Listening to the track, hesitating, and fixing shit I messed up when I was building the track. Not even kidding, these probably take 50-90% of the time I spend with a track.

Apart from those, everything happens in a state of flow so it feels like a breeze, but I guess I spend most time doing stuff I don't know how to do yet. Lately it's been things like using ambiences and risers.

The breakdown is beautiful musically. Would be cool to hear it with something like a chamber orchestra, but that might be too expensive! And you're on the right track with the chorus as well.

I have a few comments regarding mostly sounds:
- Might be cool if the "banjo" evolved somehow during the intro - a filter sweep or something
- The click of the kick is too loud, sounds almost like the metronome was left on!
- Ride sounds toyish, I would change that sample (check out http://www.michaelkingston.fi/kingstondrums/easyrider.html), maybe give some life to it by varying velocities (and samples maybe), and also pan it more to one side, and maybe add reverb.
- The one-note riser is not very effective to me, maybe some FM riser might be better. Or sidechaining it to the kick and adjusting the panning might also help. Now it just sounds like a lead that's never in tune!
- That boom kick in breakdown should be louder
- The breakdown needs more layers/pads/atmospheric stuff to keep it interesting. The string sound alone sounds a bit dull.

Would like to hear a louder version next time, so that I don't have to crank my volume knob

I'm really just learning, and don't know about the conventions of prog house, but here are my observations anyway. I usually do vary the volume/timbre of the kick in one way or another during the intro. So I would set the fader where it should be in the drop, and then use things like note velocity or a gain plugin, and HP and LP filtering to control and build up the kick during the intro. And I guess the goal is that, if anything, the kick should sound the most powerful in the chorus, so in the intro I could keep it slightly quieter, but not louder!

The same question goes for the bass. Let's say that the kick and bass sound okay in the intro but during the chorus it sounds off when being played at the same volume. How would someone handle this in the mix? Volume automation? Duplicate the track and create a separate "chorus bass"?

What do you mean by "off"? If it's just the relative levels, then automating the volume (preferably a gain plugin, so that the mixer fader controls the overall level) sounds fine. I guess if the instrumentation changes a lot, then it might be easier to make a copy of the bass, which you can process independently.

As for switching samples, if there is a drastic stylistic change from section to section, it might be the most natural option; in fact, that's what I did in my latest WIP: https://soundcloud.com/arktopolis/trance1-newdrop2/s-P6HCR. I wanted a softer kick in the intro, and then a more hard-hitting one in the drop, so I just used two samples.

@Arktopolis I don't understand why he should start new thread if I understood you well. That's helpful link.

Nah, I meant that the video was so spot on that it concludes the discussion Just trying to be funny.

Disclaimer: I haven't listened to this kind of music. Anyway, to me the mix sounds pretty good on a pair of portapros. The basses are cool, the rhythmic ideas are catchy, and nothing really stands out as not fitting. But you asked for a roast, so

- The lower "low" just before the drop sounds like the guy hasn't quite hit puberty yet. You might wanna ask Tay Zonday to feat on this. But seriously, I think the drop could hit harder if the vocal didn't sound like a burp.
- Also, are you sure the vocal is in English? I have no idea what he's saying, and I think the name of the track could also be 'tea time no'.

Can't think of anything nastier right now.

Still a noob to this kind of stuff myself, but it definitely sounds like a combo of multiple samples/bass synths. One part (the wobble?) sounds like it could be a 100% wet reverbed kick. And then there's a low-passed drill-like (FM I'd guess) bass at the end of the phrase with probably a tiny bit of bitcrushing.

E: I'll continue, since I realized you weren't really asking "how to make this sound". I agree with Farley that keeping the stereo image narrow in the basses is important. Another thing is that there's a lot of silence between the bass notes, and not many instruments are playing at the same time. The contrasts really contribute to the punchiness.

There really doesn't seem to be a simple way to do this. The closest I could get is by using a "Fixed" AUX source with the CRS pitch and setting its level to 78. That gets pretty close results (a couple of cents off, still green in a tuner plugin) when the jump is less than about two octaves. But you have to be careful when setting the value 78, because there seem to be values between the integers also

Maybe you could throw a feature request on the official forum?

Thanks a lot for the comments. I now have a pretty clear idea of how to improve this track... Already did some recordings of a dishwasher, let's see if that helps here

Still not quite sure what kind of percussion you guys are talking about though, but I'll try to experiment!