Need Feedback Please! Latest Track

[DyCastMusic]

Hello Everyone, and Happy New Year! Wishing Everyone a happy, healthy, and peaceful year.

I could use some ears on this track. I started working on it back in October and have revised it entirely close to 8 times now. I'm personally quite happy where it's at for the most part, but truth be told I've listened to it so many times I can no longer make heads or tails of what's missing, what's too loud/too quiet, etc.

I'd be very very grateful if some of you guys could take the time to check it out. If possible I would REALLY love to get it polished up enough to submit to labels (assuming it's not light years away from being at that level, which is certainly a possibility!).

Let me know what you think, if something jumps out as needing obvious fixing, if something in the mix is way off, or any details that can be added/tweaked to get it "up to par" (or at least close). Thank you so much.

https://soundcloud.com/dycast%2Fcrystal-cove

 

[Jetflag]

Hey DyCast. Welcome to the forum

First off, love what you've cooked up here. In terms of drivers and little sounds. they're lovely. I like the feel of the track.

In terms of the mixdown, it sounds (imo) too saturated. A lot of sounds are competing for dominance and a lot of those are sounds that (again Imo) don't belong front & center stage on the podium.


It also sounds very heavily compressed if i'm honest. question: am I listening to the mastered bounce or mixdown without compression on the main bus?

 

[DyCastMusic]

Hey DyCast. Welcome to the forum

First off, love what you've cooked up here. In terms of drivers and little sounds. they're lovely. I like the feel of the track.

In terms of the mixdown, it sounds (imo) too saturated. A lot of sounds are competing for dominance and a lot of those are sounds that (again Imo) don't belong front & center stage on the podium.


It also sounds very heavily compressed if i'm honest. question: am I listening to the mastered bounce or mixdown without compression on the main bus?

You may very well be right? I don't think my ears are developed enough to totally know when I'm overdoing compression, saturation, or both.

As you're hearing it, there's a compressor on my master bus (2:1, 2db reduction at most), as well as Logic's "bitcrusher" set to 24 bit, 1x downsampling, 2.5db of drive. Also a limiter at the end, doing at most 2db reduction. I read lots of comments about adding gentle saturation to the master bus, and this was the most gentle of my options, everything else I had even at the gentlest settings introduced too much distortion.

I will also mention this master bus saturation was added to get LUFS up, as without it and a limiter already hitting 2db reduction, my LUFS were only hitting around -111 or maybe -10.

I should also mention: Almost every channel has some saturation as well as some compresion, some (Like Leads and Mid Basses) have it both in the individual layers, and in the bus (glue compression).

Most of this was done with the goal of having elements be loud enough and cut through enough without their levels (either individual or bus) peak higher than the Kick. Some of the Saturation in the case of bass and leads was more to make it sound a bit fuller to my taste as well.

Hope I'm making sense.

In theory I tried to be somewhat gentle with all these things aside from Specific Saturation setttings so leads and bass sounded thick, but it's possible I went a touch far, not sure!

 

[Jetflag]

I think I have an idea of what it is you’re doing even though it’s difficult not seeing the actual project file and specific settings..

…But notice that on virtually everything you have some sort of compression going on. And on your master bus effectively 3. (Limiter, compressor, bitcrusher, saturater etc.)

what this does is squeezing every element in your mix up to maximum brickwall volume, in a manner of speaking, getting rid of all the dynamics.

it’s a bit like trying to fit 10 models side by side on the catwalk at the same time.

a good, clean mix down (imo) is something that has a clear hierarchy in which select elements are most important, with the rest taking a back seat, effectively eliminating the need for compression unless used as an effect.

Again, it’s up to you as the composer to determine and make this “podium” so to speak, creating space for the main actors.

what helped me a lot is this tutorial by everlight.


A good mix down requires minimal to 0 mastering if done right.

hope this helps . Good luck

 

[LostLegend]

WIll echo what @Jetflag has said.

It's a really nice track in terms of the music itself. Great sound selection, synth work and I really like the melodic aspects.
But yeah, it sounds way over-compressed.

I think it's easy when you are working on music to fall into a vibe while you are mixing and over-do things. It's easy for your ears to lose context when you are listening your own track over and over as you are working on it and end up over-cooking the compression/limiting. I fall into this trap myself from time to time (as @Narel will testify )

I've definitely been looking to dial down how much I use compression recently. Another good music content creator, whom I've mentioned on here before, is BtheLick.
He's an engineer who focusses on electronic music. There's a great video where he talks about only using compression when absolutely needed rather than just sticking it on all your bus tracks just because. His argument is that a lot of the sounds and samples we use in electronic music are already heavily processed and you risk just stacking compression on top of compression at that point.


Using reference tracks is a big one as well. It can help your ears keep the track you are working on in context to what sound you are going for.

 

[DyCastMusic]

I think I have an idea of what it is you’re doing even though it’s difficult not seeing the actual project file and specific settings..

…But notice that on virtually everything you have some sort of compression going on. And on your master bus effectively 3. (Limiter, compressor, bitcrusher, saturater etc.)

what this does is squeezing every element in your mix up to maximum brickwall volume, in a manner of speaking, getting rid of all the dynamics.

it’s a bit like trying to fit 10 models side by side on the catwalk at the same time.

a good, clean mix down (imo) is something that has a clear hierarchy in which select elements are most important, with the rest taking a back seat, effectively eliminating the need for compression unless used as an effect.

Again, it’s up to you as the composer to determine and make this “podium” so to speak, creating space for the main actors.

what helped me a lot is this tutorial by everlight.


A good mix down requires minimal to 0 mastering if done right.

hope this helps . Good luck

Hey! Apologies for the delay in responding! You might be right that I overdid it, I'm gonna see how things sound with a toned down compression overall, maybe I'll play with keeping it on certain buses, but dialed back, and completely removing it from others.

I did add Saturation (Decapitator) to many of my sounds, as I liked how it sounded, and this varied from heavier amounts to only slight (sometimes just having the plugin turned on, but no drive applied was enough). Do you think this needs to be toned down as well? Or should I try with less compression first? I think maybe I'll reupload with no "mastering" compression or limiter or anything? I could very well just be doing more harm at that stage.

Lastly, part of what was tricky here was a lot of my elements are playing off of each other, like two different plucks doing a call and response thing while two different leads are doing their own call and response. It's easier for me to choose what's on the "podium" when, for example, there's a distinct division between main elements and background. Uding an acid arp ad a background texture for example is easier for me to let sit back in the mix, than in this song where I have a specific acid riff playing off of a pluck.

I had a other friend listen and say that he felt I was losing clarity, and that that's okay as not everyone is pursuing utmost clarity in their mix. But I wonder if he was referencing the same issue you guys are, where either the compression, saturation, or mix of both are making it too noisy so to speak.

 

[DyCastMusic]

WIll echo what @Jetflag has said.

It's a really nice track in terms of the music itself. Great sound selection, synth work and I really like the melodic aspects.
But yeah, it sounds way over-compressed.

I think it's easy when you are working on music to fall into a vibe while you are mixing and over-do things. It's easy for your ears to lose context when you are listening your own track over and over as you are working on it and end up over-cooking the compression/limiting. I fall into this trap myself from time to time (as @Narel will testify )

I've definitely been looking to dial down how much I use compression recently. Another good music content creator, whom I've mentioned on here before, is BtheLick.
He's an engineer who focusses on electronic music. There's a great video where he talks about only using compression when absolutely needed rather than just sticking it on all your bus tracks just because. His argument is that a lot of the sounds and samples we use in electronic music are already heavily processed and you risk just stacking compression on top of compression at that point.


Using reference tracks is a big one as well. It can help your ears keep the track you are working on in context to what sound you are going for.

Hey, I appreciate you liking the musical aspects! I've been loving your work, do that's definitely a wonderful compliment!

I'm familiar with that youtuber, he's one of my favorites specifically because of his focus on dance music without being one for those "how to make your latest EDM banger" click baity assholes. I've learned a lot from him, but yeah now that you mention it and now that I saw that specific video, it hadn't clicked that he doesn't use compression all the time.

I'll ask you as well, do you think my use of a saturator is contributing to this issue, or is it, to your ear, mostly an over compression issue? I tried dialing back the saturation and while I found some sounds probably didn't actually need it (or much much less of it), others like my bass line and leads lost some of their oomph without it. It's 100% a lack of trained ear issue. I'd say I'm only just now starting to even notice effects of compression for example, so it wouldn't surprise me that I lack finesse with some of those details.

Lastly, you and other people have mentioned reference tracks. Truth be told, I always attempt to use them but at some point they start to feel like a hinderence. For example, this track was inspired (and my two reference tracks) were Ben Hemsley's "Tidal" (Ferry Corsten Remix), and Chris Metcalfe's "Spacecraft". They're very different styles of record, but both had different qualities I loved and wanted to try my hand at incorporating. Ben's had a really fun, bouncy groove and bass line, and Chris's had this huge sounding Lead with tons of movement that I'm in love with.

Besides the initial inspiration though, using them as references became hard because inevitably my sounds (and the presets I used and tweaked) were quite different, and especially as the track took on a soul of it's own, it ended up very different from either two references.

At that point, I feel like all I call try to look at it the general shape of the spectrum in SPAN and make sure nothing of mine is WAY off. And purely with how it sounds, trying to match the reference doesn't always work. In Spacecraft for example, I find the kick sounds surprisingly quiet compared to the lead and even mid bass. I tried that on mine, and it didn't sound right, my track just had different qualities.

I'd love to hear if you like using references visually in certain ways, or how you gonna about dealing with differences between your track and your references. Do you just use as a loose guideline for volumes, structure, and uses of elements? Or is there more to it ?

Would love to hear more of your thoughts!

 

[Jetflag]

Hey! Apologies for the delay in responding! You might be right that I overdid it, I'm gonna see how things sound with a toned down compression overall, maybe I'll play with keeping it on certain buses, but dialed back, and completely removing it from others.

I did add Saturation (Decapitator) to many of my sounds, as I liked how it sounded, and this varied from heavier amounts to only slight (sometimes just having the plugin turned on, but no drive applied was enough). Do you think this needs to be toned down as well? Or should I try with less compression first? I think maybe I'll reupload with no "mastering" compression or limiter or anything? I could very well just be doing more harm at that stage.

Lastly, part of what was tricky here was a lot of my elements are playing off of each other, like two different plucks doing a call and response thing while two different leads are doing their own call and response. It's easier for me to choose what's on the "podium" when, for example, there's a distinct division between main elements and background. Uding an acid arp ad a background texture for example is easier for me to let sit back in the mix, than in this song where I have a specific acid riff playing off of a pluck.

I had a other friend listen and say that he felt I was losing clarity, and that that's okay as not everyone is pursuing utmost clarity in their mix. But I wonder if he was referencing the same issue you guys are, where either the compression, saturation, or mix of both are making it too noisy so to speak.

here's something you can do, just to give yourself a bit of training in these things.

- keep the original file and make a copy.

- in the copy: carefully go through all your elements (layered plucks, basslines, percussion fx etc.) and see just how much you can remove stuff to still keep the vibe of the track. If a layered pluck with compression added for instance to "make it sound fatter" barely makes a difference with or without "fattness" in the overall mix, Delete one of the layers, regardless on how great they sound individually, till you have the bare minimum required. Systematically Kill your Darlings. Keep it simple, less is often more.

- once you've cleaned stuff up /done that, Remove all compressors, saturators, decimators EQ and limiters everywhere. set your masterbus to mono, and (say) -3 db, and finally put every volume slider to 0 on every element.

- write down for yourself on a piece of paper which elements need to be front & centre, (maximum 6!) and which can be put to the background,

- put the sliders up one by one and try to only use EQ to not make them clash frequency wise, ensuring the masterbus does not clip. Till you have something that you think is sort of acceptable in terms of podium.

- Reset your Masterbus to Stereo, and do the last/ final bits where there is too much dynamics or emptyness going on with veeery light compression/saturation if you must.

- export the mixdown with around -3 DB and post it here. we can then see where and what might need additional tuning

- only when that's all well and good, place a gentle limiter and maybe some additional soft eq on your masterbus to make the final product.

 

[DyCastMusic]

here's something you can do, just to give yourself a bit of training in these things.

- keep the original file and make a copy.

- in the copy: carefully go through all your elements (layered plucks, basslines, percussion fx etc.) and see just how much you can remove stuff to still keep the vibe of the track. If a layered pluck with compression added for instance to "make it sound fatter" barely makes a difference with or without "fattness" in the overall mix, Delete one of the layers, regardless on how great they sound individually, till you have the bare minimum required. Systematically Kill your Darlings. Keep it simple, less is often more.

- once you've cleaned stuff up /done that, Remove all compressors, saturators, decimators EQ and limiters everywhere. set your masterbus to mono, and (say) -3 db, and finally put every volume slider to 0 on every element.

- write down for yourself on a piece of paper which elements need to be front & centre, (maximum 6!) and which can be put to the background,

- put the sliders up one by one and try to only use EQ to not make them clash frequency wise, ensuring the masterbus does not clip. Till you have something that you think is sort of acceptable in terms of podium.

- Reset your Masterbus to Stereo, and do the last/ final bits where there is too much dynamics or emptyness going on with veeery light compression/saturation if you must.

- export the mixdown with around -3 DB and post it here. we can then see where and what might need additional tuning

- only when that's all well and good, place a gentle limiter and maybe some additional soft eq on your masterbus to make the final product.

Just for clarification:

1. "Remove unnecessary stuff". If I try to remove say, saturation or compression from my midbass bus and I find it loses the vibe, only then do I keep that?

2. "Remove saturators, compressors etc everywhere". Related to step one, if I find my bass line or something loses too much character/vibe, are you saying to remove these things anyway?
As for faders at zero, assuming I have decent gain staging, at this point most elements would be peaking more or less equally, correct?

3. Podium hierarchy list. Just for note, I have my bass, leads, two plucks, one acid, and one "counter lead" as my main elements already. So 6 main elements, and most aren't playing at the same time, but doing "call/response".

4. "Put sliders up one by one", of these are already at zero, are you saying at this point we're balancing elements using only level faders and EQ for clash? So the main mixing step, picking which elements to be loudest, etc while maintaining headroom.

Just to make sure I'm not misunderstanding.

 

[Jetflag]

Just for clarification:

1. "Remove unnecessary stuff". If I try to remove say, saturation or compression from my midbass bus and I find it loses the vibe, only then do I keep that?

You are the composer If you think it is absolutly neccesairy to squeeze a sound to combat excessive dynamics then sure, but i would urge you to be very sparingly and only if absolutely neccesairy.

2. "Remove saturators, compressors etc everywhere". Related to step one, if I find my bass line or something loses too much character/vibe, are you saying to remove these things anyway?

i'll rephrase : Don't delete, but turn off saturators, compressors etc everywhere. and yes, by everywhere i mean everywhere including the ones you had to keep on in step one. this step is to set-up a clean mix, you can choose to reactivate (some) of them that you though where crucial when resetting the masterbus to stereo in step 6

As for faders at zero, assuming I have decent gain staging, at this point most elements would be peaking more or less equally, correct?

no, i mean turn them all the way down. complete silence.

3. Podium hierarchy list. Just for note, I have my bass, leads, two plucks, one acid, and one "counter lead" as my main elements already. So 6 main elements, and most aren't playing at the same time, but doing "call/response".

Surprised you didn't include one of the more important elements in virtually all trance tracks which percussion/kick. But yes, if you have two leads that never play simultaniously then you can treat those as "melody element one" so to speak.

4. "Put sliders up one by one", of these are already at zero, are you saying at this point we're balancing elements using only level faders and EQ for clash? So the main mixing step, picking which elements to be loudest, etc while maintaining headroom.

What you are doing in this particular step is making a mix in mono, using only volume and eq. if you can get that foundation right, then filling in the rest sparingly in stereo mode using your aformenioned neccesairy comp and things like panning, without excess or overstepping/oversaturating, is easier.

Good luck (Y)

 

[DyCastMusic]

You are the composer If you think it is absolutly neccesairy to squeeze a sound to combat excessive dynamics then sure, but i would urge you to be very sparingly and only if absolutely neccesairy.

i'll rephrase : Don't delete, but turn off saturators, compressors etc everywhere. and yes, by everywhere i mean everywhere including the ones you had to keep on in step one. this step is to set-up a clean mix, you can choose to reactivate (some) of them that you though where crucial when resetting the masterbus to stereo in step 6

no, i mean turn them all the way down. complete silence.


Surprised you didn't include one of the more important elements in virtually all trance tracks which percussion/kick. But yes, if you have two leads that never play simultaniously then you can treat those as "melody element one" so to speak.


What you are doing is making a mix in mono, using only volume and eq. if you can get that foundation right, then filling in the rest sparingly in stereo mode using your aformenioned neccesairy comp and things like panning, without excess or overstepping/oversaturating, is easier.

Good luck (Y)

Okay, thanks for clarifying! I'll work on an upload an "option B" of the track and post when done. I appreciate the help!