Humans don’t need to apply - Robotic Synthwave by Man from Space

Lots of months and lots of banging my head against the wall later, this one is finished…

AND I GOT MYSELF INTO TROUBLE!

On the mixing side, this track is much more complex than I’m used to. Two things trouble me:

1 - fitting the voices in place: a male vocodered voice for verses and a female harmonised one for choruses. I got myself into trouble, no doubt.
2 - Absolute lack of perspective. This track was months in the making because things weren’t falling into place. The bass line was rewritten twice. Harmonising the female voice was not even part of the plan when I recorded the vocals.

To summarise, I have no idea whether the track sounds good or makes any sense at all, but I want to put it out of my system.

Here it goes:

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Again a tune that speaks to me. Really fitting synth sounds and as somebody with a slight vocoder addiction, the vocals are of course a delight to listen to.

Listening on headphones (which tend to exaggerate exactly the points I’m critizing now), I find it a bit too much stereo stuff/reverb in general. It feels overly busy and crowded with too much sound at the sides and in the back.

The kick is a tad too much “edm” for my taste. It feels too hard compared to the rest of the song, if that makes sense. And the toms sound so noticably panned to one spot at the side and detached from the drums. Normally you don’t do them this way or I never recognized it.

Thanks for checking. I let this sleep and then referenced, considering your points, and I agree. So I did a couple adjustments on the kick to soften it a bit: hi passing it over 40Hz, reducing its volume a bit. I did not tweak the attack, but I’m considering giving it a nudge, just enough to make the transient less aggressive. I also attacked the snare, too noisy around the 6KHz mark… but in fixing it, I think I overcompensated. I’ll check again tomorrow, fresh.

Regarding reverb, I tried reducing all send reverbs about 3db, and nothing fell out of place, so it seems it was the right thing to do.

After those changes, the track sounds the same, but feels less “ear demanding”, if that makes sense. I’ll call this a victory.

Thanks again!

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Sorry, I’m getting back very, very late on this one :blush:

Reason is that I unfortunately had to move the studio desk in a new room and nothing fits in terms of audio, so in a nut-shell : I have lost my ears !! ( or at least my trusty/habit/used to… whatever, I was familiar with ).
Listening on brand new headphones as well and have moved from closed to open back headphones, so everything is very different and that will take some time to get on with new listening habits and good referencing again I believe.

So, I suppose this is the amended version after some time, its sounds good to me, nice work with the vocals IMO. Maybe a less harsh/short and “in your face” kick and more washed toms with reverb ? And then maybe the arp synth part ( i.e : at 1:25 ) with more delay/echo/reverb. But again, I won’t go too much into details since I’m not yet feeling 100% sure with what I’m listening. So it’s OK for a broad impression, but not for going sharp into details.

Anyway, nice one to listen to and happy to see that you’re keeping it up with music production :wink:

Cheers !