You can't just put random sounds and rhythms and proclaim this is a song.
There isn't an established structure : the so-called drop do not bring any contrast, therefore they are practically invisible.
The sound design is unoriginal, and violent : it sounds like you wanted ALL the sounds and instruments to be ALL POWERFUL, but sound design is about the sounds working TOGETHER, not all of them being ear-destructors.
Author Comments
This song is in B♭♭ Harmonic Minor at 160 BPM.
I probably won't make a song this great for a long while (and the fact that I won't make a successful dubstep for an even longer time). A lot of effort was put into this dubstep. It took a lot of pain to make this (and a lot of inspiration). I spent more time on the drops (especially the first drop). The third drop starts with a cinematic and ambient feel.
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It is the year of 2150. The phenomenon that just happened was the deadliest event known as Armageddon, or the apocalypse, or Doomsday. The earth as we know it has been abandoned, and the apocalypse just ended, leaving nothing but desolating buildings and a bunch of rubble. When you arrive at the abandoned planet, you soon realize that you are not alone. Years before the earth was abandoned, aliens had invaded the planet during the apocalypse. Some of these aliens took billions of remaining humans hostage to their home world, and the rest of the aliens stayed to search for remaining lives on the planet. These aliens do not want to protect humans, they want and destroy them after they experiment on them. These aliens have no care for human lives. Now you are under their radar. They are armed with inescapable strong force that can disintegrate a human within 5 seconds.
First Drop: You must escape before they notice you under their radar before it is too late. You can try to hide, but their technology is far too advanced.
Second Drop: The aliens have now been armed against you. You must escape before you are disintegrated. YOU can try to run, but again, their technological advantage puts you in definite death.
Third Drop Part 1: You now realize that there are other rogue humans. These humans that were remaining have established extremely agile and effective techniques in order to survive and escape.
Third Drop Part 2: You and the remaining humans are now targeted by the aliens. You must quickly plan out a strategy to kill the aliens and escape.
Third Drop Part 3: The fight between the aliens and the remaining humans has begun. There is no turning back. You are to win and escape, or you are to lose and die.
Kysertron responds:
I don't know what you are hearing, but this is very original, plus the fact that the songs are, of course, random, but they are set to fit the song. The sound design is supposed to be violent, hence "Strong Force". In the sense of sound design, it is called "Strong Force" in that all of the instruments (especially the bass drums) are attacked. Also, your definition of a drop will be different from anybody else's. After the break following the second drop, the feel goes from all-powerful (as you called it) to solemn (but still somewhat attacked).
Now back to the random sounds:
The sounds are, in fact, random. I wanted to mainly apply the cinematic feel, but also supply the sense of a variety of sounds into the songs. The beginning is a reverbed GMSynth Square, designed to give it a feel of a post-Armageddon-era game. There are two kinds of the synthetic plucks (high and low), both of which play on the second half of that given measure (first measure is low plucks, second measure is high plucks). Now for the strings. There are two types of strings used in this song (natural DirectWave and synthetic DirectWave, both of which are the two String Ensemble DirectWave presets). The lead in the drop is significantly different from the main lead. It is more reverbed, plus it is a DirectWave+MiniSynth combination preset, not much else to say about it. Now for the percussion. Yes, I did overlayer the kicks, but I intentionally did so to give the harsh part of the main feel of the song. Here is another very important part, you bass and subbass. I used a Picked Bass guitar for the subbass, and a 16th-note-segmented Chopped Bass for the bass and subbass support. Now for the main drop instruments, the wubs. I used two wubs (a Double Octave Wub and a Big Wub). The Double Octave Wub has a three purposes: a filler for the the drop, support for the Big Wub, and support for the High Plucks. The Double Octave Wub is a MiniSynth+GMSynth combination preset. The Big Wub, the main drop instrument, was the big key to the drops in this song. It was a special GMSynth preset I created in the process between Truth 2 and this song. In a lot of my dubstep songs after Strong Force, I have used this preset.
(speaking of dubstep) I am, in fact, still new to dubstep. This song was my first successful attempt at a dubstep song. This song is set as a big milestone for me. I have done more advanced, but I can't go too much over the top. I don't have the full version of FL Studio, but I have FL Studio Mobile, in which I used this to create Strong Force.
So that is pretty much it. Hope that clears it out (or not, but if you are still against this song, I can try to do better).
It's too bad you can't enter this one into the auditions phase of NGADM with this one. Is this really a 3-person team effort on this piece? Well done collab if it is. A bit repetitive, but that didn't take away from the track much at all.
Lol as I was listening to this before reading the description I already imagined a cartoony, yet sci-fi and dark show that would air on TV with this cool music playing in the background.
This is an overall very good fusion of EDM and dubstep.
Kysertron responds:
This was done by me and inspired by two people. This is my NGADM audition entry for both FGK and I.
Thanks for the review! ;)
In the first chipscompo this was one of the tracks I felt had the most potential. Still, there are a lot of problems with the mix that detracts from the quality of the track, and I'll try to specifically describe why it bothers me.
First of all, the mix is a bit muddy. Mud in a mix mainly originates from the low end of the tracks, and you get mud because lower frequencies that normally are barely audible clash with each other. To avoid this problem you the lowest frequencies that you don't need from all of your synths. I advise you to go through every single mixing channel and listen closely to each instrument individually. Try to cut all unwanted frequencies, both audible and non-audible. A common mistake many people do when they begin to learn mixing is that they don't recognize how non-audible frequencies destroys the mix. when you have a lot of different elements.
Also, to me it sounds a bit like you at times boost the higher frequencies of your leads in order for them to stand out. If you ever have to boost frequencies because your lead doesn't sound clear in the mix, consider lowering the same frequencies from the other elements in your track like the bass our pad. You very rarely want to aggressively boost frequencies unless it has to do with sounddesign. It's always better to lower frequencies rather than boosting them.
Also the kick sound could do with some improvement. Though a kick often is considered to be an element that reigns over the low-end, that doesn't mean that it shouldn't shine through in the mid and high frequencies. The "umph" feel that you get from a lot of kicks in EDM songs and especially dubstep comes from the higher frequencies. If you boost the bass frequiencies too much however, the high frequencies completely disappear in the mix and thus the kick-sound ends up sounding very dull.
I know I'm a bit harsh, but I'm honestly only trying to help, and I honestly wouldn't spend all this time writing this review if I wasn't. The main issue with the track lies in the mixing being chaotic. There of course other things that could be improved as well, but before I can comment on any of that, I really believe you should focus on improving your mixing skills. I recommend that you take time with each and every element in your track seperately and make sure that they sound good together. If there's something you don't like, fix it straight away even if it's only a minor issue. In mixing, many minor issues tend to become a major one once they all arelayered on top of eachother. Also I adivce you to listen to your mix on different speakers before finalizing it. If the mix sound good on a laptop speaker, it will sound good anywhere, but if the mix only sounds good on your cheap or expensive headphones, that means that it might not sound as good on my headphones. The goal is that you want your mix to sound good regardless of the equipment of the listener, and this is something I'm still working on getting down.
Keep up the good work :). There's some really interesting elements in this, and I believe that you have a lot of potential that can be realized if you dilligently continue to learn more about music production :).
- Ectisity
The mid section melody at the beginning isn't great to be honest. The melodies with the wobble sound is quite good, but I find that melodies created with wobbles are usually not very effective. You should use orchestral instruments for that melody like strings. That would be quite epic.
In this piece, the mix can be so much better with heavy percussion (kick primarily). The drum choice matters a lot, so choose powerful samples.
The sound design isn't great. The wobbles don't feel fully processed in terms of sound design. They feel like someone just started designing it but didn't finish applying the necessary compression (etc). That could be a matter of the overall mix as well, but that is something to look into.
There is a point where chords come in around 3:05 and the melodies and chords kind of clash with this undesirable dissonance. Listen carefully for details like that.
The overall track is quite repetitive, which is not good in this case especially because it is a 6 minute track. You only want to make a track long if it needs to be. There is one famous track (I forget the name) that is around 11 minutes, but it is really well done.
I appreciate the storyline you guys included for the project. Since music is an art, I believe it can be combined with other forms of creativity. That's why music videos exist (though a lot of them are more about publicity and advertisement unfortunately).
So to summarize:
-work towards less repetitiveness
-work towards a stronger mix; it takes time to develop an ear for mixing, but it can be done with practice.
-watch out for dissonant notes that don't work with the chords.
-work towards stronger sound design (each of you can practice and even give each other feedback throughout the contest period).
-Listen to TaintedLogic's review. I just looked over it now, and it is quite similar to my review actually in terms of key points. TaintedLogic lists out a logical perspective of the flow of the track. TAKE NOTES XD
-Use some background FX and reverb during the intro, verses (etc). so that it has more of the vibe you are going for. There are a lot of possibilities for an idea like yours.
Either way, you guys proved that you can work together. So now you need to discuss on how you will improve from this point for your next piece if you make it to the next round of NGADM.
Best of luck, you three!
I like the sense of energy and tension at the beginning. The instrument for the line at the very beginning wasn't my favorite, but it works well with the rest of the sound design. I thought the frantic melody ducks under the mix a bit at the 1-minute mark, and the kick could also be a lot stronger to give the piece some more drive. I like the dark chords at 1:43 and how they are molded into the strings shortly thereafter. The transition at 1:55 could've been a lot more subtle, but perhaps you intended for it to be in-your-face. The piece is very catchy and energetic, but I don't see the theme coming through a ton just from listening to it. Also, the part at 2:55 kind of came out of nowhere. I would've liked to see you prime the listener more by introducing the riff at 2:55 earlier. By the time the frantic synth comes back in at 3:12, you can really tell that this piece has some mastering shortfalls. I would recommend toning down the reverb a bit and adding some more careful compression and equalizing to help add some clarity to these muddy frequencies. The chord at 4:10 threw me off a bit. It didn't have much of a sense of direction to it, so I thought you were ending the piece. In general, I didn't think the piece needed to be 6 minutes long, either. You rarely vary the melodies here, so the piece tends to drag a bit. It's a cool tune that's going to be stuck in my head for a while; production and arrangement are the major downfalls. Keep at it, man!
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Kysertron 
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