<wip><Original> An Old Mare's Tale - Could anyone help?

[Pashoo]

I need serious help with this one. This video was my original finished product, but when I sent it to EQD, CyrilRufus sent it back, and he was nice enough to send it along with a lot of helpful tips. It makes sense, since I was going into this project completely blind, with no idea how to make good electronic.

Anyways, I'm tossing everything back up, and it'd be nice if someone could help me fix this up, and give some advice for working with electronic, in general. (In-depth explanations would be appreciated since I still have little to no idea what I'm doing. Also, I used Fruity Loops to make this.)

For anyone willing to help, thanks in advance!

[Sonic Breakbeat]

I guess I'll be the first one to try and help you (this forum isn't great for getting feedback from by the way; I had to learn that the hard way).

First off, your mastering is way off. Everything is way too quiet and there's no volume in the sound (by volume I mean the sounds don't spread between the left and right channels). I would suggest using a compressor and/or maximizer to fill in the spaces (if you don't know what these are, I suggest you do some research). Some parts seem louder than others too, which makes it seem awkward and misplaced.

Second, before you work on anything serious (serious enough to attempt to get on EqD), get to know your DAW - hell, I would suggest looking around at other DAWs; Just because FL is used a lot doesn't make it the best. Here are some good ones I've tried/heard of: Cubase/Nuendo, Ableton, Reason, Mixcraft, and of course there's plenty out there I haven't even heard of.

And to continue a little on the above: don't worry what people say about your DAW. I use Mixcraft, which is extremely underrated because it comes with pre-made loops (that I don't use cause they suck), and the sound isn't great without any effects. That's why I say learn your DAW and experiment to get the best sounds out of it, cause all of them are different even though they generally do the same thing. It'll take knowledge and external plugins (AKA VSTs) to get a good sound depending on your DAW, but once you get a good sound it's as good as any other DAW.

Third, it's not always good to play the melody from vocal samples. I would at least suggest adding another synth or melody behind it to even it out, but I would also suggest editing your samples to mesh together much smoother. Also, the timing seems a little off on some of the samples, so I would look into that as well.

Fourthly, don't settle with the VSTis that your DAW gives you. There's plenty of good synth/bass VSTs out there and they're not all expensive. There are also much better drum kits, especially ones specific to this genre of music; it just takes a lot of searching.

Lastly, your ending was really dry, and the overall song a bit too short. Electronic songs are usually about 3-4 minutes, but you have to put more work into it to make it sound not as repetitive. It's almost never good to end a song on a note; it should ring a while before the song ends.

Hope I helped. I'll answer any questions, too.

[Pashoo]

oh my god. thank you so much.

At the moment, I am researching more into FL Studios' capabilities, and general techniques to improve the sound.The biggest thing I'm trying to conquer at the moment is when and how much reverb to use, cause everyone says that it's one of the most valuable tools.

As for the soundfonts and sounds themselves, I'm definitely going to try to get better sounds, especially for the guitar and lead synth. I've been reading through some tutorials on the synth programs FL has. I want to gave a fairly heavy emphasis on the vocals, though, so I'm just going to try to fix it up and find better sound clips to work with.

And really, thanks for replying. I thought that my post was just going to get buried before anyone replied.