eSQUIRE - It's over now (Aaron R remake)

[azzr10]

http://soundcloud.com/aaron-r-1/esquire ... ow-aaron-r

I just finished this, it's like my 1st real production.

all coments are welcome.

[seismic1]

Nice tune. Decent production. If this is your first track, you're on your way

[azzr10]

Nice tune. Decent production. If this is your first track, you're on your way

Thanks alot Seismic1

[azzr10]

Sorry to be a pian, but if any kind soul has the time to take a look at this track and maybe give me a few (or more) pointers on how I can improve my overall mixing process. thanks in advance.

[Programentalist]

I can't find any obvious flaws in the mixing really. It's not really my style of music and some parts of it get too repetitive for me, but mix wise it works.

Actually, if anything, perhaps it's a bit too dense? Getting some more depth in there probably wouldn't hurt, trying not to have everything be in your face but building some kind of background texture...

[azzr10]

I can't find any obvious flaws in the mixing really. It's not really my style of music and some parts of it get too repetitive for me, but mix wise it works.

Actually, if anything, perhaps it's a bit TOO DENSE? Getting some more depth in there probably wouldn't hurt, trying not to have everything be in your face but building some kind of background texture...

This is my very first effort at a serious (at my level) production, i'm not too familiar with some terms. so when you say too dense, do you mean bass-heavy or maybe too many parts going on at the same time?

Also how to go about building background texture?

thanks alot for taking the time to listen also.

[Programentalist]

Sorry for being a bit vague! Dense could mean a lot of things... I mean the sound is very compact, full spectrum frequency wise and very up front in the mix, very "in your face". This is good for impact, but if the whole song is like this the impact gets lost a bit. What I'm saying is perhaps try and make it more dynamic, make some parts a bit more toned down so that when you really put something up front loud and full, it will make more of an impact on the listener.

For background texture I mean trying to simulate depth, this can be done with subtle (or not so subtle) use of reverbs (experiment with dry/wet ratios) and delays. For this to work at all there need to be space in the mix, ie if you add a subtle texture without first making room (toning other things down) it won't work very well since it will get lost behind the BIG sounds. Automation can be your friend here too, perhaps being used to "move a sound" forward by going from a fairly high "wet to dry" ratio (ie lots of reverb to little reverb) on a sound or part.

Now, take all this with a grain of salt, it might not be applicable to all styles of music, maybe this is all about being in your face. Sometimes you want it to scream, and sometimes you might want it very laid back, but in general contrasts will work well...

[azzr10]

thanks alot for the advice Programentalist, will come in really useful. Working on a production atm so will try to incorporate your advice to spice up my work.

[Morgaxx]

Really nice for your 1st real track. I dont know the original, nor will I listen to compare. Your stutters and pitch drops were well done and the choice of sounds seems well thought out. Energy is high and driving. However, since you asked, may I comment on the following.

There is a clap/snare and some sort of hats at the beginning and end. Did you remove them throughout the rest? To me they dissapeared. Some of that snare/clap would be welcome for my tastes. Perhaps the style is to have just one wall of sidechained saw pad layered over a bassy tone as one part. My only real appreciation of the bass itself or even the arps/noise swells came when the saw pad was omitted. Again, this may be the style. However that saw pad is really dominating/powerfull. Is it possible to keep the power/energy of the pad while letting any other sounds come through a little more. personally I would be eqing lows from the pad and bringing up the percs and twiddly bits for melodic hooks.

Then again, I am not on the pulse of new house. Enjoyed.

[azzr10]

thanks for listening morgaxx.

I tried putting snares, hats & claps into the main parts of the track but they didn't seem to fit, they just made it sound more complicated and messy. I'm not the best at eqing also haha, so maybe I could boost the blippy thing towards the high end to make it stand out more? or cut the highs on other things so that I don't have to boost?

thanks.

[Programentalist]

Ah, see that's the kind of problem you can get when you have this dense wall of sound, it's hard to make anything fit in there. That can be fixed though...

There are a few tricks to EQ-ing. I use this one a lot, say you want the snares to pop out more, put an EQ on there and set the Q pretty high (ie, the EQ affects a narrow frequency spectrum) then boost it as much as the EQ allows. Then while playing back the song with the snare soloed sweep the EQ around until you find what sounds like the fundamental frequency of the snare, where it's main sound is. Note this frequency, then you can remove the EQ entirely from the snare channel (avoid boosting, at least for now). What you do is now you cut this same frequency out from the other instruments, especially big sounds like pads and such. Use a smaller Q value to really make some room and try cutting 3dB, 6dB or as much as is necessary. Now the snare should stand out more.

Another thing to try is the get rid of pads and "wide" instruments from the center of the mix, and just keep your drums, bass and lead instruments there. There are several ways to do this, you could use an M/S (mid/side) plugin of some kind and just bring the M volume down, or perhaps exaggerate a stereo effect using a "widening" plugin (often those will make sounds wide, but lose energy in the middle). If you have several sounds layered you could also simply pan one hard left and one hard right to make room in the middle.

Using a combination of these things you should be able to get the sounds you want in there without it all sounding like a big mess.

Another very basic but extremely useful EQ trick is to highpass EVERYTHING. Many sounds, especially coming from synths, have stuff going on in the bass region you really don't want, unless it's your actual bass. A safe way to do this is to use another sweep technique, but with a highpass filter, starting with the frequency in the very bottom, as the sound you're highpassing is playing soloed, sweep the highpass frequency higher and higher, until the sound starts sounding thin. Adjust until you find a balance that sounds ok. Now you've gotten rid of junk bass frequencies you probably didn't even hear in the full mix, but which were muddling up the lower frequencies, and you've also gained some headroom. Often you'll find that you can even get away with thinning out a sound quite audibly, because it's not noticable in the full mix. Do this with everything, even kicks and basses, although there you'll obviously want a the highpass to be set pretty low down in the frequency spectrum. For a kick use the method mentioned above to find the fundamental frequency of it, then cut everything below that. For bass, a highpass filter set at 30Hz or 40Hz won't be audible in many cases, but can clear up the mix and again give you more headroom to work with.

EDIT: Oh, before any EQ at all, you'll want to just try and make things audible just using faders (and perhaps panning). Start by turning everything down a lot and then bring the faders up one at a time, making sure the mix sounds as balanced as possible adjusting as necessary. When you can't get further with volume and panning alone, THEN try the above tips.

[azzr10]

thanks for the tips Programentalist. this advice would have made no sense to me what so ever but it just happens that I watched a fabfilter pro-q video on youtube and this all makes perfect sense haha.