[Original] [Dubstep] This Calls For A Party

[MusicalSwissKnife]

http://soundcloud.com/musicalswissarmyknife/this-calls-for-a-party

This is the first song I've made that I felt was decent enough to publish, so criticism would be greatly appreciated. I took me an obscene amount of time (a little over a month I would say) with all the stuff I had to learn to make it decent. My time is also very limited right now due to marching band so I won't be able to really go all out on music until around November, which is another reason why this took so long for me to make. Anyways, enjoy the song and tell me if you liked it/ what I should improve upon.

[vladnuke]

Ok, the drums need more compression. Dubstep likes it's drums. They make the beat. I like the intro. Could use a little more variation. Something cool should happen every 4 bars. The drop was ok, it was themed nicely, but then you kinda drag it out, without anything changing until you pull back to the intro synth, should mix it up there. Ok use of riser on the transition from intro synth to the same drop, not ok in use of the same drop.

You know, for dubstep, this has a surprising lack of bass.

The first glitchy drop thing: it was trippy, but that's about it. It kinda killed the whole flow of the song. Could be replaced with something else. Actually, if I could change one thing in this song, it would be the lack of variation. The second glitchy drop thing: you used a better glitch effect here, but you still were using only one glitchy effect for that whole passage. You could've kicked it up and had some pitch drops or key changes or rises or literally anything other than just leaving it bare for 16 bars.

This has a cool song underneath, it just needs a little bit more digging. Listen to other people and try to see what kinds of different techniques they use.

Also, what daw are you using? Did you have any experience (playing instruments) before this?

[MusicalSwissKnife]

I'm using Fl Studio, probably going to look around at some other DAWs like Ableton or Cubase though. Besides just generally screwing around with my keyboard to learn FL and making a few small things that turned out very badly, I had no experience actually arranging or composing a song electronically. I have a good amount of experience actually playing instruments (Alto Sax for about 7 years, Drums for about 3 years, Piano for a little less than a year but I suppose that doesn't help when I have no money to buy anything to record them with .

What I think I may do is flesh out this song a bit more, give it more variation, and just generally do everything you recommended to improve it, then try to make something orchestral so that I can focus on composing/arranging/brushing up on music theory rather than juggling how to make all these different sounds with all these different VSTs and how to properly mix/master/eq. It just seems like it would be easier to write a song with pre-made instruments that are recognizable and have their roles in an ensemble already than to focus on synthesis and effects and writing and mixing and mastering and ARGH SO MUCH TO LEARN.

Does that seem like a decent idea or should I just really buckle down and try to learn how to make a larger bass and write another dubstep song? I would love to make something comparable to Porter Robinson but I had tried before and I learned I just can't imitate that style, at least not right now.

Thank you so much for your recommendations, I think I'm going to get rid of some stuff and move some stuff around and add some new parts to vary it a bit more and I'm definitely going to redo that glitchy part (once I figure out how to actually use dblue glitch that is). Probably going to cut down on the time too.

On a completely unrelated note, you avatar is awesome. Seriously, it's probably the most adorable thing that isn't Fluttershy .

[DJ TATCM]

vladnuke pretty much covered everything important here.

One thing A couple things that I might add is that you should cut out all the synths at the part where Pinkie Pie says "A PARTY!" I think that it could add impact, and maybe even incorporate a little delay to it to get a bigger sound after the drop and keep the flow going. Add some subtle hi-hats to the beat after the drop, because it seems somewhat empty (might be fix'd after compression). Instead of dBlue Glitch, try using Gross Beat at first, because dBlue has a bit of a learning curve, with all the different effects and whatnot.

I just got to the glitchy part that vladnuke was talking about. Use automation clips to change the glitch gate every four bars. And that's all. What plugins do you use, just out of curiosity?

[MusicalSwissKnife]

Most everything here was from NI Massive, for mixing I used Parametric Eq 2, Fruity Limiter, and Fabfilter Pro-L (the demo). I think there were one or two things I didn't Massive for but I can't remember off the top of my head. I'll check out gross beat too, but I think I'll stick with Glitch unless it's something spectacular. I just really like the sound it produces.