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I found this video of a gamelan gong being made on youtube and the noises of the hammers hitting it form the basis for this track.

It's down the Shackleton line with polyrhythmic percussion and the drums hits are jacked half from sholay- higher plains drifter and a couple of burial tracks. I recorded all the samples on my portable tape recorder, hence the hummmmcracklefuzz.

http://www.divshare.com/download/3515444-d0c -you don't have to download it, you can listen in the online player.

It's about half way done (length wise) and I'd appreciate some honest comments about it before I have another session on it on Sunday.

Nice one to anybody who gives it a listen.

blessup- Grifter

Go on. Please give it a listen and tell me what you think.

Here's what I think...

The drum layering is good and the rhythmic interplay between parts is quite interesting.

The use of musical samples is good.

The tonality is quite original.

The bass is too muddy and probably too loud in the mix

The vocal samples are indecipherable (a bad more than good thing?)

The mastering hasn't been attempted yet

The progression is too subtle.

umm, dis link dun werk...

cheers man. i fixed it.

heard this on ya myspaz the other day Tom, im proper feeling it like,
think your only problem is not actually being Burial or Shackleton, because if this had been posted by them I think people would be wanking over it. proper deepness.
will have to get a tune off ya in next couple of weeks for the jasbof comp mate! but yeah proper sterling work mate

I like the sense of atmosphere in it. Bit more of punchy the kick would be nice somewhere in there and i dunno if your using a sub or not but on my speakers you cant really feel any bass. you can hear it but not feel it. maybe stick some subtle sine bass underneath. I quite like the vocal samples as they are to be honest. maybe a bit of echo delay on some of the words with a little break now and then so you can hear the delay would be sweet, if that makes sense. Nice tune tho...

Yeah man. I'll have a little look at layering something over that kick. Not too much though I don't reckon, it'd spoil the mood. Might have a look at smoothing the groove out on the second drums that come in as well.

The bass should sound a bit chunkier once it's mastered but it sounds pretty hefty on the speakers that I was monitering on.

Nice one for listening la's.

sounds quite nice, but tbh very much like an intro to something else - I kept waiting for it to drop. Of course not everything has to be heavy, but it could definitely benefit from some crisp minimal drums laid over the top to emphasis the framework of the beat.

Also, I reckon a lot of the atmospherics could be a bit quieter - there's quite a lot going on at once, same goes for the distortion on the bass - kind of muddies the whole thing and makes the sub quite difficult to detect. A better mixdown could solve a lot of that though.

nicely different though mate.

ThinKing wrote:it could definitely benefit from some crisp minimal drums laid over the top to emphasis the framework of the beat.

...distortion on the bass - kind of muddies the whole thing and makes the sub quite difficult to detect.

enjoyed listening to this but definitely reckon the drums need more defining, just a kick and snare would work wonders, and even though i really like the distortion on the bass, the sub doesnt come out at all and i felt like i really wanted it to when i was listening. like the vocals and atmosphericalisms and liked the beat. be a really interesting tune with a little refining.

thomas e. griffin wrote:Yeah man. I'll have a little look at layering something over that kick. Not too much though I don't reckon, it'd spoil the mood. Might have a look at smoothing the groove out on the second drums that come in as well.

The bass should sound a bit chunkier once it's mastered but it sounds pretty hefty on the speakers that I was monitering on.

Nice one for listening la's.

No worries lar. should have some stuff up soon so i will be asking the same. bit of a perfectionist myself and i've not been at this too long. should have something fairly ruff up next week. You all set for thursday and what night is kode 9 again?

Nice one for the advice chap's. I'll work on the drums and the bass sounds and drop-structure (maybe) tomorrow and post an ammended version up when I feel I've changed it enough to warrant a relisten.

Dreadnought is on Saturday Will mate.

Can't wait to play a little deeper on the Thursday as well. It should be really good.

This is nice, Drums are a bit crunchy, could do with maybe some clean ones layered in, but as an idea this track is decent.

Dubstep needs more innovation like this, and anything with elements of Sholay and assorted Burial in it is definitely going down the right route.

You used percussion samples off youtube, too? They kinda sound low-bitratey, but they work, i've been told you shouldn't even use 320 samples, so it's good to hear that isn't the case.

More like this!

Agree with Thinking's comments ... he summed it up quite precisely. Finding the overall mix quite muddy to be brutally honest. And generally this didn't really grab me. The intro had some nice pads but then they were lost fairly quickly in what ensued. Some interesting percussive elements also but I had to really concentrate to make them out in the mix. Sos dude.

Promo wrote:Agree with Thinking's comments ... he summed it up quite precisely. Finding the overall mix quite muddy to be brutally honest. And generally this didn't really grab me. The intro had some nice pads but then they were lost fairly quickly in what ensued. Some interesting percussive elements also but I had to really concentrate to make them out in the mix. Sos dude.

Don't need to apologise mate. Thanks for the constructive criticism. It's not meant to be crisp but I can appreciate it's hard to pick out the elements. I'm gonna do a bit more work on it today and see if I can make it a bit more kicking.

Cheers for the props as well Slim.