I decided after I recorded an uplifting mix to make my first real attempt at cracking the recipe. I made a small demo at 136 and decided to post a deconstruct of it for some feedback and help. I used a 4 bar loop since there is very small changes in the chords/drums/ synths every few bars
Let's start with the drums . I watched a video about them, simple enough they follow a certain pattern and I added a shaker. Goes a little like this
Aight, so first follows a production- technical set of comments. and in the end i'll review the music part of it.
so first. your (low end) kick lacks attack and has way to much release/length. A kick as an architypical sonic element is basically a transient. I would recommend treating it as such, Short and punchy. you can alter this by either choosing a more appropriate sample or cutting in length and/or layering with (drum) sounds that have more attack presence in the mid/high range, aswell as compression. Saves up a lot of space for the rest of the low to mid end elements aswell, speaking of which....
Then I did the bassline. I used 6 different ones(1 for sub). They all follow the chord, so they can be used on its own. One has typical uplifting trance shape and 2 I added with a groovy shape to give it a little bit more feeling.
the sequence you're using works nicely, but the sound itself is extremely muddy and has way to much presence in the 60-160 hz range. its very "whompy" right now, not ideal for a fast pasted uplifting trancebass apreggio. you can change this by either altering the parameters on your synth or eqíng/ using a multiband compressor.
Now the synth I wasn't sure how to write, so I used 2 samples, one prog trance and one prog psy trance. They actually sound very nice together.
by far the best sounds of the pack imo. love the grainy texture and thrillseeker esq dreamyness of it. but again there's a lot of presence in the low end, leading to a very muddy mix, especially when blended with the previous elements. Clean it up. and maybe don't go all over the place with the notes. Keep it simply and effective. Less is usually more.
(I know, I know, coming from me thats ironic since most of my demo's get rejected on that note, but still, the best helmsmen stand on shore etc...)
For the chords I used 5 different sound - 2 pads, 1 synt and 2 piano synth. There is slight change at the end of bar 1 and 2, repeated in 3 and 4.
Very retro sounding, I like it in and of itself but I wonder if it fits in the track, this however is more of an artistic choice so i'm not going to either left or right on that. I will say that on the technical side, where the other sounds have way to much low end present this could do with some fullness. The layering works well, but you might want to add some delay/reverb to make it less "casio esq" if you follow me. For uplifting I find it better, pad wise, to go with full sounding first, and later tone it down using sidechain or regular compression/eq to make it blend in more, then the other way around,
Vocal - easily the weakest part, very cheesy l but I kind of like it. And this is a vocal I wanted to use for a long time.
I think its a great element, not cheesy at all, Well sung and in a proper key, (Chapter 47 can suck a tip on that for sure) The reverb is OTT though, definitly tone down on that. Also i'm curious to see how this fits in the mix after the rest has been cleaned up. Right now its drowning in the rest of the elements you have, that might not be the case anymore if the mix is cleaner. If, however, its still has problems rising to prominence in the mix (which is generally what you want with vocals in an uplifting trance setting) you can try boosting the high mid range a bit, and applying (vox) compression for some more definition. Then slowly add reverb but don't overdo it,
And now lets see them all working together
To be continued as comment...
This comment mostly applies to the latter 3 elements, Vox, Strings, Lead. All of them seem to be doing their own thing without minding the others... each has its own chord/melody sequence, that isn't in sync with the rest (including the bass) Invidiually they sound ok and even great sometimes..but remember, they have to work together or else i'tll just be chaos when combined.
My advice would be trying the following. Start with the vox and its melody pattern as its hard to change.. Tune the strings/pads, melody/note wise to that first, then the bass and then finally make the lead fit.
after that you can start building the track out and add transitions etc.
good luck
