ALL of the elements you have right now and treated them like dabs of oil on your session view pallette, and reworked each of them 10 or twenty different ways (or however many it takes) till they share at least 4 or 5 unique scenes/latteral grooves,) you will have something very fucking serious to jam with. If you leave at least on track (referring to the line of clips running perpendicular to the scene) of melody
or beats in midi, you can limit the use of a randomly generated reanging tool (like supatrigga) to off set things in a minimal, yet organic matter. This way you have more changes, while subtle enough not to violently distract
from the overall structure.

I would love to hear this track posted again, once it has been taken from a two dimensional sketch, and rendered in 3D, oh yeah! Panning. I don't remmember if you utillized it or not, but whoa... what a difference, especially for something minimal (just keep it equally miniaml). The more delicate the contrast, the more effective it will be!

Sorry if it sounds like I am spelling everything out too much, but I want these ideas to be accessible to newbies.

Anyway, if I had your master files and I had to remix your track, I just gave out my formula for what I would do. Thanks for sharing!

[oblong]

good tune, glad to see your taking advice so well, i would freak if someone slagged me !! bravo.
these are the basics and also some of the most important things i think the track has wrong with it.
1. wrong snare
2. snare needs to gell with the very mid range kick
3. hats need to be brighter
4.needs a proper sub bass for this kind of music
5.cut out all the abient sound effs at times to accenuate the beat
6.u cant wait 4/5 mins for a floor to get into any kind of rythmic build up, uless youve done something astounding/u dont need to make it 1 or 2 mins and then begin the musical sounds-this is known as a mix beat
7.programming - but this comes with time/if you get the mix right you can be very minimal if you need to and people will accept it - strange but true!
8.do those few things and you are lot closer to getting better
its always difficult to get the balance between kick/snare hat/bass
when youve got good measurements across an acceptable audio spectrum for the ear with those four, the rest of the stuff is easy to fit around the track, when the bassis is nice and pleasing, then the ambient sounds can be used minimally for more effect. it sounds at the mo like your covering up floors in the production by using so many wavey effected sounds.

hope this helps.

[forge]

First off, I really don't advise trying to master your stuff at this point. You should be working on your mixing/production skills at this point, not trying to master anything. It'll just frustrate you and stifle your growth as a producer (I know because I focused on mastering for a LONG time before figuring out that it was my production skills that were lacking). I can't deny that it would help, but I don't advise going there yet.

I dont disagree with what you say there in theory - but I wasnt really meaning mastering in the final sense of what a mastering engineer would do - I was more advocating the use of a multiband and limiter DURING the production stage because I find it gives you a very different picture of the sounds and what stands out - I often find I'm turning the C4 on and off to get the contrast and it definitely helps. And also in the case of this track I was thinking just doing that would bring it out of it's self substantially - then it can be reworked accordingly.

Like LOFA was drawing the fine art analogy - I also often think in terms of an analogy with stage shows and spotlights - for a long time at the beginning I was working on a track listening to each individual sample as though it was a soloist but putting it together with other soloists to make a chorus line - but that doesnt work - you need to be able to give the soloists the spotlight and let their merits be heard and then give the other wicked samples the stage when it's their turn otherwise you just end up with a big jumbled mess and none of the good bits can be heard, but it's really hard to then decide what to get rid of because when you solo each track they all sound good individually

so if you think of mixing in terms of bringing the best bits out in the spotlight to have it's turn so you can actually hear it's good bits then do them all that way then your allowing each sound to be properly heard and it gives a track much more power. I find it very useful to have a multiband and limiter going while I'm doing this because often if you just stick them over one stereo file at the end of the mix you might then find you want to change things as the dynamics of the mix are altered......

then you get on to surgical style EQing as well - I often go through each sample in the mix and try and figure out what I like about it and which parts of the frequency range the good bits are in and then cut out everything else - so in other words if there's a percussive mid range loop that has a little bit of low end which sounds good on it's own but bring in the bass and kick and it's all mixed up, sometime's just getting a really good sharp EQ (like waves renaissance) and cutting out the low end will make it mix better and the bass and kick will have more power.

Likewise if you have 2 samples that occupy the same part of the spectrum but you like the rhythmic miw they create and dont want to sack one then maybe try panning them - not bottom end though I wouldnt go panning bass sounds - and then if there is a mix of 2 bass sounds that creates a nice rhythm it's probably the bit's over 150Hz which are creatig it anyway - you really want to keep below that as simple as possible

[fmass]

i wish i had this kind of help when i started !

great input guys...

... and we meant good ... no slaps or negative things ...

but i have got this 99 pences ready to buy a good song and that wanst the one ....

[randyh]

First off, I really don't advise trying to master your stuff at this point. You should be working on your mixing/production skills at this point, not trying to master anything. It'll just frustrate you and stifle your growth as a producer (I know because I focused on mastering for a LONG time before figuring out that it was my production skills that were lacking). I can't deny that it would help, but I don't advise going there yet.

I dont disagree with what you say there in theory - but I wasnt really meaning mastering in the final sense of what a mastering engineer would do - I was more advocating the use of a multiband and limiter DURING the production stage because I find it gives you a very different picture of the sounds and what stands out - I often find I'm turning the C4 on and off to get the contrast and it definitely helps. And also in the case of this track I was thinking just doing that would bring it out of it's self substantially - then it can be reworked accordingly.

It sounds to me like you're using a multiband limiter to do the job of an eq. I'm not sure I understood how you're using it though.

Regardless, I still think a multiband limiter is a complicated, confusing tool that should be avoided until you can get at least decent results from volume, panning, eq, and compression alone. The possibilities of doing something completely wack with it are so much greater because there are so many more possible combinations of settings, *especially* with C4.

-r