So I’m not sure what to say about this one… Just started messing around with one of my unfinished tracks… nothing’s really set in stone but I’m a bit too chinky at the moment to think of any other ideas. Give me some ideas
Deadb3at by J.HiZ
decent enough track that
loving the bass 
oh my god i know, I did that last week and i was tripping so hard
really nice track by the way, reminds me a bit of wolfgang gartner but not all overdone like most skrillex stuff. good work
yeah… was up until 3 am. I feel great this morning. haha!
Had a listen this morning and the dynamics are all over the play with my automation. Also for some reason… I feel as though there is something missing but I can’t put my finger on it. Maybe I’m still braindead :crazy:
I’m about ready to call this one quits unless anyone else has any ideas or feedback… any critique?
[quote]J.HiZ (27/04/2011)[hr]yeah… was up until 3 am. I feel great this morning. haha!
Had a listen this morning and the dynamics are all over the play with my automation.
I’m about ready to call this one quits unless anyone else has any ideas or feedback… any critique?[/quote]
J.HiZ i like ur posts on here & we like same music so I will chime in a little…
So I just had a listen through. Its not bad. I like the cool glitchy parts. A few wolfgang-ish oneshots for sure. I could hear the bass pretty well in my headphones at work, so I could prob feel it as well… over all the mixing wasnt too bad. drums were ok.
now onto the critque…
For me it comes down the hook/lead. Gotta remember the hook is ALWAYS the most important. Even more important then the bass IMO. The lead sound is OK at best, and below par for whats going on in electro today on beatport. Its got to have some more “HOW THE F*CK DID HE MAKE THAT LEAD SOUND” to it. Not just like a square or pulse wave pushed up an octave with some reverb + EQ. dunno if thats what it is exactly, but thats what it sounds like. and i know its easy 2 do this, because I am lazy and make cheap leads all the time. It just doesnt have the WOW factor…To a label or other big Dj thats what their gunna hear as well.
Unique sounds is the name of the game! Listen to how unique a lead from Deadmau or Wolfgang is. They are spending TONS of time on just that 1 sound for sure because the sound is prominent throughout the whole track… You want something special.
Last but not least… the hook itself is not catchy enough. I’m not saying its not danceable… because it is… but its not catchy enough. Its not gunna blow people’s minds away & make people slaves to the addictive nature of the HOOK! Don’t think you gotta make a SHM One type hook or something everytime… Not it at all. Its just got to be really catchy. Something people will key-in on.
Also another suggestion might be to do more of a melody with the hook.
Like move the whole hook up a key on the 2nd & 4th - 2 bar intervals within the 8 bar hook.
Try doing that with some chord progressions. It will make it more of a song.
Hope that made sense… overall not bad dude! ur stuff is getting better! 
[quote]UnitedVision (27/04/2011)[hr][quote]J.HiZ (27/04/2011)[hr]yeah… was up until 3 am. I feel great this morning. haha!
Had a listen this morning and the dynamics are all over the play with my automation.
I’m about ready to call this one quits unless anyone else has any ideas or feedback… any critique?[/quote]
J.HiZ i like ur posts on here & we like same music so I will chime in a little…
So I just had a listen through. Its not bad. I like the cool glitch parts. A few wolfgang-ish oneshots for sure. I could hear the bass pretty well in my headphones at work, so I could prob feel it as well… over all the mixing wasnt too bad. drums were ok.
now onto the critque…
For me it comes down the hook/lead. Gotta remember the hook is ALWAYS the most important. Even more important then the bass IMO. The lead sound is OK at best, and below par for whats going on in electro today on beatport. Its got to have some more “HOW THE F*CK DID HE MAKE THAT LEAD SOUND” to it. Not just like a square or pulse wave pushed up an octave with some reverb + EQ. dunno if thats what it is exactly, but thats what it sounds like. and i know its easy 2 do this, because I am lazy and make cheap leads all the time. It just doesnt have the WOW factor…To a label or other big Dj thats what their gunna hear as well.
Unique sounds is the name of the game! Listen to how unique a lead from Deadmau or Wolfgang is. They are spending TONS of time on just that 1 sound for sure because the sound is prominent throughout the whole track… You want something special.
Last but not least… the hook itself is not catchy enough. I’m not saying its not danceable… because it is… but its not catchy enough. Its not gunna blow people’s minds away & make people slaves to the addictive nature of the HOOK! Don’t think you gotta make a SHM One type hook or something everytime… Not it at all. Its just got to be really catchy. Something people will key-in on.
Also another suggestion might be to do more of a melody with the hook.
Like move the whole hook up a key on the 2nd & 4th - 2 bar intervals within the 8 bar hook.
Try doing that with some chord progressions. It will make it more of a song.
Hope that made sense… overall not bad dude! ur stuff is getting better!
[/quote]
Thanks for the feedback UV. 
With only 6 months under my belt, I’m glad to see that people are at least seeing me improve which helps with the motivation.
So for this track I was focused more on actually finishing a track as I always have a terrible habit of making an 8 bar loop and not doing anything with it.
I have also been focusing on my production quality. This project was produced solely with logic plug-ins and my goal was to focus more time on mixing than the musical elements. So that’s why the bass sounds simple. I also kept switching directions and backed myself into corners with what my options were…
But I completely agree with everything you said in your post. It’s all about the melody and the “wtf sounds” for sure!
I think I get what you’re saying about the doing more with the melody… are you referring to what Wolfgang does in the beginning of Space Junk?
(The analog chord progression that comes in at around :30 secs)
[quote]J.HiZ (27/04/2011)
Thanks for the feedback UV. With only 6 months under my belt, I’m glad to see that people are at least seeing me improve which helps with the motivation.
So for this track I was focused more on actually finishing a track as I always have a terrible habit of making an 8 bar loop and not doing anything with it.
I have also been focusing on my production quality. This project was produced solely with logic plug-ins and my goal was to focus more time on mixing than the musical elements. So that’s why the bass sounds simple. I also kept switching directions and backed myself into corners with what my options were…
But I completely agree with everything you said in your post. It’s all about the melody and the “wtf sounds” for sure!
I think I get what you’re saying about the doing more with the melody… are you referring to what Wolfgang does in the beginning of Space Junk?
(The analog chord progression that comes in at around :30 secs)
[/quote]
im in the mood to write… so deal with it!
I love that song as well! Wolfgang is by far my favorite producer. Atleast the past 2 years.
I, like you, (probably around the 6month mark) would have a field day making 8 or 16 bar loops but trouble doing a whole track. Its taken me a lot of practice & time devoted to banging my head against the wall to figure out certain tricks when writing a complete house/electro/dubstep track… And after over a year of producing, I still havnt got it all correct. hahaha. But I think I can help ya a little bit…
IMO… writing a house/electro track starts from 2 points. Chords or a Hook. 1 or the other.
Can you do it another way? sure. Can you do it from vocals? yes.
But I prefer to do it with the hook, because if you understand music theory you can figure out some chords to go with the hook. The hook is the catchyness in electro… NOT the chords. Same for house music its always the hook. Think Swedish House Mafia - ONE… The chords provide a bridge between changes, but its not the main part of the track. Which is what wolfgang did in space junk. He made the main hook and complimented it with the chords. Animal Rights is another PERFECT example of this. Again wolfgang, with deadmau, would have created that main lead sound first. Then created the hook. The rest of the track falls sooooooo easily at this point if you get basic music theory stuff. Could they have done it another way? absolutely… but I will explain why they prob just did it around the hook.
A standard electro hook is 2 bars long. All the tutorials on SA for electro make the loops 2 bars long and arrange them into an 8 bar loop. Listen to Animal Rights the main lead sound. Thats a 2 bar hook repeated into a 4 bar hook, the same 2 bar hook again with a varying-1shots-wolfgang-deadmau 2 bar hook on the tail end. Add them all up and you have a sweet 8 bar electro loop/hook. So I like to think about it in 2 bar segments. Even though my brain keeps telling me to visualize them as 8 because we are looking at the screen in arrangement view…
So what I was saying about the key changes in your track… I do have a point
If you have an 8 bar hook. Split into 4, then you have 4 2 bar loops.
The root note of your initial 2 bar loop is the key of your track. Lets use G for example…
From there you know what key you are in, so develop some chords in the scale that you are in and you are on your way. just make sure the chords sound cool and its a melody that you think will fit correctly with the track. its not easy to do, but I think its much easier to do then writing the actual hook…all you have to do is find the right notes in your key. I usually do chords/stabs in 4 bar clips duplicated into an 8bar.
When you are change a CHORD even if your in a scale of G, your making a key change with the chord that you are playing. so say your chords are G D G B and you have those playing a pattern within an 4 bar loop. Well you could then move your hook from its standard position (root note of G) to match with the chord changes. So now your 8 bar electro hook follows the chord changes as well, and creates… a melody! It’s easy as hell to do as well. Just go to the clip you want to change hook key of, highlight all the notes and move the root note of the hook to the note within the same octave scale that your chord change lies on. So just highlight the hook on G and move all the notes to D.
so visually if your original hook was 2barG,2barG,2barG,2barG then the new hook following the chords would be 2barG,2barD,2barG,2barB. This gives your hook a groove AND a melody to it and makes the whole thing into a song. From there you can do even more stuff like do chord reversals (like if you went up, then go down for 8 bars)… its pretty much limitless. Also the chord progressions can get really complicated if you know what your doing/how-to-play. You can go pretty crazy with it… See Skrillex…
So basically my whole post was about writing an electro track based off the hook.
At the start I also said you could do it from the chords…
Basically its the reversal. You come up with a chord progression that is super catchy and awesome sounding, and then you write a hook from that chord progression. You still get the same result of 2barG,2barD,2barG,2barB and you have all the key components to write a dance music track from this point.
A good example of writing chords before the hooks is Deadmau5 - GhostsNStuff. The chords in the start are the basis for the whole track. He def wrote that hook based off those chords. Also I find its easier to write dubstep from chords rather from just a cool wobble hook. When you have the chords in dubstep your golden. Its just making the sounds that takes forever.
sorry for the long post, but I felt like explaining some of my thoughts to somebody ahaha. and yah man ur stuff is getting better! I pay attention to the people on here that actually make stuff thats more my style… i know others do as well.
i hope my post made sense or maby helped you think about something different
once i learned about writing tracks that way, it made it much easier for me to bang out a complete track. i can do it much easier now, and I get better at it everytime I do it… so keep practicin! I’m with you as well, cause I am spending a lot of time about making sounds … sound PRO. still working on it! we’ll get there tho!
Well for 6 months that’s a spot on track! The only thing that stuck out to me that I didn’t like was the length of the break.
I agree with what uv said about the hook or something but could be arsed to read all of his posts lol
Sorry uv
[quote]Mussi81 (27/04/2011)[hr]Well for 6 months that’s a spot on track! The only thing that stuck out to me that I didn’t like was the length of the break.
I agree with what uv said about the hook or something but could be arsed to read all of his posts lol
Sorry uv :)[/quote]
hahaha. no worries dude. after posting it i was like WOW that was long. hopefully J.Hiz will read it!
[quote]UnitedVision (27/04/2011)[hr][quote]Mussi81 (27/04/2011)[hr]Well for 6 months that’s a spot on track! The only thing that stuck out to me that I didn’t like was the length of the break.
I agree with what uv said about the hook or something but could be arsed to read all of his posts lol
Sorry uv :)[/quote]
hahaha. no worries dude. after posting it i was like WOW that was long. hopefully J.Hiz will read it![/quote]
read every word! and it made a lot of sense… thanks for taking the time out to write it!
@Mussi81 could you elaborate a bit on your thought with the break?