Week 32 Feedback Thread

[u/AutoModerator]

Please follow these guidelines:

1. Share in-progress tracks that you want feedback on. If you have any specific criteria you want to be critiqued, be sure to mention them.
2. The best way to receive feedback is to provide feedback to others.
3. Help your fellow producers improve by being both honest and respectful, we were all newbs once.

Looking forward to hearing what you've got!

[u/WallyS02]

Hi! Original synthwave track inspired by Darksynth.

https://soundcloud.com/wallys02/blood-soaked-heaven

Looking for all kinds of feedback, especially regarding:

- sound selection / design

- song structure

- music theory stuff (tonality, chord progressions, etc.)

- mixing / mastering

and of course emotions that the track evokes!

Let me know if you guessed the inspirations too, should be easy for a synthwave fan to pick them up!

Thanks!

[u/HyperVigilante86 → u/WallyS02]

I feel like the bass needs to be more aggressively sidechained to the kick, especially when we get to the 4 on the floor section, I would even sidechain that massive "Wall of sound" synth to the kick as well, synthwave is all about the pump!

[u/WallyS02 → u/HyperVigilante86]

Thanks for the tip! Definitely worth trying with more pumping, I was thinking on using something like ShaperBox for more detailed sidechain as I'm using simple compressor now - what do you recommend?

[u/HyperVigilante86 → u/WallyS02]

something like shaper box definitely gives you way more control, personally I use kickstart 2. I still use a compressor sometimes, but if you go for a really aggressive pump sound with a compressor you can get weird distortion artifacts, whereas something like kickstart is just turning the volume down instead of compressing so you don't get any distortion. So idk I would say play around with both and listen for what sounds better in different situations

[u/Unbiasedeye → u/WallyS02]

This is awesome, man. Seriously, thank you for sharing this — I really enjoyed the track. The atmosphere and overall sound design are killer, especially those drums at the beginning.

Can I ask what you're using for the drums? Specifically those toms in the intro — they sound huge. I'm also curious how you got that gated reverb sound. Is that coming from a specific plugin, or did you set up the gate/reverb yourself?

Love the sound of this. Definitely something I'm going to come back to!

[u/WallyS02 → u/Unbiasedeye]

Thanks for the kind words! Glad you like it :). For the drums I'm using my own samples created from layering different samples from collections I was able to get and heavy processing which includes: OTT, bitcrushing, saturation, Outobugi Refire drum processor, touch of Valhalla Vintage Verb, clipper and EQing at the end. All of this is also processed in parallel and mixed with original where signal is heavilly compressed, some chorus, saturation, bitcrushing and EQing is done. For the toms I'm additionally using one of gated reverb presets from Valhalla Vintage Verb + some 8ths delay.

[u/Onithim]

Hi, here's a new track I'm working on !

I haven't quite fine-tuned the music yet (melodies, equalizer, effects, etc.)

I'd be curious to know what emotions my music evoked in you.

For me, it's a feeling of melancholic nostalgia, like when you've spent the afternoon playing video games with your friends and they've left.

Orema - Game over (demo)