Hey Greg
The synth/sound selection comes very close to the late 90s Prog-Trance, one of the styles I absolutely, wholeheartedly love. The intro is already very good but the later progression lacks, well... progression. The piano should do a bit more than repeating the same pattern, give it some variation. Fade in another thick pad (like Chicane's) using a low pass filter over a few bars.
Some percussion samples in the main groove feel a bit delayed, take a look at all your samples and check if there's silence at the beginning. Use a clap with more punch and presence, I can barely hear it right now. I think there's too much going on in the cymbal-section, tone it down a bit. The bass sound is more on the subtle side but that's just right for prog trance, although maybe you could try turning the low-cut resonance up a notch to give it some spice?
Ok, so much for the things that could be improved imo, but I'm really looking forward to the finished version of this, keep it up :)
Thanks a lot man, that was a really helpful review! Gave me an idea of what to focus on.
Progressions are kind of hard for me because I get kind of stuck on an idea I guess and don't want to risk ruining it XD (have to drop that bad habit) I do happen to have a nice thick pad that I loaded into an instrument track but I didn't get around to doing anything with it. It sounded pretty good with it but I'll have to tweak the sound first, it wasn't really right.
About the percussion delay, I didn't see any silence at the beginning of any of my samples. But there is reverb on most of them and there's predelay of about 10 ms. Maybe I should shorten that I guess.
I'm very tentative with claps, as I try to avoid getting a 'cheesy' sound that can be so easy to achieve. Plus I like the way in trance songs how the clap 'blends' with the kick and I was kind of trying to do that here, but I guess it's the wrong kind of kick anyway so it will need to stand out more. It's actually two claps, one is lowpassed with a crapload of reverb and some low freq stereo spread. It makes up most of the sound. The other part is mostly a bright clap with some high freq stereo spreading. It does have a high cut and I guess I could brighten up the sound by raising the second clap's overall volume, raising the high cut, and raising the volume of the snare sample. (claps are one of the things I ponder about XD)
I kind of got lost with the percussion and I'll have to tweak that obsessively until I'm happy with it. I've never done anything like this for percussion and I'm playing around with LFOs and white noise for the first time in a groove. I kind of have trouble deciding what volume everything should be at so layering is tricky.
I don't know about the bass it's kind of weird and when I mess with it it just seems to get worse :(
I feel like I'm getting ahead of myself here because everything on here is totally new and I'm kind of reluctant to take risks. This is totally different from anything I've done :P
I'm gonna keep working on this but it's gonna be a bit slower as I'm going back to school... thanks for the encouragement, and glad you liked it.
Good work, i like it, especially the buildup in the beggining, yeah the kicks might be too strong for this type of music, i agree with the guy below on that one, more subtleness there would help, also i think if you later on added a background melody or maybe a higher one to complement the main one, that would really add depth to it.
But anyway, im no expert, and it's a good track you've made here, so keep up the good work.
Thanks for the review, and yeah I'll mess with the kick :) I did put in another melody on top of the piano but they were clashing so I'll have to go back and rework things. I'm good at pairing sounds together it's just figuring out what they should do is hard :S
ok first off, take it from me, this is really good. definitely among the highest echelon of stuff on NG, which sadly isnt saying as much as you'd think. i was very pleasantly surprised with the mixing and overall feeling of the track. i was like oh sh1t i actually want to listen to this one, better jot down notes:
bad kick drum, something with less mid-range would be better.
the keys are too dominant in the right ear
too repetitive
develop a deep main theme.
overall, a splendid piece of work, and i know what i'm talking about. i'd like to collab perhaps, you seem like you are somewhat along the style of the music i enjoy producing. i can still count the number of 5's i've given out on one hand during my time here on NG, even after rating you. hit me up sometime, peace.
"ok first off, take it from me, this is really good. definitely among the highest echelon of stuff on NG, which sadly isnt saying as much as you'd think. i was very pleasantly surprised with the mixing and overall feeling of the track."
Thank you, I'm guessing you're a tough critic? :P
"bad kick drum, something with less mid-range would be better."
I'll tweak it, I knew something about it was bugging me. I used a trance kick sample but I didn't want the tight high end, it seemed like it wasn't fitting with the mood and I wanted something more laid back so I cut it at 12000 Hz I did give it kind of a big boost in the low end early on and I forgot about that, didn't do it very carefully but it sounded fine, I'm only listening on headphones (Sennheisers, but still headphones) so you may be hearing something I'm not if you're listening on monitors. I'll definitely go back and EQ everything better.
"the keys are too dominant in the right ear"
Yeah the sampler I'm using for the piano, it pans the keys based on their position, high keys = right, low keys = left. I didn't bother countering this and it sounded fine to me, but I do have some very minor hearing trouble in my right ear so again you might be hearing something I'm not :S
"too repetitive"
I know :(
"develop a deep main theme."
I still have a lot of trouble with composition... totally noobish in that area. I have trouble making my songs interesting or engaging enough, something that's bothered me about this track.
"overall, a splendid piece of work, and i know what i'm talking about. i'd like to collab perhaps, you seem like you are somewhat along the style of the music i enjoy producing. i can still count the number of 5's i've given out on one hand during my time here on NG, even after rating you. hit me up sometime, peace."
I would be open to the idea of a colab, but I see you use FL and I use Logic. Unless you want to go through all that trouble of making different parts of a song seperately and pasting together the mp3s... :S
