It’s like a giant buildup! Like the melody… I know you know it still needs a ton of work, but I found the drop most noticeable that it was missing low-end. Missed punch. Needs more sidechaining?! Also the stereo is a bit too wide for my taste.
The detuned start totally deceived me! I thought some hard gesaffelstein music would come, then you French styled the melody in… Thehe… Like something ominous was coming a huge impact and than a happy melody. Like a horror movie set at a carnaval…
No idea if feedback is welcomed. But I always find it useful…
The “unmastered” thing got me wondering-what do you guys all do for mastering? I usually run it through LANDR or a preset in WaveLab LE, but I’m starting to suspect that I’m taking for granted that what’s coming out is right.
Fun piece! Takes me back to when my ass was for shaking and not for dragging.
Hey @Maxhirez ,
I’m not a mastering engineer but I can tell you for sure that these AI programs are not a good solution. Though, they can guide you somehow and can be useful to have as a reference to overcome. Mastering is all about bringing life out of a track, take it to its full emotional potential, which is stuff that you can achieve with cutting annoying resonances and balancing all the frequency areas to have a choerent and well sounding piece of music. Compression is also applied for this puropse and, depending from the mix that the engineer gets, it will help to make the sound to come closer to the listener (aka ‘in your face’). Limiting is used to avoid that the tracks passes a certain treshold which is the 0db on your master channel and to create additional dynamic together with the compressor(s). Be careful with limiters on the master because if you push the volume too much, the track is not going to brathe and is gonna sound ‘flat’. Coming back to the AI thinghy, I personally think that an algorythm doesn’t know whats best for your track, he can maybe achieve something decent based on his settings, but is never going to overcome the brain of human beings in these field (same goes for mixing). The creative and artistic approach that an engineer has is always gonna be different from the mechanical brain of a machine!
I do a lot of stereo single-takes too, but i still run them through one of the options I mentioned. I don’t think it sounds bad but that might be because I’m attached to it since I’m the one that did it.
I try to make each individual track sound right with eq and effects first, then a couple of compressors in series, then master eq, and finally a BBE sonic maximizer used very gently. Years ago I had an Aphex Aural Exciter that I quite liked, so I may pick one up again some day. Once recorded, I use Ableton’s Limiter to normalize the level, but not enough that it really changes the character.
Feedback is totally welcome bro! Thanks alot. Here’s my updated version
this mix is pre-reading of your comment and i’m def going to add low-end to the drop , I agree 100% abt the side chaining.
I’m glad to deceive you with my intro lol. Alot of people in my circle know me for those suspenseful style intros/outros.
For mastering I normally just put it into Fl20 and f*ck with it till the mix sounds decent.
Recorded another session tonight. More laid back dub this time. Featuring the fart box as a bass drum, performance filter, VCLFO as well as the Music Thing Modular Chord Organ, an Ensoniq ESQ-1, and a whole lot of patch cables.
Wow, that’s really pretty. Perfect music to wake up to. I kept half expecting it to go into full 1995 amen break jungle mode; probably better that it didn’t .
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