I'm Alive<nonpony> <originial> ...BTW FEELS GOOD TO BE BACK!

[BronyMetalMix]

https://soundcloud.com/notewise/im-alive

HI EVERYPONY! Wow...it's been a while. I took a few months off from production for personal reason. During that time I wanted to try and watch some tutorials, get advice and talk to others about how I can improve on my music. I wanted to come back with something strong and something that I can say I'm proud of and I think I have just that. It's more of a progressive house song, a Deadmun5 or Zedd like feel to it. I do hope you enjoy it and I'd love any feedback you can give me.

Thanks,
Note Wise <3

P.S. On an unrelated note...NEXT THRUSDAY IS MY 18TH BIRTHDAY!

[Injustrial]

This is pretty decent! I like the bright, chippy leads and the minimalist approach to drums.

The one thing I'd like to point at would be your kick. It sounds very muffled and "behind a door." With the general lack of bass in the track, this makes it very stuffy. If that's what you're going for, keep it as is, but I personally feel like there should be more of a low end. At 2:34 the bass starts ramping up, and resolves the issue, but it's a bit too late for me.

Anyways, funky track. Could do with some more variation, but enjoyable nonetheless. Keep on trucking!

[BronyMetalMix]

Thanks, I'm glad ya enjoyed it. Thanks for the feedback aswell.

Yeah, when it comes to bass kicks, it's always been a challenge to kinda get this "thump" that I do my best to get. I'm not sure if it's just the kick I'm using or it could be my EQing. Do you have any tips or suggestions on how I can do kicks better?

[Injustrial]

I'm pretty bad at EQ'ing myself, but here's whjat I do:

I usually make two spikes in the Parametric EQ and find the 2 frequencies (Around 80 and 120 hz) and boost them slightly in a narrow band. Then I cut the following low mid frequencies, since there's usually not a lot there. I make sure to leave the mids as intact as possible, since the clarity of the drums are usually there. And then Lowpass as usual.

After EQ'ing, there's usually some compression going on, with a relatively long Attack and a short-ish release. This usually helps to accentuate the punch and the reverbing boom in the kick.

Soft Distortion can often do a great bit of difference, since distortion is sort of like Compression. For reference, here I've got an older song of mine with some hard drums:



I've applied some pretty hard compression to them and used variations of the technique discussed earlier. I can't remember right now, but I think the original drumsound was something I made in FL Studio's Drumpad and then exported as a sample

[Injustrial]

Here's a screenshot. The order of the plugins are EQ, Compressor, Distortion and reverb at the end.

Spoiler screenshot:

The Ohmicide plugin is more of a luxury item than completely necessary. I've had good results using the native Fruity Fast Distortion plugin as well. This approach does give you a very dirty sounding kick, though. I'm sure some other people here could help you get more housey kicks.

Forgot to mention: You can never change an illfitting sound into one that will work nicely for you. Choose a kick sample you like the sound of. Judging from your style, I'd go for a more light and airy kick and then ramp up the punch in that. Try to avoid those deep bassy samples.

Hope this helps ;)

[Guthey]

Okay, so the first thing i noticed is the kick. If you're going for a bass kick, try a little more EQ in the 500-4000k hz range, or you can just get a regular kick and layer it with a short bass sound. It's not punchy because there isn't enough EQ in that area, and I agree with Injustrial, try making two EQ spikes, one for the low end, and one for the midrange. Also, it sounded like you have LP filter on the kick, if so, try putting the cutoff a little higher and add a LITTLE bit of BP, but only if there was a filter on it. The melodies were pretty good, so good on you there. The white noise kind of seems unnecessary, try to fill it in with some other electronic elements, ie, chords, and IDK how far you are in Bass production, but just keep it in mind. The 1:48 sequence was pretty enjoyable, so nice one there. As for the ending it seems kind of abrupt and just sort of strange, when you end a song, you want to slow down, or just slowly close all the elements by making them softer. In the end you sort of just cut off each elements one by one, which is what you're supposed to do, but the lead was in the same tone and tempo, which gave a feel as if it was going to start anew,which is what I thought when I first listened to this,(I wasn't looking at the time, nor did I see how long it was) but you still have the idea of what to do nonetheless, just knowing how exactly you go about it is the biggest problem among producers.That's pretty much all i have to say about that.

And I'm Soooooo glad to hear that you're coming back from whatever it was you were doing, I love seeing a musician coming back and continuing what they love to do, so good on ya there. Plus, Happy almost 18th birthday!! I hope it's Amazing!!

[Guthey]

This is how I would order it, the order is in the top left corner of each plug-in. and if you want decrease influence of filter, just pick up the cutoff to 100%, HP = 50%, and lower the BP back to 0%.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/1fb3b5q8ycndvj0/EXa.png

For Maximus I picked up the arch on low to about 10%, increased the attack to about 40%, and decreased Rel to about 30%.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/hn5oucwkrpks7y6/UntitledExa.png

For mid I scooted the 2nd point to -3.0 db and put the attack to about 80%, Rel to about 20% and left as is on the arch.

For more Mid-range hz, just pick up the 4th slider on the first EQ, and for higher range pick up the 6th slider and go from there. The steeps on 2,4,and 6 on the first EQ is 4. Hope this helps. Sorry, I don't know how to add a spoiler box, for some reason I have to manually type the code in, but I don't know the code for spoiler.

Edit: I think I fixed it?

[Injustrial]

Broken image links, man...

[BronyMetalMix]

Thanks for all the tips and everything you two. ^_^
Transitions have always been a "ehhhhhh" kinda thing for me. I'm honestly never sure how I should use chords to continue through it. Trying to find the rhythm and how to carry the energy from one section to another is difficult right now. I'm giving myself goals and things to work on when it comes to producing for 2014.

Transitions
EQing
Mixing
Sound Design

All that good stuff.

[Guthey]

Broken image links, man...

How do I submit a screen shot, ugh I don't know how.

[Guthey]

Thanks for all the tips and everything you two. ^_^
Transitions have always been a "ehhhhhh" kinda thing for me. I'm honestly never sure how I should use chords to continue through it. Trying to find the rhythm and how to carry the energy from one section to another is difficult right now. I'm giving myself goals and things to work on when it comes to producing for 2014.

Transitions
EQing
Mixing
Sound Design

All that good stuff.

The thing I do for chords is simple. I make a melody out of a lead, and if I like the melody, then I just copy/paste it onto another plug-in and make a find the 2nd, 3rd, and maybe even 4th notes in order to make it an actual chord, then boom, you have a chord progression.