Soft melodic techno

On the one hand I like this song, on the other hand it’s disappointing because without too much effort it could be much better. It starts promising for the first 2, 3 minutes, but then it should keep on escalating.

From the mix, I am a bit concerned that I’ve went too far with cutting around in the highs and removing everything that sounded sharp and annoying.

  1. Have you tried to change your kick ? :wink:
    This one is taking too much energy + I’m not sure about the fast & repetitive pattern for the rest of the track, but less low end and a shorter kick with a slight higher pitch might work better here IMHO.

  2. Drums into space : missing the feel of a room/reverb here + some panning ( sounds like placed either right or left now ).

  3. Spread & effects on synths.

For the rest it’s a cool and easy listening track with a bit of a psychedelic and trippy feel to it :sunglasses:

Hey, thanks for your answer.

1 Yes, a lot. Most of the character of this kick is coming from a gated mono reverb below the kick. It does to a certain extent what I’d like to achieve: this cheap 90s techno kitsch, young kuchenchef on mdma in a bunker outside of Berlin, a monotone kick, changing hihat patterns that sound like an mc505, and some chord based flavour. But then the kick has no real shape. Most likely it’s the same old problem that I need to buy a house and get some decent speakers. After two hours on headphones, everything just gets annoying, especially hihats and that click or tock on a kick.

2 & 3 Yea, it’s all still pretty random panning and very little stereo reverb. Nothing really changed I discovered that method last year. 8 degrees, 15 degrees or full left or right. I really need to read more on how to do that properly. Maybe you remember two, three years ago, when my problem was that I tried to make these big sound walls and everything was just fighting for attention and space and there was no space for nothing and it was an unpleasant screaming of melodic noise. Now I like that I have no problem anymore to add more elements. There is so much space now. On the other hand there is no concept about the placement of sounds in the stereo field. As always, one problem solved, two new problems appear. Hope, it doesn’t need another pandemic to figure that out.

Hmm yes, at the end of the day, what you listen to and your monitoring is definitely key and the more you advance your technical or mixing skills the more you need to pick up the differences and rely on some “accurate” monitoring of course.

But yep, that’s another part of the journey I believe :sunglasses:

Headphones ( the highly praised Sennheiser HD 650 or the infamous Beyer Dynamics Models ( 990 for Open back or 770 for Closed back I think ) + Sonarworks SounID Reference are cheaper than a house and new speakers :wink:

I can only rely on other’s feedback and online reviews mentioning those models, I haven’t really used them except fro some testing with a Beyer Dynamic 770, got a Focal Listen Pro now, used an AKG 271MKII before which was very deceiving ( impossible to mix any low end on those ). Since the room is untreated, it really helps to use headphones + Sonarworks at some points.

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I can’t access the file

@fred29 It’s youtube. Maybe it was done. Working for me.
@Tekalight: I got sonarworks after you recommended it last year. It really made me aware of some weird things I was doing. Anyways, my beyer dynamics dt not so pro headphones just died, which is probably a good thing. I’ll do some extensive research and get me something utterly decent this time.

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Looks like the video was blocked on YT, I can’t access it anymore either.

The video is back. Some Albanian TV channel had filed a copyright claim.

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