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How's My Driving?

visiblenoise

Active Member
Here's the fifth song in my exercise of writing a soundtrack for a space/sci-fi game that doesn't exist. Hoping to get better through forcing myself to write to different story concepts and maybe create some worthy portfolio material in the process. This one's still early in the story when nothing has really happened yet and everything is going fine, but then a mysterious character pulls you aside and talks to you about conspiracy-theory-sounding stuff.

Lately, I've been wondering if I'm still making my compositions too busy. As we all know, (sometimes) less is more. I found myself EQing things quite aggressively to get a decent mix, so I'm not sure whether I'm getting better at mixing or still forcing in too many elements.

Also, this nonexistent game is meant to be set in some futuristic space setting, but setting aside the use of double bass, I'm not sure I captured that so well here. How do you personally go about making a song "space-y"?



Thanks for listening!
 
It's an interesting track, but there's a few things I wasn't a fan of. The bass comes in way too hot, it has to work too hard to be heard over the other instruments. Some of the synth sounds are not to my liking... the main one you finish on, and the main one you start on, they sound very up-front. And the ones used more for underscore and movement are too busy for my liking. The overall track sounds a bit discordant to me. Maybe that's the intent, but it doesn't set well with me.

I do like the percussion. One or two parts not so much, but overall it works.
 
It's an interesting track, but there's a few things I wasn't a fan of. The bass comes in way too hot, it has to work too hard to be heard over the other instruments. Some of the synth sounds are not to my liking... the main one you finish on, and the main one you start on, they sound very up-front. And the ones used more for underscore and movement are too busy for my liking. The overall track sounds a bit discordant to me. Maybe that's the intent, but it doesn't set well with me.
Well, I was a fan of some fairly dissonant metal way before I got into this sort of music production so I might be predisposed to it, but I'm still a little surprised that the discordance here was noteworthy. The intent was to sprinkle some of it in (since it's bad guy music after all), but I don't think it should ever not sit well.

I'm still not comfortable with sound design and find it difficult to program or choose sounds that are subtle but still interesting enough to keep me excited about it. So I'll take your comments about the synths as a reminder to work on that...

And for clarification, you mean the double bass is too loud? I ran it through multiple saturators and OTT compression. Are you suggesting to go easier on that stuff and do more EQing on the other elements to get it to pop?

I really appreciate your taking time to give specific feedback, thanks!
 
Yes, I mean the double bass. I'm just not sure it works all that well. It is very up front and dominant, and seems to change the tone of the track up to that point substantially.

In the context of the game the discordance aspect may sit very well. I'm just noting it's there and that it doesn't leave me thinking, "oh, nice track".
 
I really like it! It's very weird, and I get the "mysterious" angle. Obviously this isn't a standalone track someone is going to listen to for pleasure, but in the context you describe I think it's perfect. Is it Sci-Fi sounding? I don't really know, but I certainly don't see it as a track that would be out of place in that setting. The vibe I got was more of a lighthearted detective genre, but one that could definitely work in space.

I personally thought the mix was fine, but I don't necessarily trust my opinion on that.
 
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