Hey all, I've been working on this new techno track with a strange lead, and I'm looking for some feedback.
I haven't done the mix properly yet, but I'd love to hear what you think. What stands out? Do you have any specific points of improvement regarding production choices or the mix so far? Thanks in advance!
Compression took me years to get to grips with. I understood the principle pretty fast, but actually hearing it took way longer. I would always way over cook things because that was the only way I could hear it, but more often than not compression is more of a feel thing than a hear thing (although the more time you spend with it, the more you can actually hear it). It's kind of a tricky one, cos unless your compressor is adding a lot of harmonics, you're more listening to what isn't there, or to the shape of the sound, rather than the sound it's self if that makes sense?
What I ended up doing was sticking a hardware optical compressor on my main PC output (can be a plug in and any type of compressor really - just optical is the slowest, so one of the harder ones to hear, and it's just what I happened to have as I got into DIY audio gear and built a bunch of compressors for myself). Although optical is great for vocals, so not a bad choice in this scenario.
I then spent months with it and every time I played a new YouTube vid or a new song, I would re-adjust it to taste ... and eventually I got super proficient at telling what exactly the compressor was doing as I was constantly living with it and constantly using it and dialling it in over and over again. I tried to incorporate practise into my leisure time without it getting in the way ofc. and it worked really well. I since did it with a bunch of different types of compressors, and that's how I got to know them all well. :)
I tried the same thing with EQ and saturation, but that doesn't seamlessly go well with leisure, as often any EQ you do makes the sound worse (if it's already well balanced) and saturation doesn't always compliment things. Sometimes EQ would help, but I find you get a lot less practise this way compared to compression, where 75% of YouTube vids are direct recordings from a nice sounding mic just with 0 compression and only about 24% have a sub par mic/recording environment that really badly needs EQ (this is more talking about bigger creators, and ofc if you always watch much smaller creators you would need to EQ more often). EQ and saturation is best to play about with over music that actually needs it in my experience, but the compressor over YouTube vids is a really neat way to learn and actually makes the sound better in most cases.
Hey, guys! I was wondering, do you think about your motive when you create music? There is so much dark music out there, be it lyrics or beats that suggest into that. Lately I feel paralyzed to create new music because I don't want to tap into that subconscious pipe. And it happens without realising. I was wondering If you are aware of that? Or maybe you like dark music? Or do you make effort to create music that would drive you listeners closer to God?
