Hyper Granular

[V-Ormix]

glitchy 8)
https://soundcloud.com/ormix/hyper-granular

[Vospi]

right off the bat it came as "too stereo" in a bad way. it has a feeling of an overprocessed stereo track, it feels that all the stereo that's happening is done on master or something, so there's no contrast. effect is too "effecty", too wide, and thus you're left with not that much room to play with.

compositionally, as we're speaking about mostly atonal piece, I would like to have less constant HF in the effects in order to be more contrasting and less fatiguing as it is now. 0:47 should be a turning point, I think, but here we have the same problem: all track is kind of "shifted to the right" and "unweighted" (again, I guess some master processing involved), so this booming sound doesn't come across as a turning point or, maybe, as a bridge between an intro and your "moving part".

I'd suggest to try Voxengo MSED on master and carefully monitor your sides. I haven't checked but it definitely feels like you have too much going on in a side channel.

sorry if I sound a little rough, I don't mean to.

[BilliumMoto]

Vospi is back and he slayin'

[V-Ormix]

naw you basically nailed the direction I came from, the stereo of the master was the result of a phaser just cause it "sounds cool" but really is just me being lazy on my part to do any real separation between tracks.

Could you recommend ways to get an interesting image on individual tracks? One thing that always stands out to me about "crazy" tracks or their mix is the overall image and clarity which seem to be any number of methods you could use. (I take it you didn't like mine xP)

[Vospi]

You need to split your parts, or sections of parts, in "roles".

Like: this one is booming, this one "heightened and light", this one is "interrupting" or "annoying". Then you process them that way. For example, don't phase or stereoprocess your ultra low freqs, this will never come as good as you'd expect. Try to play with the simplest waveforms (triangles, sines) for supporting roles (bass, overlays, noise), modulating them. Give different roles to parts of your mix to cover all sorts of aspects (LF/HF balance, mid-side balance, volume, tonal/atonal elements, emotional aspects in terms of parts) and to create interest, not permanent presence with them. Don't, for example, add some stereoeffect or noise or whatever "for stereo" and just leave it there running. What you get if you put a static FX on master — it just glues everything in a bad way and won't let go, you can't have it "contrasting" with other parts. And it's all good for 30 seconds on some parts and with your ULF summed, but not for the whole track. With this track, if you'd want to play more with it, don't part with the phaser completely: route this effect you love to a separate channel, route most parts of the mix there and then try to "unroute" something directly to a master.

But do sum your LFs on the effect channel below 60-70 Hz at least, maybe even higher.

You'll probably notice that about great trippy tracks that attract your attention — they sort of attack you from different sides unexpectedly, and that's why it could be very time consuming to create this kind of effects — though sometimes it of course is just a result of luck. But mostly, you have to invest your time into feeling inner "tempo" of FXs.

Try to listen to something that you like watching from this perspective -- listen to it in terms of "which little things appear and which disappear". Sometimes there's a ton; they're just not that "plot-twisting" for a general listener to notice, because he just follows "the plot" -- the genre, the main instrument, the beat, something like that. And all these tiny things are comforting him, but he shouldn't be really aware of them.

So it's really more of "what to give and what to take in any given time" than "how to process it".

[V-Ormix]

I understand a majority of what you are saying, the truth is I know better to have chained all tracks to image separate from the lower frequency ranges but at this point it's just a bad habit - My imagination would have me think in a practical way to automate panning on everything to some sort of rhythmic impulse to get an image, although another thing I really like doing is using FL's EQUO to image things too.

I'll work harder on this next track 8)

[Vospi]

Good luck on working your ways, engineering shouldn't become a priority for a musician. Habit is not always something bad, of course. Good luck again.

[V-Ormix]

thank ya ;3