Hey,
This time around i am collaborating with my friend Brian on a song. He is not into production, but he has had a love for electronic music and has used some DAW tools on and off. So, I am letting he and my brother give input all along the way with this track.

My style is generally: ambient, down-tempo, progressive, electronic, experimental, acoustica, acid.. Brian is into a lot of styles including dubstep, dance, electro sort of stuff..

Now I turn to you, KVR. You have it within your power to help me! I think that we have an ok rhythm section going, but the lead flute is bad, we need a better lead melody and instrument.

The track so far is ADM drums, Diva drone bass, Diva organ then that Halion 'ethnic flute'.

I am open to any and all suggestions! I am hoping that opening my mind to other people's idea of music and creativity will be good - I have worked for soo long alone here...

http://www.noahcohn.com/brian/brian3.mp3

previous version without flute - http://www.noahcohn.com/brian/brian2.mp3

I have things to work with such as ABL2, Virus Powercore, ACE, Synth Squad, RealGuitar/Strat, Cubase 6.5 plugs..

Thanks for your time!

I like the track, but the flute sound is a little unexciting. Whatever you do don't dump it entirely. There is still so much you can do with that flute. Feed it through another processor (synth, FX, whatever), or layer it with another sound in the same octave (maybe a 'Tron flute). The possibilities are endless. Maybe some crazy reverb might sort that out. Don't give up on it yet. I can agonise for hours over that sort of thing, but it's worth the grief when everything comes together.

Anyway. Cool track

update - had a session last night and replaced the flute with xylophone - http://www.noahcohn.com/brian/brian4.mp3

I think this is an improvement upon the original. Where the earlier version was quite "loungey" and relaxed, the new version feels a little more mysterious and energetic.

The xylophone version sounds much better than the previous one with the flute. A mellow saxophone would also fit into your track...

ya.. we had a chat about horns.. i just don't know how to program them even if i had a good bank of sax...

i did more polishing and added a solo part to the planned progression - www.noahcohn.com/brian/brian5.mp3

thanks for the input..

so.. my friend has dropped out of our collaboration..
i think that i will still use this as a song for my next album.. after making some huge changes.. otherwise i have wasted one month out of my year..

here is the new deal after some violent changes - http://www.noahcohn.com/brian/noah1.mp3

i plan on putting in more sessions on getting this back into my style and sounding good..

added to soundcloud as well - http://soundcloud.com/noahcohn/project-x

Now it sounds more like Electro-Pop, but it's nice, too...

Whenever I hear a xylophone, I think of Gotye...

would love more feedback since i have changed a lot on my own with no input now...

http://www.noahcohn.com/brian/noah2.mp3

I have listened to all of them and my favourite is brian4. I like the darkish organ melody with the xylophone topping (which reminds me a little of some '80s Zappa). Those two parts complement each other well and, I think, form a good focal point for the track. The later versions sound "busier" and conspire to hide the melodic base.

The preceding comments are, of course, only my own view, and other listener's tastes may generate differing opinions.

ya.. there are more tracks now.. i should cut more out to reveal the good parts.. that is what i did last night somewhat.. definitely needs more sessions..

Flute version: 1. I can't figure out what all the repetitions are about. 2. The flute sounds like a keyboard. Read up on how to program a realistic attack.

Xylophone: big improvement, especially with the ambience you added to the solo. The solo part is also much more interesting.

Noah2: much more frantic, and it has something, but that hyper lfo'ed synth is very irritating. Also that that track has no focus.

Victor.

WOW!!!!!!!!!!

What an interesting track! I REALLY like the quirky chord changes. You know? Those haunting flat V cadences are appealing to me...sort of reminds me of King Krimson in a way? You may have been in diapers when that was going on? YIKES!

I think seismic1 (Tim) has some thoughtful points regarding the flute-though I really like it-it gives the track an organic and human quality. But yeah....perhaps you could experiment with it? Like Tim said processing it here and there or I would cut up the file and find interesting way of bringing into the IDM genre? If your using Ableton you could just slice the whole flut track to midi and get lost for years?

Aaaaaaannnnnnyyyyyywwwwwwaaaaayyyyyyy.

VERY nice!

thanks for the comments!
i had abandoned the 'ethnic flute' but i could certainly bring it back in.
i do need to cut out more of the LFO synth don't i. or cut parts and make it overall less annoying. you may notice the it was the organ part which i changed to synth lead then to LFO synth.
i have heard bits of king crimson. he was before my time though. i am 33.