My First Track: Need Feedback

[Dublatron]

This is the first track I've produced. lemme know what think, tips/advice would be great


Soundcloud

[kaiori breathe]

Nice eerie intro, reminds me of some of the music from Zelda: Ocarina Of Time, or FFVII, nice drum patterns, the fax machine sounding bass that comes in first comes in a little hard and is a bit unexpected I think, i think maybe a bar or so of silence before that section comes in would do it good so i'm expecting it a little more, or maybe, instead of that a little more build up to that point and making the drop a little heavier would help melody that comes in at 2:20ish is pretty interesting, nice twists and turns sounds really persian, it gets a little chaotic when you introduce those big octave jumps though i think, those piano stabs sound a little unnatural but i think in this case it works. Overall this is pretty good as a whole, there were enough change ups and new ideas for me to not get bored and the progression was pretty solid, although i tend to prefer tracks that follow a 'intro-drop-breakdown-drop-outro' sort of formula than those which slowly progress which it seems yours does, but that's more personal taste than anything. Nice work man, especially for a first track, you've definitely got something to be proud of there, a very strong first tune with a lot of great ideas/sounds and good production value over all.

[rainbo]

Okay you said its your first track so i hope it doesn't bother you that i say there's a lot that can be done here. One thing a lot of people worry about is loudness. Your track has a lot of peaks that are going to push your loudness down. listen to your track in your daw and watch the master fader's peak db meter. Use that meter to identify when your track is peaking and weed out the peaks to bring up your loudness. Also one thing i always like to remember when i'm making my beats is a quote from GZA that goes something like "1/2 times as long 2 times as strong" which is basically saying don't have your loops repeating too much. Think about it if your loop is dope and people here it a couple times "they"ll think man that was a dope track but too short". but if its long and they get bored all they will think is "that was boring." You've done a lot to switch up your track and its got some good ideas for sure. And your mixdown really isn't bad as far as clarity goes. but unless the peaks are intentional which i doubt you should weed them out to bring up loudness, and again i would recommend shorter.


pls check out my latest track and return the feedback here. http://www.dubstepforum.com/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=195139

[rainbo]

@dublatron Thanks for the feedback man i appreciate it. To answer your question about peaking; No, when your master volume goes into the red thats "clipping." You want to avoid that too unless its intentional. When i say peaking i mean small bits of your track (usually drum hits) that are substantially louder than your track's avg volume(rms). Can be caused by all different stuff. for example you might have like a high note in your sub line that plays at the same time as a kick with high velocity. In such a case you might want to go in and turn down the note or sidechain compress it because the peak it will cause will push the rest of your track down in volume, or in other words cost you headroom and loudness.