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South Dakota, United States

So I just made a new track called "Lets Get This Parade Started" for my album *!BitParade!* and I took a different approach on how I structured the song. I've usually been trying to keep most of my tracks simple so they don't get all muddy from to many instruments playing at once. But with this track I wanted to try and make things a little bit more complicated. Now the problem is that I can't really tell if there's too much going on. It sounds fine to me but then again, I have all the melodies stuck in my head so I can pick them out easily. So if its not to much trouble to ask, could you guys give my track a listen and let me know what you think? Any type of constructive criticism is much appreciated.

Link:

https://soundcloud.com/yuki-kakushi/let … de-started


Thanks,

YukiKakushi

Last edited by YukiKakushi (Mar 16, 2016 2:56 pm)

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UK

It sounds awesome to me

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Whateverville, California

Hey good work. You've come along way already from your first demos! For the most part it does sound pretty awesome.

Upon listening to the track posted and your newest song, I've tried to think objectively and brainstorm on what your music could benefit from.
So far it seems like your tracks could use:

More WAV work.
More instruments.
More emphasis on tracking in general.
More well-defined hooks and less recurring melody lines.
More emphasis on songwriting in general, for example the A part, B part, Bridge, etc, should be moderately distinct and at least one should be immediately memorable. I'm not saying you have to write obnoxious earworms here, but something that steps forward in the song and takes you somewhere is always desirable.
More focus on tracking volume. (Dynamics are very important in tracker music. Try to write as if you are mastering as you go, so after recording you hardly need to make any changes at all. It took me a long time to figure this one out. I still struggle with it when it comes to WAV sounds.)
Less emphasis on DAW effects/post-production.

- Opinion time, feel free to ignore the following. -

This mix is loud, flat and muddy for my taste. (I prefer clean gameboy sounds most of the time, so take that specifically with a grain of salt.)
Remember that the gameboy as an instrument is interesting because even when it doesn't sound like a gameboy, it still pretty much sounds like a gameboy. Use this to your advantage, don't try to cover it up. I'm not trying to sass you here, but to me it sounds like what you want to be making is more mainstream EDM type music with chiptune elements. If you want to make music that sounds more like professional electronic music, there's a wide range of trackers and daws out there that might be a better fit. FL studio is a great middle ground, I'm told. Finding a footing stylistically can be a serious challenge, don't be afraid to experiment. Find what feels good and all will develop into what it should be with time.

Offline
NC in the US of America

I agree with imaginary that the mix does seem kinda flattened. Like everything is squashed into a very limited range of frequencies. I don't know about the whole "stop making chipmusic in lsdj, switch to fl studio edm" thing, but I haven't heard your other tunes so my perspective is limited in that respect. If that's the kind of lo-fi sound you're going for then it's fine, but if it's not, I'd look into revising your mixing technique (if any). What kind of monitors do you use for your mixing? If this is just raw gameboy, then cool.  You have some really cool sounds going on, in my opinion (I particularly like the short envelope + high-frequency vibrato pingy instrument thing you've got going on).

As for your actual question, I didn't find the melodies hard to follow. It doesn't sound like there's too much going on. The melody didn't particularly grab my personal preference, but it didn't make me nope out of the song and close the tab before listening to the end.

At the end of the day, just do you and make what you like, and just keep doing it more and more.

Last edited by SketchMan3 (Apr 28, 2016 8:29 pm)