Hey all. I did this in like 5 hours today with all original melodic sounds. Fuck sample packs and presets.

Let me know what y'all think. I'd love to get some honest feedback both positive and negative!

So if you can do it in the form of a critique sandwhich: One thing you liked, One thing you disliked/thought needed work, and another thing you liked.

Thank you and I love you all.
https://soundcloud.com/decypher-3/apex/s-kCWbZ

Cheers

uhhhh it still isn't working hahaha, is it private? that may be why

EDIT: Wow I just figured out how to change your texts' color and it's pretty BA

Yayyy okay it works haha.

Okay so the drum groove at the beginning is rough, but that's okay because you did this in 5 hours and it's impressive you got all of this down that fast haha.

I seriously love this melody, honestly this rocks haha.

At around 1:00 and 2:30, those piano stabs might need some reverb. Also the drops need more reverb and space; maybe some white noise going on or just slight background noise to sort of "fill it up." I love the stutter effect going on with the supersaw, though it's great!

Things to note:

1). I actually recognize one of the hats you used (the one at the outro that plays alone with the saw) as one I have haha
2). Would you mind sharing the chords? I can't exactly nail them down and it's frustrating because they are so great haha.

Good song! It's incredible you made this so quickly!

snare too loud relative to the kick

kick is just too quiet for the whole mix. the kick should be the loudest element on your track but it gets lost under everything.

Learn how to properly eq and compress your kick.

your composition skills are actually decent, the melodies and stuff are kinda cool man

Your track could also use some white noise upsweeps and downsweeps to add to the atmosphere

good luck.

compression is basically making certain parts of a sound quieter, and other parts louder.

The majority of the loudness from a kick (its decibel output) comes from it's bass (the thump of the kick). if you increase or decrease the volume of a kick, you're equally increasing/decreasing the loudness of both the transient (the high end, slappy/punchy part of the kick) and the low end, thumpy part of the kick.

But what if you could increase the snappy, punchy part and not the lower part?

Compression is just a fancy term used to describe very fast volume automation. That's what compression is used for. To create the ILLUSION that something sounds louder than it actually is. You're reducing the volume distance between the snap and the thud in the kick.

So in effect, you're 'averaging out' the overall volume of the kick, So its more consistent - and hits harder (without increasing its overall DB output!)

I'd recommend watching tutorials on this. What DAW do you use?

FL12

I get it now. I've never had compression explained to me so simply. Everywhere else I've looked they way over complicate it. Grew up as a sound kid so I grasp a lot of the techy production stuff quickly and understand what it all does. Good to know though! Ill definitely look up some videos and experiment with it more now.

Just watched a video that exclusively talked about compressing kicks. I understand it almost completely now, but of course it'll take a lot of experimentation and practice to get it down. I've done a lot to clean up and master the song better now, as well as adding a few more things rhythmically and melodically. I'll post an updated audio sometime in the coming week.

Thanks for you help and feedback. As someone who's been learning everything himself this forum could not have come at a better time.

Props to Mat Zo for bringing classic forums back!