Score: 9

"Minimalistic, but a nice vibe."

submission: First Musings

date: October 3, 2009

As the summary states, I like the minimal feel you get there at the start.
It creates some sort of comic feel at first. When the second instrument comes in, you get a nice atmosphere going.

The instruments sound very realistic, you've got a nice plugin there.
At one point the notes seem a bit random, but they're all nice and harmonic (you're way too good at harmonics, lol).

The strongs come in unexpectedly, but very fitting. You get quite some energy going there, I like that.

About that crackle - it actually gives it some sort of lo-fi feel, which I like. Maybe you could experiment around with that effect intentionally a bit.

I hope you're still going to extend this into a full song, it's a really nice song you've got going.

Keep up your stuff man. :)

-Mich

Score: 9

"Nice glitchy and lo-fi"

submission: SN |Pristine| SN

date: October 3, 2009

Unlike Supersteph54, I do like me some glitch from time to time.

I like how it started out crackling in a really lo-fi style. You have a nicely set band pass filter there too.

Reverb-y closed hihats are good. Flawless transistion to the full beat.
I think the beat is quite in-your face, perhaps a little too bassy to fit with the rest of the style.

You've got a very nice ambience going in here though. I guess with delayed and reverbed synths.

The glithy effects on your drums are very well done (what did you make that with?) Maybe the climax of the song could've lasted a bit longer, but overall, it's a very nice product.

Keep it up and such!

-Mich

Score: 7

"Pretty nice, but I'd re-arrange the layers a bit."

submission: [X] Against All Odds

date: October 2, 2009

You have a giant supersaw laying over the whole song, while it would probably sound a lot cleaner and more polished it was pushed more to the back.

You could do that by for example sidechaining the supersaw, so it ducks when the kick hits. I also advice Equalizing that supersaw so it doesn't take up the whole frequency spectrum, but only a part of it, which is for you to decide.

Overall it was pretty catchy. a little repetitive, but that's normal, as you explained.
Your intro was pretty unique by the way. The track has quite some potential.

As for genre: I'd go for dance.

Keep it up, and try to work on those points I mentioned. Hope I helped!

-Mich

Score: 9

"Radio friendly song :p"

submission: Ziende Ben Ik Blind Geworden

date: September 20, 2009

As the summary states, this is pretty much a tuypical radio friendly song.And that doesn't have to be a bad thing at all.

The piano melody was played very well, and you can feel the emotion put in it by the player (you?), because fo the velocity changes.

I like how the piano changes through the song. It gets more character. Then those strings give a bit more melancholy (if that's the word) to it.

The only thing why I'm giving not a ten is the lyrics structure. The song would've been more interesting fi there were different verses instead of just the same verse repeated.

But in all, very nice work by all of you. Try submitting it to some label or so, they might like it ;)

Keep it up!

- side note: I'm from Belgium, Flemish, so I understand the lyrics.

Score: 7

"Nice on the drums and effects part, but..."

submission: Hardball!

date: September 7, 2009

I must say, you've been very innovative on the drum patterns and effects in this song, good job; they kept it interesting over the 5 minutes.

I think this track has good potential to be a really bad-ass drum 'n bass song, but there's one thing that really bugged me about it.

I had the constant idea there was some annoying sound through the whole track. After listening a few times I noticed this was just a bunch of very loud, extremely low bass frequencies.
Admitted, the genre's name is drum 'n BASS, but you still need to keep your eye on some meters.

I ran your track through a spectrum analyzer and noticed that even at 20hz, it was constantly peaking around -18db. The peak through the song was -2 db (at this frequency), which is actually far too high.

I suggest cutting off the bass under 40Hz, as those are pretty low frequencies already. Such frequencies (the more at this volume) make your mix very muddy, and kind of noisy.

Perhaps it'd be a good idea to try and make an all new bass, located at slightly higher frequencies. Don't get me wrong, it's a good thing to dive to the really low (sub) frequecies regularly, but you don't want to have it as a constant bass around there.

I hope that gives you a bit of an idea what to work on; I reckon you could make a really good DnB track once this issue is adressed.

Another tip I want to give you: Keep the overal (master) volume level under -6db, to avoid clipping.

Hope I helped!

Score: 8

"You make fun stuff when drunk."

submission: Invention No. 2

date: August 29, 2009

Pizzicato strings definitely sound nice with that little melody you have there.

Maybe you would be more statisfied with the brass if you simply lowered the volume of it a tad bit. The moment it comes in I just feel like 'that's too loud'. No shit, lol.

At first I got the idea that the panning was a bit faulty with the pizzicato strings and the brass to the right, but when you introduced the harp it made more sense. Nice play.

I've got an idea for something you could (perhaps in a sober state);
extend what you have, and add some 'heavier' strings to it, perhaps cello or contrabass.

If you really want to go with it (which I doubt you do though :p), you could merge the track with some metal recording, and make once big fusion track of it. I know you could do it.

Anyway, good work loans, keep on it.

Score: 8

"Nice and mellow"

submission: Post Dr.Pepper

date: August 29, 2009

As I just read in your response to MH16, nifty use of a guitar amp here.

It has this kind of mellow, relaxed feel to it. (If that's the proper use of 'mellow').
Nice use of those string, pretty typical in hip hop (or am I wrong there?), but they add to the nice feel of it.

To be honest, I would've like it better if you had made a more 'complex' drum pattern to it. To give a slightly more speedy feel to it than it has now.

The drum samples and/or the processing of them were pretty top-notch though. Simple and clean.

Sorry for the not-so-lengthy review, but I can't really say much about hip-hop as I barely listen to any- which makes it automatically hard to review one. Hope it was a bit helpful anyway.

Keep it up dude. :)

Score: 9

"Very soothing"

submission: SR - Sleeperhold -demo-

date: August 27, 2009

I like the combination of guitar and more 'electronic' sounding instruments.

It sounds all very simple, yet quite perfect. It got me in a really lovely mood, to be honest.

Maybe you could add a bit of stereo width to the guitar track you can still hear out the end. (I don't know how else I'd tell you which one I mean).

Your bass is very simple, just ongoing tones, which fit the style well. I'd turn down the volume on it just a bit though, I'm listening on my headphones (which have a better bass response than AV40's (which I have too).

Your drums are nice breakbeatish, a nice soft layer over the rest, which makes it a calming song. Keep this up!

Score: 10

"May I ask...."

submission: xKore - Cosmos (Hard Mix)

date: August 27, 2009

how much time you spend mixing?

The mix in your latest tracks is just so perfect it goes beyond most tracks. Nice and crisp drums. No element in your mix sounds too loud or too quiet, Equalization is perfect. Where's your label?

The track is about the opposite of repetitive.
The pitchup you threw in there felt a bit awkward on the first listen, but then turns out to give it another nice touch.

The synth you introduce at 1:19 sounds more trance-y than house-y, which adds another unique touch. The filtering effects you used could be called generic, yet you used them in a way they were unique.

Would you mind writing something about the production of the song in you author comments next time? It's more interesting than 'ehcoooool' or 'Pro.' and such.

I feel a bit bad because I don't have anything constructive to offer, only praise. But yeah, please answer the questions I included ;)

Score: 4

"mixing/mastering, creativity... This is lacking."

submission: "Positive Vibe"

date: June 26, 2009

First of all, excuse me for not just giving a 10 like everyone else here does, simply because it's on #1.

You start of with the typical Nexus simple saw, unedited, solely a slight low pass filter effect. The pattern your bass follow isn't all too original either.

Try using a different preset and tweak all the knobs until is sounds different. Prefferably use a different synth (like 3xOsc). Also try playing with different bass patterns.

The Lead synth sounded incredibly preset-y too, it's probably a nexus lead too. Same goes, try making your own synth instead of going for the lazy way and just picking one from a preset list. Try layering multiple synths that play the same notes, to get a more original feel to it.

Your drums sound like You just picked them from Vengeance. Which you probably did. Don't worry, a lot of (professional) producers use them. Just use them right. Don't just use a sample as it is, it gets very recognizeable. Try layering them, try playing with the various knobs in the sampler, add effect in the mixer... Make those drums your own. I shouldn't be able to tell which file(s) you used.

Then.. at some points (mostly at transitions and the chorus) your mastering... incredibly sucks. Everything crackles and sounds pretty unenjoyable. You need to at least tweak the volume levels of your different channels. Automate them so the whole thing doesn't get all mixed up in a bunch of loudness. When multiple things play at once, make sure they all have their little place in the mix, so they don't create a bunch of distortion.

A good way of checking this is to see if the volume meter in the mixer doesn't go up to the red area. You should never pass 0db.

Also try giving every element its place on the frequence spectrum using the Parametric EQ. You don't want the low frequencies of your leads to mess up your bass, so you just EQ down those low frequencies on your lead (for example).

An other thing that bothered me was the fact you used that overused chord progression. It's like cheating to make an instant catchy song. I know, it's very easy to make something catchy with that progression, but it seriously lacks creativity.

An other tip I want to give is: try playing with some slight reverb and delay, it always gives sounds some more space. The biggest problem here is the mixing and mastering though.

Good luck on future productions, I hope this review helped you develop your producing skill.

Also; I hope you're not offended by criticism, I didn't give you a 4 and then didn't bother to explain why. I wrote this to help you out. So I hope you can see the good side of the low score. It comes with a bunch of tips.

I'm just saying this because I tried to be helpful to someone else once, but he just got angry at me. So I hope you take it well.

Anyway, I've typed for long enough.