Great! Very fast-paced and semi-intense! Obviously not the best but if this is your first song, that's amazing! :)
I literally started making music yesterday, so here's my first audio portal submission ever, which is also my (first?) entry for phase 2 of the NGDIC 2, where we were asked to take a MIDI pattern from phase 1 and make it into a full piece. I originally left Noisysundae's creation (called MIDI Mayhem) alone and just added an ending, but eventually decided to experiment with some of the channel presets and came out with this fast trance track.
Yes, I know the basses don't sound that good...
The NGDIC 2 phase 2 thread can be found at http://www.newgrounds.com/bbs/topic/1397573
Note by Noisysundae : I've uploaded MP3 version of the original song here. :)
https://instaud.io/private/5bf4dd203cf575e46063c204a5425f8a908eaa3c
Great! Very fast-paced and semi-intense! Obviously not the best but if this is your first song, that's amazing! :)
Thanks for the feedback :)
Note : I almost always detect the flaws when it comes to reviewing so don't worry if my review is so negative. :P
Since this is your first time in electronic music. It's highly recommended to google for the technical words you don't know or understand and test it.
The bass at 0:26 can be done into an exact kind of bass I was expecting! (a slightly detuned sawtooth bass with a phaser or a flanger) What you forgot to do (or didn't know) is reducing the release of your synths. Release in term of synthesizer is the trail of sound after you released the key. That's why there're the ghost sounds in some part like the bass on 0:28. It's a ton of effects you can play with but for your first one, it's alright. :)
Now onto mastering. I'd say you wanted to pump up the kick. Is that true? This is a good example of what 'too in-your-face' is. You worried about the kick too much and overlooked the bass. Simply cut down the kick and increase the bass volume a bit will do.
It also lacks the mids on 0:40 where you changed my choir (which was used to fill in the mids during the bass showdown) into another bass and make that part look empty. Did you try pull the choir notes up by an octave?
The last thing is heavily clipped samples which cause unwanted distortion. It can be heard easily at 1:13 onward because you tried to play many instruments with already high volume so some the wave samples in that part went through their highest possible volume (0dB) and caused the distortion. (the same as overdrive/distortion effect in electric guitars but with an excessively loud volume) The easiest way to prevent this is lowering all instrument's volume. When you have more knowledge about mastering, compression can help you keep the loudness. (I suggest not using it too much, though.)
Anyway, I think mastering is the hardest part for the DJs to achieve and it's mainly the sound engineer's job to deal with. But it's necessary if you're a bedroom producer and want to make quality music all by yourself.
It's a long way to go in making electronic music, mate. Practice makes perfect. Keep it up. Do what Shia LaBeouf said. Don't make him disappoint! :D
I'm perfectly fine with negative reviews - I was hoping for them, in fact :P
Unfortunately, I probably won't update the piece due to me only having the demo version of FL Studio, meaning I can't re-open stuff. (I worked on it in a couple sessions only because you can save and load MIDIs.)
I did mess around with the attack/release/stuff for a bit, but I seem to remember leaving the synth around 0:30 alone a little more than some of the others, so thanks for the feedback there.
Pumping up the kick happened because I couldn't hear it at first... different speakers give different information on the mastering, I suppose.
About the choir, I changed it into a synth pad. I don't think I deleted any notes - it was probably something to do with the way I had the pad set up. Either way, I completely see what you're talking about and I'll keep an eye out for stuff like that in the future.
The issue at 1:13 was that I added a higher line in addition to yours on the channel which was originally a clavi (not entirely sure what I changed it to as I can't open the file...) while I was still having trouble with adding tracks and changing their patches. After I solved the issue I forgot to separate the two parts, which most likely would have helped with the distortion (as well as lowering the volume, of course).
Thanks for the constructive review - I'll spend some more time on mastering future pieces.
Hey, Gragon73! Nice to have some fresh blood here on the Audio side of Newgrounds. This is a pretty solid adaptation from Noisysundae's MIDI track and I like what you've added. The bass could actually sound much worse, and I think you've done a good job here.
To be honest, this might just be the coolest way for someone to get into music production. It's how Samulis got his start right here on Newgrounds once upon a time, in fact. Now I really want to hear what you can make on your own! But hey, don't let that make you feel pressured or anything. Good things come to those who wait. :)
Yeah, the "I know the basses don't sound that good" was before I messed with the oscillator waveforms a bit (pretty sure they were all saws) and it really sounded terrible x.x
(To be honest, I really want to hear what I can make on my own as well, lol.)
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