Broken Dreams

[chaotix]

Track I started today, i know a lot of you on this forum are amazing at making music. so what do i need to fix?

Soundcloud

[dobotomy]

It sounds to me like you are using several different bass sounds in succession near the end. If you are, I'd suggest finding a way to generate them all from the same source or at least feed them all through the same compressor and stereoize it all. Also, some of the bass sounds are kind of hollow, like they are missing mid range where mid range is needed. Another suggestion would be to pan the solo synth in the intro to the right or left so as to give it its own space (and perhaps use EQing to separate it from the other sounds--for instance, reduce the high-mid range on the solo synth and increase the high range, but do the opposite for the electric piano sound or emphasize a lower high pitched frequency). Lastly, if you were to remove the lower piano cords and just keep the higher notes, it'd give the intro a somewhat more artsy sounding vibe, something similar to Plaid. Maybe. Might be worth exploring. Maybe you could replace the low notes/chords with a different kind of sound that has a more low-mid frequency timbre, leave the LFO wobble, but have the notes fade in volume (like a bell, but not a bell sound, per se).

Phill

[chaotix]

Yeah the piano is actually two pianos combined in a group ones panned hard right and ones panned hard left...the lead synth in the intro is in the center so they all do have their own space and they are eqed respectively. As for the drop, yeah i don't really know how people get all those bass variations for one bass channel. I pretty much have a channel for each single sound..it's kind of a waste, but i find it's easier to make variation in the bass. I don't really know how to do it all in one channel. I'd love to know how though lol.

Like certain things i can't automate..like my lfo shaper that i use. I pretty much have to use a new instance of massive everytime i want to use a different lfo shape.

[dobotomy]

Which GUI are you using?

[chaotix]

Mac OS X why?

[dobotomy]

I mean music GUI. What do you use to arrange your music?

[chaotix]

You mean a DAW then? haha. I work in Ableton Live.

[dobotomy]

Yeah, DAW. I had a feeling I was using the wrong acronym, but couldn't quite draw up an alternative.

Anyway, there are a couple things that you could try (if you haven't already). One is to "group" channels together. You just highlight the channels you want and right click (ctrl + click on Mac?) on one of them then select the "group tracks" option. As far as LFO in Massive goes, I was exploring it a bit to see what could be done about automation. It looks like you can map almost all of Massive's functions to Ableton for automation, except for changing the shape of the LFO wave. You could potentially combine Massive with Ableton's autofilter or record the bass sound from Massive as a sample and load it into one of Ableton's samplers and use the LFO functions on those.

[chaotix]

Yeah that's true, I find it hard to believe that people who make songs with bass just doing a whole bunch of different things have a channel for each sound being modulated a different way. By the end of the song I'm going to have like 80 channels haha.