bassnation said:
i've been working on a new track which i can only describe as dubstep on a couple of e's. just wondered if anyone would like to check it to give me some feedback.
hi, great that you have the guts to put your tune up for public listening. that's the way to go! i should do the same really!
gap_analysis is a great track. i really like the intro, and this idea of combining dubstep with squelchy house it very good. but there's potential for fine-tuning the track. here are some suggestions for making the track stronger, i hope you find the leve of detail helpful.
(1) i really like the hi frequency (hi hat-like) pattern in the background. (3 beats in the last quater of every bar, becoming two beats near the end), but the lower frequency part of the drums is too much in the forground. they also sound slightly too much like DnB. finally, there's not enough variety in terms of rhythm on several levels: no breaks, little syncopation, everything changes on the grid, too much repetition. generally, the drums are a bit busy for dubstep: dubstep tends to use drum beats sparingly. Also, dubstep tends to build up tension by playing with rhythm and rhythmic expectations (e.g. by using k...s... to fool the audience into expecting ..k.s..., but then delaying the ..k.s... by a bar or so (k stands for kick, s for snare/claps etc). i would add reverb on some drums, but carefully (don't drown things), maybe changing over time, put in 2 or 3 clear breaks in song structure, take parts of the drums (some combination of kik, snare, hats) in and out at different times, add delay from time to time (that works especially well if the delay frequency is different on the left and right channel without loosing sync). i'd also add some other, more artificial drumsounds (no classic breakbeats) and use more layering on kicksounds.
(2) no vocals, no 'vibe'. by that i mean something that the audience can use as a hook to *talk* about the track next day in a record store: "do you have this track that goes "helicopter sound, turning into a bassline" or "a woman with american accent saying 'hello mum, are we on air'". if you are short of vocal, type "acapella" into soulseek
(3) strings, coming in at bar 5 are a bit too loud/ too much in forground. also, that string sound is too unprocessed for my liking. it sounds like you just took a basic plug-in and use it unmodified.
(4) i really like the subbass on every (second) 3, gives it that reggae vibe, but it's played straight through. needs a bit of development. there are many ways to do this, but as this is dubstep, and i'm not too knowledgable about subbass science, i feel a bit unqualified to comment further ...
(5) the mid/high range squelch sounds can do with a bit of spatial spice: use some reverb, make different squelches come from different sides etc. also, there is relativly little development of squelch: given the direction you want to go in, maybe let the squelches morph into somehthing that could be from DJ Pierre, Phuture, eg by adding pulse gate sync filtering or something like that. i also can't help but think that the sequelches/psycho strings can be a tad busy at times: there may be some frequency clashes. it may be helpful to do EQing with high Q to filter-out offending peaks, to make sure you don't overload certain frequencies.
(6) the pad coming in on bar 17 sounds a bit bland, at least on its own (later, in parallel with the squelchs, it is more appropriate). i'd use a slightly more grabbing sound. alternativly, if you want that calming sound,i'd let it play a rhythm that isn't 4/4, i.e. change chord every 5 or 7 bars, or something like that. if you don't want that either, then transposing it down, maybe by an octave, may be good?
(7) comment on song structure: most of your 4 bar sequences seem to be of the form AAAA. i'd rather use a bit of bridging of the form AAAB where B is similar to A, maybe the bass drum cut out, or a string starting, to make the transitions less predicable.
i don't mean to sound negative: over all, i think you have already made great strides towards an excellent tune, but it needs a bit of polish.
