I think you could put a touch more work into it, but I definitely think this is a song that could be picked up - maybe a label like Astralwerks?

Great effort! This is a pretty solid track! There are a lot of really fun musical ideas in here, and I love that classic uplifting trance feel you got going on, especially with that second drop - a well deserved climax of your track.

The main points I'd like to mention are your arrangement and your orchestration.

You have the basic structure down, and you have the right kind of uplifters and down lifters and sweeps and fills, but the song doesn't quite feel like it has a perfect flow. If you listen to songs by artists like Armin Van Buuren, Gareth Emery, Arty, or Above & Beyond you can use them as reference points - hell, pull some of their songs into your next session and borrow ideas if you're feeling stuck.

Regarding the orchestration, the choruses/drops feel a bit busy - there are three or four distinct patterns going on that don't really compliment each other, so it can get hard to figure out what we should be focusing on. On your next track, try deciding on one element that you want to be the focus of the song - the drums, the bass, the chords, the melodies, or the vocals (if you have them). Make sure that everything else is used as a supporting idea for that focal element, and then pick different elements that you want to be highlighted in various sections to give the ears a break or some variety. Maybe your track's focus is the bassline, but you kill the bass completely for the second breakdown and bring the chords to the forefront for an epic supersaw progression.

Regarding the toms, they're very quiet in the mixdown and don't have a lot of force behind them. Experiment with compression, EQ, and/or light distortion/saturation to help add tone and impact, and experiment with pulling out other elements or having them fade out underneath the tom fill so that the toms are the only thing actively playing at that time.

Looking forward to your next track!

The OTT plugin from Xfer is modeled off of the OTT preset for the Ableton Multiband Dynamics effect. It's an Upwards/Downwards Multiband Compressor and Expander, pushing everything Over The Top (hence the acronym OTT) so that the frequency response of the sound is essentially equal in level - all the quiet parts of the sound are brought up to be the same volume as the loud parts of the sound, which are being pushed down to fit within the same range.

Since low frequency sounds require a lot more energy than high frequency sounds, this ends up pushing down the bass and increasing the treble, as all that HF content is now at equal power (which is actually perceived as louder).

The depth knob on OTT is IIRC somewhat like a dry/wet knob, in that it changes how strong the effect is on the sound. The knobs that say Upwards and Downwards also do similar effects, but on the Expander and Compressor, respectively.

Solid state drives are preferable to traditional motor-driven hard drives for pretty much everyone, but they won't improve your performance unless you work entirely with samples or samplers that stream off a hard drive like EastWest's Play.

Solid State drives will only increase the speed at which data can be read off the hard drive, and the speed at which your computer starts up. There are other benefits (longer life, less prone to failure, smaller size, etc) but if you're looking to improve your computer's performance you'd want to increase your RAM or improve your processer.

i think this song is fantastic, with one glaring problem: the drop! your lead synths are so loud and overpowering that they make the entire section feel like a wall of sound, to the point that i can barely hear your drums and mostly what I hear is a limiter that is trying REALLY hard.

go back and turn down all of those synths, and take some time to reference against other future bass tunes - flume, louis the child, or dakat could work! directly compare their drops to yours, and see what's going on because other than that i have absolutely no complaints - the song is gorgeous everywhere else!

i dig it! i love the melodic content, and definitely the kind of track i could see closing out a beach party in Ibiza at sunrise. no real complaints on the mixdown, though i think the accent clap you have on the fourth beat feels a bit off (maybe you could have EQ out some low end or pitch shifted it a semitone or two up?). You have a very good sense of song structure and harmony, and while a lot of your sounds are fairly generic and simple that's in many ways a positive aspect to the song - they don't try to call attention to themselves, and allow your musicality to shine through.

My two main points of critique are your mastering and the flow of your song.

Without compromising the very dynamic and chill nature of your song, I believe you could have gone a bit harder on your mastering than you did. It's not quite at a level of commercial loudness that really helps the track feel complete. You could compare your songs with that of Kygo, Above & Beyond, or Autograf (or whatever other contemporaries you wish) and find that in general, theirs can be quite a bit louder and still maintain the same vibe you're going for.

I also noticed that the different sections were pretty much cleanly divided between one another - your song goes to the intro, then it goes into the breakdown, then we have a bit of a buildup and then the chorus enters, then it goes into another breakdown, then we have another bit of a buildup before the second chorus, and then it enters the outro. It feels like I'm on a tour bus where i'm being presented these sections one by one with very little connective tissue to relate them to each other. The sections are also mostly identical, to the point where if I started playing at a random point in the song I don't think you could reliably tell me where I am. You know that there should be some sort of warning that the chorus/drop/main dance bit because you have a white noise sweep and it feels like the sounds are approaching a climax but it's so subdued that the chorus is actually somewhat abrupt when it enters.

For your next song, try to incorporate some more fuzzy boundaries, and don't be afraid to hold the audience's hand through the track. Use things like risers, downlifters, drum fills, noise/volume/filter sweeps, crash cymbals, and drum fills to announce that we're at the end of one section or the beginning of another. Introduce sounds a few beats or a few bars before the next section, or have them finish after a section ends to help maintain continuity between sections. Also take some time to study how other artists construct their songs - see if you can start to pick out the progression from beginning to end. Maybe the first breakdown of a song has no bass or percussion, and the second breakdown adds a sub layer and a shaker loop. Maybe the first chorus is more melodic, and the second chorus is more bass-oriented.

These little tweaks allow you to stay with the classic ABABA songwriting style while constantly providing something new and interesting for the listeners to enjoy - and makes your song more like a story and less like a tune, which is much more memorable.

Can't wait to hear the next project!

Any time you don't know what to do, try doing what I do: Steal from someone who does know what they're doing.

In other words, I usually have at least one and as many as 3 or 4 tracks that are in the direction I want to go sitting inside my project so that I can actively reference from them and "borrow" an element from one of them - either vaguely influencing my direction or outright copying them, depending upon what I might need in that moment.

You're going to have to compromise the attack of the sound to some degree, because if it's happening at the onset of every note then it's a part of the transient of the sound.

If it's a pad, though, why do you want it to have a sharp attack? Traditionally speaking, a "pad" is an extra background element used to fill out space in a song, and generally you want transients on things that you want to call attention to. Not saying you're not allowed to have a pad with a fast attack of course, but it's a question worth asking.

Edit: Also this is technically a sound design question, so I'm gonna move this over to that section.