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Drink-Mix Man
Mar 4, 2003

You are an odd fellow, but I must say... you throw a swell shindig.

intervolver posted:

Song Title: Glace Acide
Artist: Intervolver
URL: https://soundcloud.com/gabriel-tripp/glace-acide
Genre: Acid Breaks (I think!)
Song length: 3:47

I'm focusing on mixing and mastering right now, trying to get better at production in between studying synthesis fundamentals, so I thought I had made a breakthrough with this; better volume range, more dynamic sounds etc...

A friend told me it sounded "weak" and that it lacks "juice". I'm not sure what juice means, and if he was describing a problem with the mix, the volume, the range, or the composition. My self-assessment is that my composition needs the most work at this juncture (I'm not absorbing music theory as quickly as I'd like), but the worst thing about being wrong is that you don't know that you are wrong! I need to keep growing, but essentially everyone I show my work to say the equivalent of "nice track!", and I'm feeling kind of stranded and directionless about how to continue improving. I would really appreciate any input on what this is lacking, what might be wrong with it, and what I should focus on to keep moving forwards.

I feel you pain, because I feel like I'm in the same boat with feedback and uncertainty about my mixing skills, and recently find myself in the similar places.

As an unbiased listener just trying to help out (not necessarily an authority), it seems like your friend's feedback could partly just be his own expectations about what he thinks an electronic track should sound like. I personally didn't find anything "wrong" per se with the mix or composition, but I know there are things you could do to give it more punch if that's what you're after. If it was my track, for example, I would probably experiment more with compressing the kicks harder, and see what happens in the master if I push the whole thing a little harder against the roof of the limiter. Maybe find a good tape .vst to glue the mix together and give it a little more push and texture.

Or if the clean conventional electronica sound isn't what I'm after, I might I go the other way, mangle it more with the analog effects and modulation, see if I can get something interesting and warped sounding out of it.

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Drink-Mix Man
Mar 4, 2003

You are an odd fellow, but I must say... you throw a swell shindig.

Cool, glad my thoughts were useful.

I'll take you up on your offer. Here's the most recent track I've been messing with, kind of a laid-back affair:

https://soundcloud.com/eric-zak/squares-12-4-2?in=eric-zak/sets/meditation-for-dogs

I usually stick with ambient/experimental things, so this is one of my first forays into doing something with a groove that's a little more controlled...

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