This track has been submitted for your friendly, constructive criticism. What useful feedback can you give the artist? The floor is yours to talk about the track and how they can fix problems in and improve upon the mix and the song.
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Description of the track:
One of my first tracks. I’m still new to the world of production as a college student. Constructive criticism is greatly appreciated.
Terms of Use: This track is available for download.
Have a listen to the track and offer your constructive criticism for this Workshop in the comments section.
- Do you enjoy the song or track itself? Does it have potential?
- Can the arrangement be improved?
- How did you find the mix? What would you do differently?
- What do you enjoy about the rhythm track? What can be done to improve it?
- Is the choice of instruments relevant and effective for the style/song?
- Are the lyrics (if any) effective? Does the style, arrangement and genre of the song suit them?
- Can you suggest any specific techniques that might improve the track?
- Do you have any other constructive feedback?
Need constructive criticism on your own tracks? Submit them for a workshop using this form. Most but not all submissions are published. There may be a wait of up to two months.
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I really enjoyed this track. I like how you keep the main theme going throughout. Keep it up!
Hey man, this is a good start. It’s very two-dimensional. What I mean is that there is no depth or imaging. Check out some tutorials on panning (Left-Center-Right). Also, learn more about how to use processors. This will give your music depth. Reverb is a great way to achieve depth. There is definitely a whole lot to learn. Also, check out some tutorials on equalization and how to carve frequency gaps. Everything is there, but it doesn’t sound mixed. Once you start mixing, you may even find that you’ll have to take certain parts out or layer them differently. Make sure to reference other songs that fall into this genre to hear how it is mixed and compare yours to that. I don’t know what your background is but this is a great start. Hope this helps.
Also, compression will help a lot. To find the mix, you have to decide what is the driving force. I would have to go with drums on this track. Start with the kick and build the mix around the drums. When you have sounds that fall into the same frequency spectrum they clash and usually the loudest one wins. this makes for a very unbalanced mix. Make sure that the amplitude isn’t clipping (some of the instruments sound a little distorted). The rule of thumb is to stay between -3 and -6 dB. This gives you headroom when you go to mix. If this doesn’t make sense, check out some tutorials on Gain Staging. Keep workin’ it’s definitely a good start.
Thanks for the comments, Cody. I’m no stranger to mixing and gain staging and all, and I deliberately put distortion effects on quite a lot of the tracks (piano especially, to give it a darker sound). I guess when I say I’m a beginner I mean I’m new to producing using Logic, though I’ve used it for about 7 months now and have used recording hardware for another three or four years before that. I get what you’re saying about the two-dimensionality of the mix. I did throw a reversed reverb on on the main piano part which gave it kind of a breathing/pumping feel, but beyond that my use of delay/reverb was fairly limited. Could you comment more specifically on the parts of the mix that could use more compression as well? I used a hell of a lot on the drum parts, specifically the ride cymbals (I also layered seven tracks of drums together for the final sound). I’m surprised you can’t hear it, but oh well. Can you comment more specifically on which parts you hear competing for space in the mix? Thanks again for your constructive comments.
It would be interesting to see some movement (recession and swell) of the drums. Tossing a filter on the drum buss and modulating cutoff during more quiet instrumental bits and then creating big swells at more powerful choruses would add space, breath, and a new dimension to the track. Try it and see if I’m right. Maybe it’ll work out better.