Not entirely finished due to not liking the bass a whole lot. Its quite a busy track and because of that , for the sake of clarity , ive had to opt for a classic on-off kick bass sidechain setup , which im not too happy with.
Any ideas how to do something a little more interesting with sidechaining ?
Any ideas about the mix or anything ?

http://soundcloud.com/2ndmouse/2ndmouse-sophistikat

Comments / feedback welcome

Thanks

2M

I like the first minute which sounds fresh and interesting to me. I agree the bassline is not that good. Rather than trying to fix it with sidechaining, I would completely replace it. I suggest coming up with a new, very minimal bass part but sending it through an echo effect to add interest.

Ive always had a problem with the bass area , in terms of mixing.
My problem is that I want both the beats and the bassline to shine , and if I make a good beat , there is no room for the bassline , so to avoid clashing , sidechaining is the answer. Without the sidechaining , sounds will collide , but it sounds a bit woolly as it is right now.
Not sure what to do with it.......
Thanks for listening Frantz

My comment was the current bassline is not terribly interesting regardless of how you process it.

With respect to your point, there are 1 million old funk records where the bass and kick are playing on most of the same beats and it's not a problem. The sounds gel and the grooves work. For whatever reason in modern EDM, people make the kick massive and duck everything when the kick plays. Personally I think it's an overused gimmick. The solution is to focus on the overall groove, instead of worrying about maximizing the kick.

Oh I agree. Its a " placeholder " bassline , simply for structure. Not elaborate or as intricate as some of my others.
I havent been sidechaining that long tbh , because FL used to have the most convoluted way of doing it , and I avoided it .
Now that I've gotten into it , it seems limiting.
My normal way of doing this would be to have a sub-bass with long decay + sustain....something like a reese , just playing long supporting notes as a kinda counterweight to the high synths , but i know kicks and reese-type basses clash =/

Quite like this.
As for the bass line, how about doubling with a smoother sound an octave down - works for me ... sometimes

Thanks Folderol .
Do you mean a sub layer , to thicken up the notes ?
I dunno.
May just forego the sidechaining altogether on this track cos I hate the straitjacket of 4/4 kick-bass sidechaining. If i double it up , it'll only reinforce it ?
I appreciate your idea Folderol. Thanks for listening =)

Overall it's really enjoyable, I liked it.
Regarding the bass, when in doubt, I go to (arturia) minimoog
Seriously I played with sidechaining on a few tracks and liked it, it fits a style, but it's tiring if you use it on all tracks, so maybe a drone type of bass would work here. There's so much movement already in the track.
Great work.

I liked it. The beats/percs were good. I liked the arp section towards the end. The stab chords were great. and the glitchy synths worked really well. I agree that the bassline needs something but I'm sure you will come up with something.

folderol suggested doubling up on the bass. I had three basslines running in parallel towards the end of my last track, Swollen. I put a psy-like pattern on top of a slower, lower-pitched filtered bass, which in turn went over the top of an even slower sustained sub. To even things up a little I had two different kicks playing different patterns. It was quite dense, which is probably not what you are going for here, but might suggest an alternative to the sidechain route.

Good work

Yeah i managed to grab that free anniversary edition of the minimoog when it was out , but it kinda got looked over in my large library of vsts. Must revisit it.
Yeah i like sidecha7ning to a point , but im at the stage where not every style i make is 4/4 , and therefore not so black and white and sidechaining doesnt fit so snugly. It tends to work best on very sparse arrangements with fery clearly defined frequency ranged parts , but its not so good for something more unusual.
Maybe in cases like this i need to look at multiband dynamics or multiband compression or something.....both of which im only in the initial stages of grappling with..
I'll definitely try this with a drone or a reese or something with quite a menacing tone to it
Thanks avlot for listening and for your ideas Mario. Cheers !

I have to say the bass didn't bother me at all. I don't read posts before I listen to stuff in the cafe as I find it clouds my ability to listen and enjoy, and nothing about it said 'oohh that bass isn't right'.

Percussion is awesome, synths are awesome and for me it works just fine.

Having read what you wrote, perhaps it does need less 4/4 pounding or at least may be improved with some tweaks.

The first thing that came to my mind was maybe increasing the release time on the ducking compressor so that the pumping gets a bit lazier every 4th bar. Just to create some sort of phrasing to it.

Just a thought though, I don't think it needs changing

What a great track! Yes, the side chaining started to get to me on the 2nd and 3rd listens. Some great advice above, slow the bass rhythm down perhaps, simplify it, syncopate to get it out of the way.

Gotta say I like this line of thinking:



Anyhow, the piece is fantastic and can only get fantasticer!