How to start, make, and finish a proper track

  stolemb said:

  welcome to the machine said:

i dunno, its a pretty good start, look into learning to mix maybe, a big big part of how to make you're track sound good, to you're ears and others, is how its been mixed. you're tracks a good basis to work off and i dont think the problem lies with you're composition or programming but all you're sounds are bunched together in a big mess sonically.

 

eq, compress, read some mix tutorials, get those sounds seperated and phat in there own frequency spectrum and that track could sound prety good.

 

Yeah, thats the main thing that makes me get bored of continuing things.. when I start to add a considerably amount of different stuff at the same time, it sounds like shit, messed up etc. Thats why I wrote this:

http://forum.watmm.com/index.php?showtopic=18615

 

Beat programming can tell if I continue a track or not also. If after an hour or so that I've worked on the first beats, and they don't sound/etc good and doesn't flow well with the bass/melody to me, I just can't continue things (the thing I attached its a clear example of that).

hmm. well im not quite sure of your process as yet. if you are compressing the whole mix to suit the bass at the beggining of your track its going to sound bad and the bass will probs take over as you mentioned in that thread.

if you're compressing the bass on its own (as you should, normally) and beefing it up to a large extent you will be increasing upper harmonics in the sound meaning it starts to encroach on the midrange sounds, messing things up. the solution? eq the unnecessary highs and mids out of the bass, and eq the lows out of the mids etc.

pick the range or ranges you need you're bass to be present in and give that range ONLY to the bass. if you want a massive, heavy kick as well as the bass in that region, consider using a ducking (or sidechaining, same thing :) ) compressor, which will cut the bass a little when the kick is active, giving it space to breathe in the same spectrum.

then move on to the other sounds, 1 by 1 seperate them or bunch them together. eq several similar tracks in the same area and compress together to get a punchy lead or thick pad. or eq them apart clinically to give you're mix depth and space (or maybe to make it messy and cluttered, its in the balance)

all of these things take a track thats a mess of ill defined sounds and create a shimmering glittering monster, its mainly eq and compression but theres other things out there as well. you will start to mix properly, mess up a few tracks, find techniques that work for you and slowly get good results. in the end you will have an idea of how a track will sound mixed so you can compose with it as a mess confident it will come clear in the end, but its a long long process.

sometimes electronic music is 40% composing and 60% mixing!

btw you mention the fruity compressor, ive not used it but i wouldnt trust a free bundled compressor or eq, there often a bit shite. tbh a software compressor doesnt really sound allot like a REAL compressor ever, but free vsts like the voxengo stuff and the BLOCKfish are pretty damn good!

o