PDA

View Full Version : Dance/pop


Nineofkings
01-29-2011, 01:10 PM
http://soundcloud.com/nine-of-kings/lets-run-away

A dance song done entirely in Reaper.

Axonaut
02-04-2011, 12:08 PM
The song itself isn't bad. Maybe not the most original, but with much better production it could sound good.

To be brutally honest with you, the production and mixing is terrible (even I can tell, and I am probably the world's worst mixer).

The biggest problem is the low end. The kick drum in particular is just a kind of 'bip bip' sound, when it should be a deep thud (this is supposed to be a dance track). There isn't much bass either.

There are other things that probably aren't right, but that's definitely the worst.

Hope this helps, anyway. Possibly you're listening on cheap speakers or headphones that are really exaggerating the low frequencies, so it sounds OK to you..?


---
09ea09e4f28fd0f265c388f9c08a35c0c2c590bece7bf0bff1 2dcb6abd3aa152f266515b730f427a613a9a4bc4b1283c

Nineofkings
02-04-2011, 07:42 PM
The thing about the kick is that it is perfectly clear when it is soloed, but in the mix you can only hear the first "punch" and the "boom" at the end is too quiet. I suppose I could eq it and make the low shelf really loud.

Axonaut
02-05-2011, 01:25 AM
The thing about the kick is that it is perfectly clear when it is soloed, but in the mix you can only hear the first "punch" and the "boom" at the end is too quiet. I suppose I could eq it and make the low shelf really loud.

I think I can hear slightly more of the low end if I listen on cheap PC speakers + subwoofer. There's still almost nothing there, though, just a kind of faint subsonic hum.


It's hard for me to guess what's going wrong with the kick. Maybe you're misusing FX (although this track sounds so dry that I guess you didn't put a lot of FX on it). You could try temporarily disabling all effects on the drum tracks and the master track, and just mix the drums with the level controls alone, to see if that helps.

Or maybe it's a weird routing problem. Or maybe the raw kick sound you're using simply isn't very good or appropriate.

I don't recommend trying to fix it by adding more EQ. Even before you add any FX to the track, you should be starting out with an unprocessed kick sound that's fairly close to this: (starts at 0:44)

http://soundcloud.com/djtrux/wannabee-techno-dj-trux-original-mix/

(That's just a track chosen at random - no other recommendation implied)