Euphoric breakbeat track. Where should i go from here?

[FlawedLogicSCR]

this is a breakbeat track i put together when i was using garageband. its basically just samples with effects. i have switched over to ableton and am in the process of completely learning that software. i wanted to finish this track and was hoping for some suggestions.

Soundcloud

thanks

[Point Blank Music]

Some nice samples in there, particularly the piano thing that you're using as the main melody. You are right to bring in more percussion at 1.22, but you've brought in the wrong kind of thing. What you've done is add an entire drum loop over the already existing percussion which means that you have two bass drums and snares. While this isn't necessarily a bad thing in itself (layering percussion sounds is a common technique), in this track it makes the percussion sound muddy and confused - Very refined 808/909 sounds under more boisterous jungle-esque breaks.

Stick with the 808/909 sounds but get rid of the breaks and instead bring in some more subtle percussion - a hi hat on the back beat would be a good start, but generally some hi hat loops (panned to both sides for good spatial quality) maybe some ride cymbal hits here and there, some more claps maybe other than on beats 2 and 4, some little blips and glitches.. what you want to aim for is a gradual build up to a complex intricate percussion line made up of several elements.

Musically it sounded like firstly it need some kind of counter melody on a synth pad, and then after the piano sample has started getting a bit repetitive maybe modulate to a different key (look up Relative Minor http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Relative_key) or strip it down to just percussion and little snippets of that piano with some delay on it and some nice sub bass in there and then build back up to the full sample.

[FlawedLogicSCR]

Thanks for the suggestions. I'm going to put some work into this track

[Point Blank Music]

Thanks for the suggestions. I'm going to put some work into this track

No problem, yeah keep pushing it, you definitely have a good base here to work with

[FlawedLogicSCR]

Hey, so I've wrk on the track and it has almost a completely different sound than the last version. I think it is much better. I would appreciate very much your constructive criticism

Thanks again
Soundcloud

[Point Blank Music]

Hey, so I've wrk on the track and it has almost a completely different sound than the last version. I think it is much better. I would appreciate very much your constructive criticism

Thanks again
Soundcloud

Great effort, its always good to see people working on a tune and not scared to make big changes. There are some new things here that sound great and some that maybe don't add that much to the track.

Firstly I think there are a couple of things which don't really bring any improvement - the wobble bass sounds are one of them. These just don't sound in keeping with the track, partly for reasons of key as some of the notes in that line sound dissonant with the piano. If you want to use these kind of wobbles I would say that they need to be much more subtle, mainly sub and less mid range.

The second thing that doesn't seem to add anything to the track is the change of time signature you've made to the percussion. In this new version you've gone to half time - the 70 bpm dubstep percussion pattern. I thought the speed and pattern of the percussion in the original track you posted suited the piano melody much better.

I also miss that vocal sample from the original, thought that was a really nice touch, the one that says something like 'if you're feeling'.

The sample of the conversation in French is a nice touch, it provides some nice background padding.

The sidechain you've got set up with the bass drum sounds great. It was good to have it on the French convo sample and the piano, this sounds nice.Work on the side chain and get the attack and release times spot on.

the hi hat sounds good, try using more than one hi hat sound. This will make it sound less mechanical.

Also like how you've paused the track, sounding like you've just hit pause on the deck.

Here are some tracks for you to listen to..

Listen for how the melodic sample here is combined with sub, sounding really mellow. Also listen to the hi hat pattern and how several different hi hat sounds make up the hi hat percussion line.


Listen to this for the 808ish standard time rhythms (as opposed to half time dubstep rhythms)


Listen to this for the rhythm again, this might not be exactly what you want for your track but still could give you some good ideas for making your percussion more intricate.


Listen to this for the sidechain - this track has kind of similar background padding noise to yours (this is more like white noise and hiss) which is side chained, so listen out for how the bass drum is balanced with the target of the sidechaining.

[FlawedLogicSCR]

Hey, so i've put a bit more work into the track. it is still at 70 but has a transition to 140 after the drop. i almost completely reworked the drop, although i am still not 100% happy with it, i am liking the new sounds ive been making on massive and want to figure out how to best use the pitch sliding effect

Soundcloud

[Point Blank Music]

nice work mate, the hi hats sound great now, I can hear you've worked on that. The snare sound seems a bit too big with too much reverb, maybe try some claps instead. You can make the bass drum pattern more complex in both the 70 section and the 140 section - like with the hi hat, using more than one sound will give it a nice level of variety. Again, the wobbles don't seem to fit, but it is your track so of course it's entirely up to you.

It seems like it's going in the right direction, listen to drops in other tracks to help you. And also try and find other tracks with that pitch sliding effect to give you pointers and also just play around with the settings, trial and error is often the way forward with these things.