Massive mixing ?

[Benedict]

Soundcloud

I have graduated from using sample packs of premade noises to actually programming Massive from scratch, but I'm crap at it.

Any advise on layers and mixing etc would be awesome

[splendid]

Its hard to generally answer that lol- I tend to buy a sample pack for massive from beatport that sounds good, then I will reverse engineer all of the sounds in the sample pack. It really helps with learning what wavetables work with each other and how to make semi decent synths/basses.

[gen_]

EDIT: rewrote cos I was on my phone and didn't see the SC link

You'll find the vast majority of great sounds you have you'll make by accident to start with, so my best advice for getting great with massive is to sit down and plan to make some great sounds for another session rather than sit down and try and make a tune. When you have a little palette of tunes you've made earlier then you can go forward using them as the basis for your ideas. You wanna make a certain sound, you pull up one you made earlier and tweak to taste.

Also hit up all your favorite sounds on massive tutorials and copy them step by step. After a couple you'll get to a stage where you're halfway through a tut and you'll go, "hold up, if I do this and this instead and then take that from tut no.2 I listened to" and you'll suddenly start understanding Massive like that.

[Benedict]

Thanks for not laughing me off the forum
I'm by NO MEANS good at sound design. I've barely scratched the surface, but I'm happy to bumble along the learning curve.
My biggest problem is EQing/mixing. In my 1-minute track up there, the 2nd loud section has 2 different massive leads but I can't mix them to sound good together. Its probably just as case of cutting out the high mids from one and low mids from the other..

[gen_]

Sorry mate, we didn't mean it like that. I didn't think you wanted specific advice on that record, I thought that was just an example of where you were at and you wanted advice in general.

Personally I think the second section at 0.57 is a lot better than your first drop, the first half of the bar does something to me man lol. I'd love to know how you made it. It's slightly mid heavy though, and needs a bit more top and a lil saturation. The reason it works is two fold, firstly your drums cut through it much better, secondly, your kicks are positioned better for it.

As for your first drop. That main sound you are using isn't big enough. hipass it, stack a phasor on it or some FX that will make it wider that moves (non synced), and stick a sub under it separately.

Then your next focus should be using more sounds. Remember you have 4 bars of the same 2 main sounds in a genre where most people are using 3 sounds each bar. Your sounds aren't especially bad tho. That LFO wub need a little more to cut through.

Which DAW are you using?

[arcane uk]

I mean they arent like bad sounds you have got. It sounds like you just lack a concept for the sound. Sometimes its a good idea to just like, made shit loads of random sounds and basses and then just saving them as presets then just sampling your own presets as and when you feel like it. Im saying this like i do this myself, and this is not the case. But still a good idea if you can be arsed!

[gen_]

I tend to save the sounds I make from older records a lot.

That is a good shortcut to a good library. Then you just make sure you tweak em a little next time round or layer them if they are going to be the leading sound.

[Benedict]

gen_ + arcane ,
You guys are all awesome, thanks for your helpful suggestions!

I used Ableton 9, Battery 4, Massive and Omnisphere (plus Heaviocity's Damage for "industrial" percussion)
The second drop has a (badly mixed) sub, the first one doesn't
There is a tempo change half way through

[gen_]

Try a bit of saturator on that Wub in the first drop, see where it takes you. Make it a lil dirtier and more standout. It justs to be a little more thick. It's fine on my Rokits, but it barely shows on my A7x's and those are my most 'mix-worthy' monitors.