Any advice on this reject please

Envato Authors AudioJungle
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Cool track, and nice to hear something in this style!

It’s a nice composition, but here’s what I thought when I heard it:

• It sounds a bit like a demo at this point. The drums sound like they’re sitting really centered and way back in the mix. Now, a track like this shouldn’t sound TOO “produced”, but a little less demo/live feel wouldn’t hurt. Overall, the mix sits too far back in my opinion.

• A few of the slides are a little bit rushed. Nothing major though.

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Hi Flumen. Thanks for the feedback. Would you mind explaining a little more what you mean by “The mix sits too far back” What would you do to try and fix this?

Thanks :slight_smile:

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Well, too far back usually means too much room/reverb, not enough compression/volume and not enough highs (like tape saturation).

It’s a mixture of these things and in a mix, hundreds of small decisions and tweaks largely affect the outcome. When people say “jump out of the speakers”, they usually refer to a combination of compression and saturation (that adds a mix of the right harmonics at musically pleasing frequencies).

A track like this should of course not sound like a polished EDM tune, but I think that it needs a bit more work to sound “commercial”.

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Thanks Flumen.
Much appreciated. I’ll work on this mix a bit more, it does sound a bit dull at the moment. I think my ears are quite sensitive to high frequencies so I tend to cut them too much. I should really use reference tracks more often too.

Cheers

:slight_smile:

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Hey Gavin!

Loved your track. It has a warm, organic vibe that’s not easy to find around here lately. Listen, I think there are roughly two main aspects you might want to polish:

  • The drums: they sound a bit careless overall, IMO. It’s like you just threw a 4x4 loop there and played and recorded along. No fills, no crashes (not even in the beginning nor the ending), no open hi-hats… adding some might help to define the different parts and give the track a structure. Besides that, they are a bit opaque in quite drowned in reverb.

  • Master: I would consider emphasizing the low and highend a notch and work on the overall compression (perhaps with a multi-band comp and a limiter/maximizer you can achieve both?).

But mainly, I’d work on those drums! :slight_smile: There are no guarantees, but probably with a few tweaks in these areas you can get the track approved.

Best of luck!
WM.

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Hi Wormwood

Thanks for the feedback. It was a hard reject but I will be trying to upload it somewhere else after a few tweaks. You are right about the drums. It was just some grooves I found in SSD4. I never know if my drums are too loud or not. Glad you liked it though, and thanks for your comments.

Gavin :slight_smile:

1 Like
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Hi again.

Would you mind giving your opinion on this track again? I’ve made the drums a bit more interesting and added the waves J37 for some tape saturation and I also added a multiband compressor and adjusted the eq a bit. Do you think it needs more high end?

Thanks

Gavin

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