ZoomDagaZoom - Strange light (goa-trance)

[ZoomDagaZoom]

https://soundcloud.com/zoomdagazoom/strange-light

Laying this one down here for those who have time to listen and scrutinize. Last time (~3 months ago) mushy mushy and Recursion loop helped me a lot with their tips and I think the production improved a lot since then.

Do you guys do any gain staging when making psytrance?
Also, do you have a target amount of headroom to leave for the master?

I had a lot of crap with the headroom on this one. I was mixing happily and in ignorance only to find out at the end that I was clipping 4db at multiple points. So then it took me a lot of time to get it down by infinitely going over all the tracks and eventually even just pulling everything down... of course keeping the relative volume between the groups intact, but it did not feel completely right, especially since I had some small tweaks on my stereo out which were now affected by the volume change......

Technologies used:
- MPC Live
- MicroKorgXL
- Serum
- Alchemy
- Retro Synth
- EFM1
- ES2
- Ultrabeat
- EXS24
- Polyverse Manipulator
- LFO Tool
- FF Saturn
- And of course a shitload of dynamics/metering/EQ, whatever plugins from Logic Pro X

[ZoomDagaZoom]

Also, is anybody using Kick2 over here? What problems does it solve for you?

[Mushy Mushy]

Bookmarked for later listening

[Mushy Mushy]

Also, is anybody using Kick2 over here? What problems does it solve for you?

Yep, love it. It replaced Bassizm for me and find it much more flexible.

[Mushy Mushy]

Just listened and based on the title I was expecting a light, fluffy Goa track not the 160 BPM Hitech psy I was then met with

It has potential but the work needs a bit of work because it is quite low in volume and sounds muffled also. I'm not saying slam it but some further gain staging/mixing is required IMO. Persevere though because it does sound good.

[ZoomDagaZoom]

Just listened and based on the title I was expecting a light, fluffy Goa track not the 160 BPM Hitech psy I was then met with

It has potential but the work needs a bit of work because it is quite low in volume and sounds muffled also. I'm not saying slam it but some further gain staging/mixing is required IMO. Persevere though because it does sound good.

Hey Mushy mushy,

thanks for your comments. I do wonder now what you mean by '"work" needs a bit of work' If. you mean the bass: is it because
1) it is not loud enough in relation to other elements?
2) Or do you feel the upper harmonics are not spiking out enough?

Also, do you do gain staging before mixing or after? There seem to be different opinions about this on the web....

Speaking of which, I often have this problem that the frequencies > 200hz of the bass are clashing with a lot of other instruments, making the mix sound boxy and/or muddy. For some reason, my "solution" for this always ends up muffling the bass.... Do you have any strategy to remove the mudiness from the mids whilst keeping the clarity of the upper frequencies of the bass intact? Ive currently set these principles for myself:

1) choose the samples and design the sounds uniformly over the frequency spectrum so they dont end up agglomerating at a single point (this is more avoiding it then repairing it)
2) dont be afaraid of a lot of fine-grained EQ-ing (also before mixing) to get space where needed
3) try to use panning and volume to move clashing sounds

anyway, thanks for listening

[Mushy Mushy]

I do wonder now what you mean by '"work" needs a bit of work' If. you mean the bass: is it because
1) it is not loud enough in relation to other elements?
2) Or do you feel the upper harmonics are not spiking out enough?

That was just my poor typing sorry. I should have proof-read it afterwards. I meant that it already sounds quite good and there is a solid track, it just needs slightly more in the upper harmonics. However, I've just listened again and I think it's ok so perhaps just ignore that comment. Maybe I was just deaf yesterday

Also, do you do gain staging before mixing or after? There seem to be different opinions about this on the web....

Both really. You need to ensure there's no clipping and plugins are being fed the correct levels during mixing. But it's an ongoing processes so you likely need to adjust again at the final mixing stage.

Speaking of which, I often have this problem that the frequencies > 200hz of the bass are clashing with a lot of other instruments, making the mix sound boxy and/or muddy. For some reason, my "solution" for this always ends up muffling the bass.... Do you have any strategy to remove the mudiness from the mids whilst keeping the clarity of the upper frequencies of the bass intact? Ive currently set these principles for myself:

1) choose the samples and design the sounds uniformly over the frequency spectrum so they dont end up agglomerating at a single point (this is more avoiding it then repairing it)
2) dont be afaraid of a lot of fine-grained EQ-ing (also before mixing) to get space where needed
3) try to use panning and volume to move clashing sounds

This is what I would mainly do. Perhaps also changing the envelopes on some, panning, dynamic EQ. Mostly though it would come down to automation of levels.

[ZoomDagaZoom]

This is what I would mainly do. Perhaps also changing the envelopes on some, panning, dynamic EQ. Mostly though it would come down to automation of levels.

Good one, I did not think of using envelopes to control that, will add that to my arsenal! Also automation I dont use so much for keeping volumes well balanced but it seems like a feasible thing to do...although it feels like it can get kinda hairy keeping track of it. Thanks for the inspiration Mushy!