Wow, im loving the sound of this, the percussion sounds great, loving the trip-hop'ish snare sound ;)
The bass sounds really great, and the higher melodys are giving off some dark vibes, also sounding good ;)
The vocal is nice :) reminds me of spaceape.
Its a shame we dont have more of this side of dubstep on ng. And usually when It is, it goes unnoticed.
Anyway, downloaded the EP. I will be sure to give it a listen tomorrow.
Oh hey! I haven't been on in a while, but yeah! Thanks for checking it out! I'd love to see some more stuff like this on here for sure. I've got some more stuff to post now too.
Wow, finally a dubstep track on newgrounds that isnt electro brostep bullshit.
It stood out to me that there is only one hi-hat sound that is really used prominantly throughout the whole track.
The snare sound was nice, but i didnt really like the way it was a flam, could do with just being a single hit imo.
Other then that, really liked it, the delayed notes sound really nice throughout. The bass is really good :) no mid range >:)
Newgrounds really needs some more real dubstep like this :)
Glad you like it. you are right on mostly everything. The snare is a single hit that I sampled, probably already layered. This was an experiment and seems easier to produce old school dub for me. I might grow on it.
Some brostep is good if made right. Depending on what you call brostep.
I don't really listen to this sort of stuff on Newgrounds much :P but compared to a lot of the other stuff I've heard, the recording sounds way better, i guess thats cos you mentioned you had access to a studio, so makes it easier on the ears my end, alot of stuff on ng is almost painful to listen to. The lyrics seem pretty solid, although I'm no expert. And lovin' the accent man ;)
Thanks broski :D School studio is slowly but surely becoming my second home.
There were a few things that sounded odd to me when i listened to it.
The snare sounds really weak. I don't know how many samples its made out of, but imo it definitely needs something else there, as currently it just sounds like a single sample (correct me if im wrong).
The first drum patterns hi-hats sound a little weird to me because its just a 1 bar loop, personally i would have probably used a 2 bar loop with a bit more variety.
Other then that, it sounds nice, the main synth in the mix seems a little 'in your face' but most other things sound nice. I love the piano and strings, i thought more could have been done with strings in the last section, as it builds up til there, then nothing happens really.
Anyway, yeh, it was noice ;)
Whoo! Critical feedback!
Nope, you're right - there is only one snare sample. This track was done as a late addition to the "Trippin' Kitchen" game, and 72 hours to do a soundtrack (even for a fairly simplistic game) doesn't leave one with as much time for 'perfecting' things as you'd hope. The weak-snare has been a common complaint across all electronic tracks I've done, mostly since I'm accustomed to writing orchestral stuff: and there, you either have a snare or you don't :3
As for the bass, that's probably a combination of mixing on headphones + people saying my wobbles in the last track ("A Bowl of Spaghetti") were too weak. Also, due to the time constraints, I didn't EQ stuff properly (I've never actually learned proper EQ'ing, since most orchestral instruments already sit well with each other in a mix).
Thanks for the feedback & the crit, glad you liked the track on the whole :)
- James
Well, imo it sounds a little aqwkward at 107bpm or w/e you have it set to, quite a lot slower then the default 140 for dubstep or even the 120s that some post dubstep guys are experementing with. Yet the melodies are quite fast.
Drums - Main thing I will say here, is you have the same drum pattern throughout the whole song. Its a boring kick on 1 and 3 snare on 2 and 4. So a little varation in the drums is needed. Just reread your description and you say it sfaster then dubstep, so im not really sure what its meant to be, but il stick with 107bpm atm, seeing 217 seems a little to fast to actually do anything. I know you said its not classified as dubstep, but you could get some half time in there, (imagine dubstep as 70bpm instead of 140, or 52bpm in this case, might be a little too slow for this, but you could see how it turns out) At the least you can defenately play with the positioning of kicks a bit more and some moar hihats.
There seems to be a massive gap in frequencies between the sub bass and the higher up synth. Try filling these in a bit, lowcutting everything and highcutting the sub bass so you dont get any overlaps.
Im not really sure what effects and stuff you are using, but to me, everything sounds very 'in your face', you said your mastering wasnt very good, but the mixdown is probably the first thing to work on.
Yeh, sounds good, needs some work imo though :)
Also, what you said about genres being limited, using the tags to specify a more specific genre or subgenre, makes it easier for everyone to see where you want to head with the track. (just an idea)
Thanks, an helpful advice.
( i've already lowcutted everything and highcutted the sub bass :c )
Some ofit sounds nice,just drowned out bythe synth
I think the synth thing, is blocking out too much of the rest of the track. You can hardly hear the hit hats and other percussive parts, and i cant really make out if there is a snare either. Really the main snyth (which i assume is meant to be a wub snyth) needs to be at a lower registry if you want that brostep wub sound. Also try layering that with some sub bass to make it feel a bit thicker (make sure you low cut the bass drum to give the sub some room), and if you dont have a snare in there, for me, the snare sound is one of (if not) the most important parts of dubstep to give it that half time feel.
It sounds like a good start. Some of the hihat patterns are starting to sound nice, its just a shame they are a little hard to hear. Soo yeh, make the synth lower, add a sub bass and a snare, and then all you have to worry about is the structure ;) nice.
It isn't quite mastered yet. The percussion needs to be more punchy to stand out in the middle registry more. ANd yeah, the bass is far too high pitched XD Still working on it.
Hmmm
Hmm, there are nice parts of the track, but the transitions between sections seems to be very abrupt. Going from the strings into, which i like, to the first section, just sounds kind of weird, everyting drops out except for the four on the floor kick drum and then loads of other synths and sound effects just come in from nowhere. My next comment, is the fact that each section seems very short, so you are not giving each section enough time to change.
Most of the track seems to be lacking the snaredrum, but when it does come in at 42 seconds with the more half time'y drums, it does sound like a start of something.
I think the main problem for me, is that for alot of the sections you have tried to pack too much in without giving it any build up, so when huge chunks of sound come flying at the listener, it will just leave them slightly confused as to what is going on, and sound messy. The end section, some of the notes didnt even seem to sound right together.
I think the bit that stood out for me was the 8 bars starting at 42 seconds, but in my opinion the rest of the track needs to have more thought put into transitions between sections.
Thanks for the critique, much appreciated. As for the fast transitions, lack of "actual" snare drum, and "loads of other synths/sound effects that come in from nowhere, it was just as I wanted it to be. I wanted a glitchy laser to replace the snare so the song can be different. I didn't want two minutes of the same loops because it may bore the listener, and I wanted fast transitions so I can have the listener unprepared to what may happen next.
Peace and Love,
Lone X
Really powerfull.
Saw you post this on that thread in the audio forum and after listening i had to post a comment ;)
Reading the first paragraph of the rewiew below me almost brought a tear to my eye. (gotta say it was pretty well written ;P)
I do love the way it builds up, but remains simple (less is more). The percussion doesnt really cut through in the mix, which i was going to critisise at first, but after listening to it for a while now, i probably prefer it that way.
Sometimes it pays to be simplistic :P This track doesn't portray war as glorious, but what I did feel the need to do was convey sadness, loss, and hope into a track while still keeping a bit of a militaristic feel.
I very much appreciate your comments/feedback.
Best,
- James
Seems kinda awkward.
I think its feeling awkward to me because of the tempo. Defenately needs to be faster, obviously purist dubstep is 140bpm, but then alot of post-dubstep is doing 120 stuff now.
Because its so slow, it makes the hihat stick out like a sore thumb to me. It is exactly the same the whole way through the song.. except volume changes. Alot of dubstep makes use of triplets to make the hihats sound interesting, sort of with the same effect, shakers are commonly used as well.
My last comment on it, is there seems to be a massive gap where the low end bass should be. It needs some sub-bass maann! ;) especially when the mid range synth (the 'wub') is on its higher notes it just leaves a mmasssive gap and makes the track sound empty.
So yeh, its a good basis of a track. I personally think the track would sound better at a faster tempo, also needs some sub-bass, and some more interesting parts to the drums.
It has sub bass, but maybe the mid range overpowers it. And oh yea the song was at 100bpm, which may explain why it was a bit slow, I'll turn up the bpm and alternate velocitys on the hihats next time, thanks so much for the input man, you have no idea hoiw much it means to me.
awesome
Wow, this is really nice, downloading the whole EP thingy now :) the link you provided wasnt letting me download, but google made it easy to find anyway ;)
Really relaxing :) I look forward to hearing anything from you in the future.
Thank you, thank you!
Yeah, the website is picky.. we chose to code in html5 which means if you have a browser that isn't fully updated it won't work.
Chrome should read it fine.
Glad you found it, ill be sure to provide an alternate link as well!
Age 31
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London
Joined on 12/26/05
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