I did a practice run and would like some feedback, tips, etc

[That_One_Dood]

I started tooling around with some automation for Dubstep(LFO, Stepper, Preformer) and I was wondering if anyone had any tips or advice for me. Am I going in the right direction? Too much of something or too little? Any and all help is greatly appreciated!



Edit: Youtube Derp

[TheSunAndTheRainfall]

Were you going for some dissonance (if that's what it is)? There are some notes in that synth melody that I find a bit jarring. Or maybe I don't have an ear for what's dissonant and what's not. Actually, I think the latter is more likely.

As for the wubs themselves, I think you're in the right direction. If anything, the only thing I'd say what they're missing is more distortion. The low end is good, and the wub pattern is alright, it just doesn't feel like it squashes your head enough like it should. So my only suggestion would be make your sounds more brutal. If you're using Massive, abuse the comb, daft and scream filters, the sine shaper, the bitcrusher, the parabolic shaper, all the tube effects, and especially the dimension expander. That last one can do wonders for your sound. c:

[That_One_Dood]

Yeah, the melody was supposed to be a bit jarring, I used a minor harmonic scale over a B minor progression. also thank you very much for the information! I will go and use it to the best of my abilities!

[Triple_B]

Thoughts while listening;

I hate your kick. I really do. It sounds like a gong. I don't have much advice for this other than a new sample.

I think the lead actually sounds great; also, needs more buildup prior to the drop, imo; but that might be personal preference.

I'd agree with Sun&Rain; definitely needs more distortion on the bass.


As far as tips for Dubstep goes; when you get around to making a full song, Dubstep is arranged like this;

Intro/Buildup-A/B/A-Breakdown/Buildup-A/B/A-Outro

And those can really be anything from 1 bar each to 32 bars each; but you know how that goes with arrangement. Everything should try to be arranged in 1/2/4/8/16/32 bar segments; not like, 5 here, and 37 there, and like... 17 over here and 3 over there and an outro that's 89. Yeah; no. Bad.

Typical dubstep is arranged (using the above pattern) in this bar arrangement;

16/8-16/16/16-8/8(or 16/8 again)-16/16/16-16

Which at 140 BPM gives you about a 4~ minute song; which you'll notice, your average dubstep song is about (guess what?) 4-ish minutes; proving the theory.

Now, of course, you can get crazy with it; even throwing in C's, D's, etc into the drops;

8/4-8/2/4/8/16/8/4/2/8-16/4-16/4/4/8/4/4/16-32

It's all preference.

Also; word of warning before you do something absolutely amazing for the second drop; any DJ playing dubstep will probably double drop over it, so the listeners/crowd/whatever, won't even hear it for itself, it'll be mashed together with another track; just an FYI before semi-wasted effort.

[Navron]

In my personal opinion, your bass is too low.

A common mistake I made when creating my own basses was to have certain oscillators at -12, -24, etc, in addition to playing lower on the C2 and C1 scale.

Dubstep basses are powerful, but too many people place higher emphasis on the subbass, which in all honesty, is just a little extra for those who have subwoofers that can actually play subbass frequencies.

Does my car have a subwoofer? No. Can I still play some heavy dubstep and have it rock my socks off? Hell yeah.

I recommend creating your bass around the C2-C3 octave, with perhaps some -12 oscillators to add that lower punch, but as soon as you go below C1, especially when using bitcrusher and resampling, the sound deteriorates, which is why your drop has a lack of power to it, in addition to having a very muddy sound. The bass has deteriorated to the point the only thing you here is the bitcrusher.

[That_One_Dood]

Thanks again for the very useful information guys, I greatly appreciate it very much! I also noticed my mistake in putting this in the technique forum, from now on I'll post stuff like this in the WIP area.