Didn't really like your first track but i left some feedback on the second one on SC. There's promise in your work. You just gotta keep elaborating on your ideas and introduce some new textures more frequently. Keep grinding.

Put out this song two weeks ago.

What do you guys think?

https://soundcloud.com/oxbloodoxblood/queen-of-the-stars-original-mix

I've taken some music courses at about every level of education including electronic music courses and audio engineering. I still think the most useful information I mostly figured out by myself through trial-and-error at home, and by reading manuals and watching youtube tutorials. For producing you just need to put the effort in, though it is helpful to go to a school, not necessarily a music school, but somewhere you can network with teenagers and people in their twenties who are most likely to seek out new music to listen to.

Hello All,

Today I put out my debut EP! Here is the A1, "How Long Is Forever." I really hope you all enjoy it.

I've had a lot of positive feedback so far but people haven't really been able to say what genre these songs fit into. What do you guys think? Can you think of other tunes this reminds you of? Do you like it?
 
https://soundcloud.com/oxbloodoxblood/how-long-is-forever-original-mix

Would really appreciate whatever feedback you feel like giving!

I think it's hard for most electronic musicians to convey a political message without any lyrics. Typically, I would say most listeners want to feel some type of emotion from electronic music, or have it make them dance uncontrollably. Even with lyrics, it'd be a tough task to make a song with a strong political message that a listener wouldn't immediately write off as corny. Or, that's how I'd analyze something like that myself.

Atari Teenage Riot did a pretty good job of creating dance music that was also political with their "digital hardcore" sound. But I'll admit that was some time ago-- their heyday was late 90s.

I wouldn't say it's difficult so much as today's producers aren't interested, which is not necessarily wrong.

Here's a tip to give your 808s some more punch:

Hi-pass between 50-60hz.

Use a stereo-widener to make the sub entirely mono.

Add saturation and compression to taste.

Love the way you built up the track with the plucks.

Feel like the drums should not come all the way out at 0:46 and that hall kick sounds a little weak. If it was my song I would make the build-up longer and even more dramatic.

I kind of hate the lead you bring in at 1:15.

Lead at 2:50ish is very weak. Should be brought up a couple decibels and stereo-widened, perhaps with a touch of delay and reverb to make it really "ring" through the space of your song. I use the free plugin UpStereo on all of my lead sounds.

The drums are kinda march-y. Like very up-down up-down. If it was my track I would make them swing a little more. The plucks had a really nice groove in the beginning and then the drums come in kind of doofy and undercuts what you had going.

Overall this song started out promising and did not fulfill the expectations I had for it from the first excellent 45 seconds. It sounds like you are playing with too many ideas-- the song needs a "hook" or standout riff or synth patch. Think about somebody walking up to a DJ in the club and asking them to request your song, but they don't know the name of it, they've just heard it in other people's sets. "Do you have that song that goes, 'dum, dum dum, dumdum dum dum?" Even if this became a Beatport Top 100 song I'm not sure the DJ would know what the requester is talking about. I really think you need to do some editing and figure out what the stand-out element of your song is/should be and re-build the track around that element. Choose one.

Let's think about David Bowie for a second. Did David Bowie have a consistent style? Perhaps he created a singular mood from song-to-song on each album, but with every album he intentionally subverted what people came to expect from David Bowie. Thus, Bowie became one of the most influential musicians on the planet. Low sounds nothing like Hunky Dory, which sounds nothing like Let's Dance, which sounds nothing like Blackstar. The unifying threads in his discography were attention to detail, "writerly" lyrics, and that voice.

The important thing to understand about music is that there are many different ways to achieve success. Skrillex's path was different than Carnage's path. Carnage's path was different than Seth Troxler's path. You can worry about whether or not your sound is "consistent" or you can keep making music until you wake up one morning and realize you have a sound, or realize you have completed several songs that all have a similar vibe and that they would sound good collected into an EP or album. The important thing is not necessarily to create marketable production "signatures" but rather to be happy with what you are making, to make songs that you are going to still want to listen to one year after you make them. The music comes first, the branding comes later. Genre is just a marketing tool, after all.