hi! I'm a 16 year old from bergamo, Italy, i started playing guitar in my bedroom(self-taught) a couple of years ago, the started writing songs and last year in december I bought a focusrite and a mic and started producing my own songs, i do it every day because it makes me feel less alone and I have met lots of people with my same interest , I first started playing guitar because i saw Nirvana's mtv unplugged and that inspired me a lot, then I was inspired by jeff buckley, elliot smith and started singing and taught myself how to sing, now I listen to a lot of rap(MacMiller, Eminem ecc) and trap.
I am called gio__pando on instagram and one month and a half ago i started to post consistently because I decided it's time to show myself to people, my name on soundcloud is gio and friday I will be releasing on Soundcloud(and eventually on Youtube) my first mixtape in italian of 9 songs. I would be glad if you listened to even just one of them(i recommend -trucco=+bella= or carenza di sodio) and told me what you think I should fix or pay more attention to. thanks!
Giovanni! I just want to start of by saying that you already doing this at 16 with this amount of intent and focus is very impressive. I don't even know what I did at your age but it sure as hell wasn't what you're doing. Keep it up!
I took a listen to non so cosa vuoi dirmi and these are the notes I have made:
1. The most obvious is how far back the lead vocal is in the mix. You could easily turn them up a notch while also carving out space for them from competing instruments (google lead vocal sitting in pocket to find tutorials).
2. The guitar coming in at 1:24 is too present for my liking. I would both turn it down a bit as well as take out some high mids from them.
3. Just an overall tip. Try to start listening to music actively. This means to pay attention to your favorite artists sound selection, how the songs are mixed as well as overall arrangement. Arrangement is huge in creating palletable music and focusing on that will never go wrong.
I will stop there for now as I see no point in continuing pointing out minute mixing details. My most important tip to you by far though is to get more experience. So continue writing and producing more songs. That will teach you more than any feedback will ever give you. It will develop your own signature sound which is very important for artists such as yourself. While feedback is good it's very seldom 100% objective. It's often based on people's own musical taste which makes it fundamentally complicated.
Let me repeat myself Giovanni. The fact that you're this far along mindset wise at 16 years old is a MASSIVE gift. Nurture it.
thank you so much for your feedback! the next time I will lower a bit the guitar and when I have some free time I will go search how to make the lead vocal sit in the pocket. thanks!
Ciao Giovanni :) ti scrivo in italiano così faccio prima. Concordo pienamente con i consigli di John Ackerberg. Continua a sperimentare e a lavorare tutti i giorni... sei talmente giovane che se ti impegni un giorno raccoglierai ottimi risultati. Unico consiglio, attenzione sempre con gli effetti; è molto facile farsi prendere la mano. Cerca sempre di tenere la voce in primo piano: in questa traccia basterebbe forse abbassare il delay e riverbero che prende troppo spazio sui Side. Buona musica a presto :)
Sound design is changing so fast that it ages almost instantly. What feels fresh today can be outdated by tomorrow. But a good arrangement is a stable value - once you master it, you can stay relevant for a long time.
I guess that depends a lot. In electronic music, there are a lot of artists from the 60's and 70's still relevant for their soundshape, just like in the 90's and 00's. We still refer to hiphop, techno, early electronic for our synth and drum sounds. As goes for guitar sounds like Jimi Hendrix, Pink Floyd, and many other big artists in any genre for that matter. But in the end all of them needed both to be remembered, if you have a good arrangement but crappy sound design (or the other way around for that matter), you will not be relevant in any time :)
I think good arrangement is lacking in a lot of modern popular music. Many of the songs that I remember and that people will be learning and playing years from now have something in common: a great arrangement.
Hello! This is my first ever attempt at breakcore, or just a super chaotic song like this is general, so I would really appreciate any constructive criticism on the production or anything else you think could be improved!
Hey Will. I am not super familiar with breakcore, but I think I can see what you were going for. In the drums I don't think there is quite enough for the listener to hold on to to keep the song together. There needs to be a little bit more of a recognizable pulse. Dialed all the way down that is kick on 1 and 3 and snare on 2 and 4 (the money beat). This has to be your starting point before you go and start breaking the rules. As you think about song structure you want to start to think in phrases. Typically bars of 1,2,4,8,16. These are the places that we are used to hearing ideas repeat. Even if you have complete chaos if it regularly repeated every 1,2,4,8, or 16 bars you would end up with something that we could call music. Wynton Marsalis said that music is organized sound, if it's organized in someway it can be considered music. So your goal it seems, is to push the limits of organization without loosing the ability to call it music. To do this I would suggest you give slightly more organization. Perhaps a more recognizable phrase in your drums. Get a strong down beat on the kick, or a strong 2 or 4 accent on the snare more often. You have to give the listener points in the music where they can gain their bearings, and then you can scramble things up again. Music is all about tension and release.
I actually do think the drum beat is reasonably followable, though I agree that having strong beats to anchor a groove will help glue things together a little more. On a somewhat unrelated note, music is whatever you want to call it! The beautiful thing about it is that it's subjective, so even though we might have vastly different tastes, it's all still music :)
hi all :) ive taken all of your feedback from my last mix and tried to apply it in this new one. I used sidechain compression on the bass, which is my first time using sidechain compression so i doubt its any good but i focused a lot on getting the kicks to do what theyre supposed to do and also adding found sounds into my work, which is the very subtle whirring noise in the background. i want to try and keep moving away from depending on MIDI instruments and more toward audio and vocals, so theres only 3 midi elements in this mix. any feedback would be really helpful :)
Hi Rachel, it seems like you're moving in a good direction. Just to echo what John said, now is a great to to consider what you want to do with this. I do think it can be fun, and even productive, to just make loops, but I think you really start to level up once you're turning them into full tracks and completely finishing them, e.g. mixing and mastering them--or at least getting them to the final stage that you intend to get your tracks to. Nice work, and I wish you the best on your music production journey.
One final thought: real instruments/voices are nice, and there is nothing wrong with midi, or loops/samples if you use those at all. Ultimately, it's about making something awesome that is an expression of you and your feelings, and it doesn't matter how you do it if it sounds cool and is authentic. So in the end, I don't think you need to worry about your ration of software to real instruments; you can just do what helps you achieve your goal the fastest.
Hello Rachel! I think your sidechain compression is very good for a first time, so don't go saying it isn't! However I think that if you even just doing something a simple as just reducing the gain/high end on your drum track it would make a big difference to helping it sit into the mix, as right now it feels very piercing. This obviously will not entirely solve the problem but it's a simple way to possibly help it. Apart from that I like it! Also, do not fear midi instruments. They obviously do not sound as good as real instruments, but just finding some nice plugins (even free ones are fine) can go a long way to making them sound more real (not saying there's anything wrong with real instruments, just saying that midi can be great if you don't have them on tap!)
Hello everyone! I´ve recently published my first song (beat, mix and master) and i´d love to hear your feedback about both the beat and the mixing and mastering.
nice track :) great vibe. kick and bass is fighting eachother a bit for sure. you can hear on the 3rd note of the bassline they really clash, maybe more sidechain. if you're using a compressor to sidechain try using a volume shaper like lfotool or shaperbox as its much more accurate than a compressor. it's weird because it sounds like its sidechained but on that 3rd note it clashes hard so im unsure what the problem is exactly. love the vocals!
Hi Kamal :) it's not really my style. I think the vocals are very beautiful, but they're a little detached from the music. I feel like the vocals are too in your face and everything else is too far back. It could be your artistic choice, so in that case, no problem. Otherwise, I'd broaden the background music slightly (because it sounds a little too centered) and try to integrate the vocals a little more into the mix! (Not too much, so as to maintain this style anyway.) Anyway, great track, good idea!!!
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