My first song: critique please!

Re: My first song: critique please!

To be honest, I'm really impressed this was made with the demo of FL (iirc you can't even use the piano roll with the demo rofl, that'd be a HUGE problem for me). Also, I really like the melodies and the arrangement; it reminds me a lot of video game music--specifically Wild ARMs.

The first thing I noticed in this track though is that there's really bad compression issues; your high frequency sounds are constantly drowning out the percussion and the little bass there is, and thus your track is WAY too active in the treble end and it really grinds the ears.

Basically, you need to turn your melody and counter melody down a lot and lower the high-end eq on them (also, possibly give them a longer release / reverb for a more natural sound). It seems a bassline is missing too, so you'd probably wanna add one (the bassline generally 'glues' the song together and gives it more of an emotional feel).

Again, GREAT job for your first song AND doing it in demo; my first songs were 1000 times worse than this :P. It's a shame you can't go back and fix up some of the issues since you couldn't save. :(

Re: My first song: critique please!

you can use the piano roll on the demo version >.>

but yea what darkbear said

elso way beter than my first song using fl XD

Re: My first song: critique please!

i really think that you should try to change up the bass line its the same which is fine but at least. Im not sure if its the quality or not but the use of crescendo's and decrescendo's are off. Last id tone down the high voices, DarkBearX said it right they are drowning out the other sounds. other than that nice work really. lol just for fun try putting a drum and bass loop behind the song, i was beat boxing with your song and it sounded awesome as all hell!

cant wait to hear more from you...

Re: My first song: critique please!

Thanks everyone! I spent an abhorrent amount of time working on this, so I'm glad that my work was not in vain.

My computer's speakers are downright awful, so I used my Sony headphones when adjusting volume differences between melody/counter-melody/bassline etc. Since there's such a difference in sound quality between headphones and my computer speakers, I'm not sure how to fix those audio problems unless I'm supposed to buy really high quality speakers and work with them. But I can turn down the overall volume if that's causing some problems.

For example, at first I put the bass/deep kick at maximum volume and still couldn't hear it. Then I tried my headphones and it was overshadowing the melody, so I had to lower it accordingly.

As for crescendos/decrescendos... I didn't have any, or tried to avoid them completely. I turned the knob for "Volume -> Gain" as low as possible, so that it was still audible but didn't have any rise or drop in dynamics. Unfortunately I did hear some in the final product, so I know what you mean. This is an area I would like to work on, but I'm not familiar yet with FL Studio to know how (hint, hint, if you know how dynamics work, tell me!)

Personally, I think the weakest part of the song is the transition at 0:27-0:39, which I rewrote several times and I'm still not completely satisfied with it. After that I think it's pretty good. I actually submitted this song for some school CD thing (a group that deals with poetry/writings decided to have "musical artists" submit their works for a CD this year) so hopefully regular people won't notice these small flaws. Besides, I'm the only one who did any kind of techno; everyone else recorded a guitar/vocal song.

Re: My first song: critique please!

If its not to late to give out opinions
I think it was a good tune for a first, alot better than my first by miles xD
Nice melody, and its kind of catchy =D

Re: My first song: critique please!

Your speakers must have really really low bass response. That's the only thing I can think of as to why that happens; it's best just to use your headphones, although I think speakers are better for production (I don't use speakers for my music )

Well, the reason why the dynamics are all out of whack is because of compression (I can you clearly used a compressor since the waveform of the song is 'smooth'). What compressing essentially does is bring the higher frequencies and the lower frequencies together (this usually makes your track sound more full, although sometimes it can really hurt the way your track comes out). I can only guess your melodies are drowning your lower frequencies because they're way too high and the compression on your track lowers the lower frequencies to prevent from major clipping (which is basically a nasty sound that occurs when your track goes above 0 dB)

I think that's because your melodies are WAY too loud and are drowning out the lower frequencies as said above.

Sorry for long post. :<

Re: My first song: critique please!

Structure of the song: Great.
For your first time: Freaking awesome.

But, as other people said, the mastering needs work. Once you learn how to use the Fruity Mixer (F9) to do some EQing and effects, you'll be a god among men. If you want to ask for advice on the mixer, look toward me, /DJS\, Sleeplessdragn, iPatch, or Endorphin aka Liquid Ecstacy.

Re: My first song: critique please!

I can tell you've got alot of feeling in your music, alot of artists nowadays are lacking that,

Hold onto that especially when you start to get more used to the program you're using to produce. If you keep that emotion you will as pureblood stated, "Be a god among men."