Critiques please. :)

Discussion about Eurobeat making. Hints & Tips, Eurobeat projects, programs, plug-ins, samples and so on.
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Spacepotato1
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Critiques please. :)

Post by Spacepotato1 » 02 Apr 2017, 05:36

Hello good people of Eurobeat Prime!

So I managed to get my grubby little hands on some isolated tracks from some old rock and metal bands, and figured "hey, why not eurobeat?"
About a day and a half later, this is what my brain crapped out:

https://soundcloud.com/user-38557145/bi ... pacepotato

The thing that's bugging me about it though, is it just doesn't sound 100% eurobeat to my ears. It sounds more like the guys from Denki Groove drank a metric ton of coffee and binge watched Initial D... That and the mix is just a little off. Any suggestions on how to get the instruments to separate besides messing with the volume?

There's that, and this is really the first time I've taken a stab at using samples in FL Studio, so any advice there on top of anything else you wanna throw my way would be appreciated.

Akira
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Re: Critiques please. :)

Post by Akira » 02 Apr 2017, 11:14

Overall I would say the problem is the mixing itself. Sounds like all the elements are well placed and sound well, but seem to be competing with each other.

I think you should try to start mixing them one by one. For example, I usually start with drums and bass and start mixing them until the bass stands out and has presence but the kickdrum is clear. Then I add some guitars or some arpeggiators, and start EQing, panning, etc. so that they will sound lower than the vocals and the lead synths but will not be messing with the bass. And so on, adding new instruments and mixing them as relative one another. In every moment you should think which instrument needs more presence and which instrument just doesn't need it that much. Think of it as a competition: in order that the lead synth and the vocals sound in place they MUST HAVE space in the mixing. Also try panning and sidechaining to free space in the mix.

I also think you should compress your kickdrum since, in my opinion, it doesn't really stand out. Eurobeat is a lot about the kick and the offbeat bass. A clear kick helps set eurobeat charactheristic rhythm.

This said, I think it's an impressive work for being your first attemp and only having worked a day and a half. So congratulations! As I said before, all the elements are 100% suitable for eurobeat and perfectly placed. If you try to improve a bit your mixing skills you will for sure be able to create brilliant productions. Keep it up!
Amateur indie eurobeat producer. Check out my music here! https://soundcloud.com/super-nova-473010963

Spacepotato1
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Re: Critiques please. :)

Post by Spacepotato1 » 02 Apr 2017, 12:35

Right! That makes perfect sense.

I was wondering about how to get that nice punchy kick drum sound. The way I was going about it before was I was doubling up on separate kick drum samples thinking that the tonal variety would make it stand out more, but it still sounded all mushy. Compressor it is!

I'm off to do some EQing and I'll report back with the updated mix. Thanks for the advice Akira! It was very helpful. :)

Spacepotato1
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Re: Critiques please. :)

Post by Spacepotato1 » 02 Apr 2017, 22:40

I'm back, and I did my best to follow your advice. I used some compressors on the instruments, cloned the guitar track and panned both tracks to the left and right to space it out from the synth, did some EQing to try to separate the sound frequencies a little better, and used a whole bunch of volume envelopes to spread out the sounds on top of some smaller fixes to 2 of the little brass fills. It sounds a lot more clear, but the guitar and synth still seem to be at each other's throats. Anyway, here's the result:

https://soundcloud.com/user-38557145/bi ... pacepotato

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