Hi Jules :) Indeed the track is particular, but full of research and experimentation! We absolutely don't have to be conventional, but do what we like and inspire us! If you bring everything a little more in your face the track could benefit a lot. Even the voices, I would bring them slightly more to the front. Have a good time :)

Jules, I f*cking love this HARD! That's three banging tunes in a row and this one is my favourite. So much goodness going on, especially the middle eastern instrument samples (baglama?). I have no critique. Bring on the weirdness, my man!

@Vittorio Di Rocco Hi Vittorio ! Thanks for your words and suggestions !

You're so right, it definitely needs to be more in your face,

I tend to be too timid overall. Whenever I try to go a bit bolder, I'm afraid it might lose finesse, and I know these are just unnecessary worries sometimes. Keeping the necessary perspective is definitely not easy..! I'm afraid of ruining it by making choices I don't fully master, so I often go back to softer versions. But I really agree, I need to let go ! I'm getting there, little by little, but I can feel it ! After I put my tracks online, I can hear better how I still tend to hold back, both in composition and mixing. Sometimes I dull my tracks even more during the mastering phase, which is very, very... self-taught, aha.

Maybe one day I'll remix/remaster some of these tracks ? Anyway, each one teaches me a lot!

Thanks a lot again Vittorio, real bro 🤝🎶🖤

@Dylan Neal My man, this is the kind of comment that instantly changes your day !! I’m so pleasantly surprised that you like it this much, what a delight !

The instrument you're talking about, I was looking for an Oud; to me, it was an Oud ! But maybe you're right about the Baglama ? it sounded like an Arabic instrument to me, but I can't say for sure. 🪕

Thank you a thousand times for this gift, I'm so glad, how could anyone not be recharged after this !

Love you, bro, what great news 🖤

'Bring on the weirdness, my man !' ahahahaha love that.

@Json Mondesir 🎂🖤

OK, I checked and you are correct, it was an oud. Anyway, it really adds a different flavour to the tune that takes it from good to damn good! Always a pleasure hearing your tunes because they are never boring 👍

WOW. Transcending genres is (commercially) risky, but it also is a great force into music evolution. Your creations always get my attention and prevent it from going somewhere else. Very interesting from start to finish. Keep it up!

I'm loving this. Art must be dangerous. Move boldly.

@Dylan Neal, @Cuantas Vacas, @John Descy 🌻

Brothers, your latest comments are so in tune; it's incredibly comforting and encouraging to read them one after the other..! You're all so supportive and kind-hearted. I'm really, really happy to share with you guys; you have an emotionally attentive ear and big hearts—that's priceless.

With such a warm reception, I might keep reaching out to you ! You have been warned ! 😜

Thank you so much, to each of you 🖤

This is amazing. As a fellow electronic music producer, it's really nice to hear something so fresh and unique but also really approachable. The mix / master sound excellent and it's easy to make out every element in the track. Nice work!

@Josh Saulenas Thank you so much brother, for these carefully chosen and powerful words, and thank you for sharing; it's such a joy to feel recognized by my musician fellows 🤝🖤

'' After I put my tracks online, I can hear better how I still tend to hold back, both in composition and mixing. Sometimes I dull my tracks even more during the mastering phase, which is very, very... self-taught, aha.''

When mastering, using things like limiting/clipping/saturation can all dull transient information. What you will find, if you listened to the raw mixes of some of the most punchy masters out there, that things like the kick and snare and other elements meant to be very punchy and hard hitting may sound way overly poppy or clicky in the raw mix, because in the mix they have really brought out that transient way too far for normal listening. However, it's done with intent, and after mastering the pops and ticks are no more, and the elements retain a crazy amount of punch and still have a lot of transient information even after very heavy limiting and clipping, unlike many other tracks if subjected with the same level of mastering processing.

Try it!

Get a limiter and get a kick sample or a drum machine kick. Then after the kick place an envalope shaper (I use multiband in practice for much better control, but for this example for simplicity's sake just use a normal envalope shaper). Now, put the limiter after the envalope shaper to 'simulate' mastering and make sure it's biting in hard to the kick with a pretty fast attack (-12db or something and like a 10ms attack). Then what you wanna do is with also a fast attack time crank the attack gain of the kick's envalope untill it sounds almost too much but only just (you want it at like 20 - 30ms, you might have to play with both attack times a bit if actually using this method, but keep them both really fast for this exercise, you only want a few ms of distortion coming through before the limiter clamps down to give that post limiter puch effect). Then back off 0.5db or 1db so it sounds really punchy and good, and then remove the limiter and hear how far you actually pushed the kick... Crazy huh?! 😜

Hopefully this exersice will help you to understand how to better mix for punch with mastering in mind. You do not have to goto this extreme ofc (but it's an actual method people use in music like D+B to retain punch after hard limiting and clipping), this is only to show you what is possible, and not a suggestion that you need that amount of of attack in your tracks. Hopefully though it'll give you the confidence to at least push some element's attacks to bring out the transient info knowing it will gel well with mastering later. 😉👍

This is creative and awesome. Very experimental. Could never work as a real song release cause it's not mainstream. But I think it's great as musical project and just being creative as much as possible. Love it.
The mixing however is another story. Not gonna dive deep into it. The individual sounds are very compressed but the song in general has lot of dynamic. That's blasting my ears out... Especially the bass. The elements should be glued together, share some time based effects and should be balanced a little better.

@Josh Kingsley Can you elaborate on that experiment? Sounds interesting and I think I got the theory but practically it didn't click for me. So you are simulating hard limiting to shape the transient in a way that it sounds the way it is supposed to sound after hard (final) limiting? And then you end up with kind of pokey transients in your PreMaster because that way they sound better when mastered?

@ constantin, yes it's a technique that is prevailent in some upfront generas of dance music (I've even seen it in very well mixed rock track's kick drum before too), it was more a physical thing I wanted you to try out so you could see it in action, as opposed to nessisarily understanding exactly what's going on (although ofc both is better), nor actually using it yourself in practise. If you are trying it and not getting something useful, it may be the attack times of what I use and what you use are not the same (some plug ins have 2 stage attacks etc. etc.).

Basically after heavy limiting and clipping, like what may happen in mastering, you loose a bunch of transient information. So if you only have JUST enough for the mix to sound punchy, when it hits mastering it may very well flatten out too much (a good mastering engineer would recognise this and work around it, but ofc you are mastering yourself and are running into issues), this test was to show that it's better to air on the side of too lively and too punchy, because then you can lean hard into mastering and it will not dull the track too much and still sound awesome at the end and not too punchy, however if you have already squashed a lot of the transients out in the mix (or there is not much to begin with), you can not really get them back.

I'm not sure if the style you make warrents this extream of a practise in reality, and was more just wanting to show it to you as once you see how far you can actually push the kick ... it gives you an idea of what you may loose in the mastering process when pushed far, as well as give you somewhere to start thinking about how you can bring the most life out of your music and not have it sound worse after mastering. At least that was what I was hoping to acheive. ;)

Here's a pretty decent example of what I mean. Goto 16:31 and listen to the bit where he's just playing the drums (you can ignore what he's talknig about as it's not what we are discussing here - although it's a good watch if you want to after)



Have a listen to how much attack and how much of a pop is on the kick drums here. When he has the full mix going, you can't tell, because of everything else he's got going on, but with the drums are soloed you can really hear how much pop the kick has. This is way less extreame than the example I was trying to show you, but it's a nice in the middle example of a more common amount of pop/attack that you wouldn't realise from listening to the full mix (even before mastering), but the attack is still present, and still sounds punchy after all later processing.

I'm singling out the kick because it's the most prominant and most common example, but it's more of a general understanding I'm trying to impart about how to liven up certain elements in a mix with attack, as that's generally the first thing you loose some of when mastering, transient infomation, and you were specifically talknig about mastering causing you issues and loosing some of the life from your tracks in the process so thought this may help. ;)

@Christian Gaertner Thank you for your words ! As for my understanding of mixing, I’m working hard on it ! Sorry for your ears, I’m glad you still managed to listen to the whole track tho ! Hahaha 🙏

@Josh Kingsley It is precisely this part of the practice, being proactive and anticipating, that I am discovering, and it seems to be the biggest challenge in the field of sound engineering and production. And yeah, I feel like every time I finish a track, I uncover new insights that help me anticipate certain things for the next time.

I also feel like decisions regarding aspects like having enough punch, enough dynamics, a good low end, etc., depend so much on our perception and our ability to take a step back. Beyond my technical gaps in how to do things, my main concern is to be able to listen better. It's definitely a real challenge to hear with objectivity in a universe of constant subjectivity..! 🥵

Thank you soooo much for your kindness and intentionality in your messages, for taking the time to share your experience and advice with such precision and care. Your suggestions will definitely be helpful. I have taken note of everything ! ✍️🖤