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I just started making electronic stuff again after a really long break and I pooped these two tracks out one week while I was bored. This one is called Stutter. The entire track is around 10 drum machine loops mashed together in Cubase, with some modulation and then run through Guitar Rig. Any advice on what I could add to this to make into something better? Or should I leave it or rearrange it or even throw it out?.  This other one is called Triangle Track. It started off with a melody using a triangle sample and turned into some sort of monster a day later. I’m not sure about this one, but it grew on me towards the end. Advice on this one would be great too.  Its weird stuff but some feedback on what you think of the style of each track and/or advice on how to improve them would be great since I’m really new to this and I still find myself composing stuff in a really unconventional way, so it might interest someone. squid carpet fucked around with this message at Feb 21, 2013 around 04:19 |
| # ? Feb 19, 2013 05:35 |
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| # ? May 20, 2013 17:17 |
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Happy you're back at it, electronics are fun! Stutter I can understand why this track might be fun as hell to produce, but it's a little less fun to listen to because it's quite repetitive and it has very little "flow." The fact that it's constantly all over the place with the percussion means that the coolness of the stutter effects becomes normalized really rapidly, so it just turns in to a blurry mess. You need to allow your audience a frame of reference by including some parts that aren't just a random storm of beat-repeated percussion in order to make the more lucid segments actually interesting. A piece of advice that I'll steal from good screenwriting, but I think it applies to composition just as well, is that your audience does not just sit and "listen" to your track - a good track has audience participation. For your audience to be able to participate in your track, to actually experience it as opposed to just passively viewing it, they need to be able to understand (1) where the track has been, (2) where they are in the track, and most importantly, (3) where the track is going. Once you have all this stuff, your audience can bob their heads, dance, and point out to their friends, "my favorite part is coming up!!" They cannot do this if they are lost in a formless, structureless track. Remember, the function of percussion is to provide structure to your track, so make sure that it's fulfilling its purpose. However, if you want to use the percussion in this more rapid-fire way, you need to have something else that provides your composition with structure. Right now, you have some sort of sample or synth drone, but does it really add anything to the track? When I'm composing, I often fall in to the trap of adding something because it "sounds cool" or "sounds good" and just roll with it. This is problematic. Remember, passable production makes things sound good, but great production makes things sound appropriate - what function is that synth fulfilling within your track? For me, it does not add anything. You might try a more concrete bassline on the low end to give your track structure, and maybe some interesting vocal sample play on top of your glitchy drums. Triangle This one is far better, and it benefits by avoiding some of the structural issues that I described in my criticism of Stutter. So, instead of talking about structure, I'll talk about sound design. Not totally on board with the sound design of the saw bass and distorted kick. I might go with a really deep sub bass and an 808 style kick in order to give your cool work on the shimmery high/mid stuff some more room to breathe. The distorted, excited stuff is gonna naturally come to the front of your mix, but the stuff you've chosen to make distorted and excited are the least interesting elements of your track. Here's a helpful reference chart for when you're mixing - will help with definition and clarity. Hope all this helps!
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| # ? Feb 21, 2013 06:54 |
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Thanks for the feedback, I really appreciate it, I'll continue to work on this for a bit and see what happens, cheers!
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| # ? Feb 21, 2013 10:39 |
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