<Pony> <Original> Injustrial - The Devil in Me - Finalized

Website · by **Injustrial** » 18 Nov 2013 18:08

I've been plotting stuff into my playlist for some time now, and would love to hear what you think. This is just a rough sketch, of course. A lot of elements need to be melded together better and plenty of stuff is to be added. Especially the addition of vocals will change it up significantly.

https://soundcloud.com/injustrial/a-thing-at-a-place-wip

by **S.P.P** » 19 Nov 2013 03:32

This is awesome! My only gripe is that the kick doesn't really fit in the mix too well. Try lowering it or adjust the EQ to cut some mids slightly.

Website · by **Injustrial** » 19 Nov 2013 14:25

The mix is way off atm, so some levels need to be brought down a bit. I'll see about perhaps changing the sample. This is just a standard one I've got on my template.

Thank you for taking the time!

Website · by **Injustrial** » 21 Nov 2013 17:13

This has been updated, and not much more is going to happen before the vocals are in place. I'll get a better feel for it once that happens

https://soundcloud.com/injustrial/a-thing-at-a-place-wip

The bass may be too loud, but right now my ears are too tired to hear it properly. Would love to hear if you guys think anything is too loud or too quiet.

PS: That dancy arpeggio in the intro is getting scrapped

Website · by **Injustrial** » 22 Nov 2013 15:38

Vocals are added

https://soundcloud.com/injustrial/a-thing-at-a-place-wip

Website · by **Injustrial** » 23 Nov 2013 09:34

It is done. Would love to hear your thoughts on it

by **Twy** » 23 Nov 2013 18:19

Howdy. Sorry I missed this and couldn't give my impressions when it was still being tweaked and messed with, but then again I don't really know what I'm talking about anyway so that might have been for the best.

But I'll still give it a listen and give ya my thoughts on it if you still care.

(Obligatory "These are just my opinions and merely what I think might sound better, not what may actually sound better blah blah blah". Also the little experience I have is with EDM, so in terms of mixing that's kind of where my mind is at.)

Alright, so I like the chuggy guitar(?) thing that opens up the track a lot, in fact I think it might have been cool to have that be a little more of an active part of it, sitting on top of the bass and maybe turning down the pad synth thing (the one that comes in at like 6-7 seconds) to make room.

I like the bass melody and style, but the sound itself was a bit of an issue for me. It seems difficult to focus on and hear clearly. Kinda muddy I guess? Some transient shaping could help make it pop a bit more, or giving it some higher harmonics or taking the notes up an octave but EQ'ing to retain some of the sub or something. It's not a volume problem though.

I'm digging the synth melody variation that comes in at 0:34.

Actually, listening to the rest of the track, nothing else really sticks out to me that I'd call too much of a problem. I mean, I have absolutely zero experience with vocals, for one thing, so I can't really comment on those (but they sound fine to me).

So yeah, mostly the muddiness is what I notice. Clearing that up would probably also give some room for the drums to punch a bit more too.

Cool track through. I like the mixing of styles going on. Keep up the good work!

Website · by **Injustrial** » 23 Nov 2013 19:51

Twy wrote:Some good stuff

Hey, and thanks for commenting on my track.

The bass is just a square bass, with some distortion added to get some top feel. Your idea of lifting it an octave would probably have worked out good. There's a lot of sub-bass going on there. Perhaps EQ'ing out a bit of the really dark spots would have helped it. It sounded good to me after a bit of work, but I might have been deceived by my love for dark basses once again ;)

The bass was what gave me the most problems with the track as well. It does muddy a lot of things, and it especially eats up a lot of the other frequencies. Especially the string parts.

I'm not too experienced with square waveforms, this is just the second time I've tried. Every other song has had saw-basses. If anyone could give me some pointers on EQ'ing these types of basses I'd be very grateful. (I've increased the gain slightly around the 50-150 hz mark, and dropped almost everything else)

I would like to thank you properly for taking the time for a proper review. I'll be sure to take what you've said into consideration for my next project. Especially about the bass. I believe that's where I've got to put the most work into next time

PS: Could you explain what transient shaping is to me? I tried googling it and didn't really understand anything of the first 16 posts...

by **S.P.P** » 23 Nov 2013 20:50

Transient shaping is adjusting the transient peak (loudest part for the sake of this explanation) of a sound. The easiest way to get the picture for it is a drum. Lets say snare. You have the original hit, and then the tail end. Some snares don't have much definition and transient shaping could be done to give it more of a "snap" on the attack. Adding transient shaping to your bass would give a more percussive texture. Kinda like the difference between a picked bass guitar and slap bass I guess. :p

I suck at explaining things, sorry! :3

by **Twy** » 23 Nov 2013 21:16

My pleasure, especially if I can manage to be useful in any way.

If it sounds good to you then by all means feel free to go with whatever you feel! I mean, even with the best produced most popular songs out there, some people are gonna think x sounds bad and could or should be fixed. I simply offer ya my perspective for consideration.

I hear you. Bass is really hard to mix, at least it's always been for me.

Hah, I don't have any specific advice on mixing myself. I do tons of it, but I usually just have a vague idea of what I want and just start trying things until something works. Never really EQ'd differently for different waveforms either, to be honest. I have heard though, and it my experience it holds true pretty well, that it's usually better to EQ by cutting or lowering frequency spots that you don't want, than it is to raise the ones that you do. At least for fine tuning a sound, maybe not so much for shaping a sound to be different.

Oh hey, no problem at all! I just hope I'm not pointing out things that are in reality totally fine but just sound weird on my speakers or that I personally find off or something.

Ah, transient shaping is tweaking a sound to have more of a cone-like shape, where it has an initial burst of loudness. The idea is that the first part of the sound is louder than the rest and you end up with more of a percussive pop or snap to it. Looking at waveforms of drums is a good example. Transient shaping can easily be done with even volume automation if you don't want to actually alter the waveform itself. 'Course, that automation would probably have to be on every note. A common way of transient shaping, I think, is to use a compressor with a delayed attack time so the sound doesn't get compressed until slightly after the note.

(Edit: As pyr3light has already explained, being a music knowledge ninja and all)

Website · by **Injustrial** » 24 Nov 2013 13:54

Thanks to you both for some great insights and good feedback.

I learn so much on this forum, it's almost scary...

by **Nine Volt** » 24 Nov 2013 20:39

Injustrial wrote:The bass is just a square bass, with some distortion added to get some top feel. Your idea of lifting it an octave would probably have worked out good. There's a lot of sub-bass going on there. Perhaps EQ'ing out a bit of the really dark spots would have helped it. It sounded good to me after a bit of work, but I might have been deceived by my love for dark basses once again ;)

The bass was what gave me the most problems with the track as well. It does muddy a lot of things, and it especially eats up a lot of the other frequencies. Especially the string parts.

While I haven't listened to the song yet (I'll do it tomorrow, I promise), if muddiness on the bass is an issue there are several things you can do:

When distorting the bass, split the bass into two frequency bands: the low and the high. Then distort only the high end to get the crunchiness or whatever you're going for. Keep the low end un-distorted and such.

If you want to keep the sub aspect intact, just make a separate sub bass and EQ out the sub frequencies from the actual bass.

When adding reverb to a bass, be sure you EQ out the low end of the reverb or only add reverb to the high end (like the distortion above). This should be done on all reverb applications, as low-end reverb tends to sound very muddy.

And finally, be sure to learn proper EQ techniques. For instance, EQ out everything in the low end for everything that's not a kick, snare, bass, or sub. Maybe even use a highpass filter at around 200hz (maybe even more). I don't know what DAW you use but I just use my DAW's EQ's low shelf. That alone makes the mix sound a lot less congested.

For the bass conflicting with strings, maybe you could automate an EQ setting to reduce the bass's presence in the string's frequency areas? the4thImpulse has a nice frequency chart so you could probably find where strings usually sit in the mix through that - it's linked in his sig.