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Starting January 1st 2024 GMT each participant will have one week to upload one finished composition. Any style of music or selection of instruments are welcomed and encouraged.
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WeeklyBeats.com / Music / SteveSkiano's music / Running Downhill
This song may or may not be autobiographical. I wanted to do something more upbeat and experiment with multiple background vocals. I'm still working on mixing. It seems like the drums get drowned out unless I'm listening with my studio headphones. But still learning a lot and having a great time!
Audio works licensed by author under:
CC Attribution Noncommercial No Derivative Works (BY-NC-ND)
Drums are amazing! And backing vocals too!, good job!
Drums are courtesy of Logic Drum Maker. Lol. Thanks!
nice! a full track! cool vocals and double tracked guitars. yea the mix is not as punchy as it can be, but still it's pretty clear at least.
nice! a full track! cool vocals and double tracked guitars. yea the mix is not as punchy as it can be, but still it's pretty clear at least.
Hey, thanks for the feedback! Any tips on making it more "punchy" would be greatly appreciated.
horatiuromantic wrote:nice! a full track! cool vocals and double tracked guitars. yea the mix is not as punchy as it can be, but still it's pretty clear at least.
Hey, thanks for the feedback! Any tips on making it more "punchy" would be greatly appreciated.
My exp is limited but for the past 2 years I learned to normalize via compressors and mastering plugins rather than good old normalizing, so that could be a trick. Listen to reference tracks and try to understand if there is more bass, more kick, or what is it that makes a track you like in the same style sound good, and then play with the EQ and effects to match it. You can't fix a bad recording with plugins, but I think in your case the recordings are good so you could probably run them through like a soundgoodizer-type plugin (soundgoodizer is a free one everybody uses in FL studio for those who don't know). However if the drums are still not punchy it might be indeed the recording, a.k.a. the Logic auto-drummer? 
I personally use Levi who I haven't managed to make extra punchy yet, but there are punchier ones in there.
I use UA Spark so I use a mix of compressor, hitsville EQ, and tape plugin on the master bus for giving it that final polish. I also make many mistakes, such as over compressing so everything just sounds really crushed, and then I have to fix it.
Final tip: have good monitors or headphones otherwise you can't know what you're doing.
SteveSkiano wrote:horatiuromantic wrote:nice! a full track! cool vocals and double tracked guitars. yea the mix is not as punchy as it can be, but still it's pretty clear at least.
Hey, thanks for the feedback! Any tips on making it more "punchy" would be greatly appreciated.
My exp is limited but for the past 2 years I learned to normalize via compressors and mastering plugins rather than good old normalizing, so that could be a trick. Listen to reference tracks and try to understand if there is more bass, more kick, or what is it that makes a track you like in the same style sound good, and then play with the EQ and effects to match it. You can't fix a bad recording with plugins, but I think in your case the recordings are good so you could probably run them through like a soundgoodizer-type plugin (soundgoodizer is a free one everybody uses in FL studio for those who don't know). However if the drums are still not punchy it might be indeed the recording, a.k.a. the Logic auto-drummer?
I use UA Spark so I use a mix of compressor, hitsville EQ, and tape plugin on the master bus for giving it that final polish. I also make many mistakes, such as over compressing so everything just sounds really crushed, and then I have to fix it.
Final tip: have good monitors or headphones otherwise you can't know what you're doing.
Awesome, thanks!
You got some good mix space on this track, I can hear all the individual components very clearly. I think the one component that might be burying your drums is the left electric guitar, and my guess is that you'd need to bring down the volume a skosh or maybe EQ the gain of the low-mids a bit? And if that doesn't quite do it then I'd guess bringing up the drums a little bit after those changes. But I'm not *super* well versed in mix advice so we shall see what Blighter says.
Great job this week though! I did the chorus and I like the twangy country guitar around that 2:06 mark 
You got some good mix space on this track, I can hear all the individual components very clearly. I think the one component that might be burying your drums is the left electric guitar, and my guess is that you'd need to bring down the volume a skosh or maybe EQ the gain of the low-mids a bit? And if that doesn't quite do it then I'd guess bringing up the drums a little bit after those changes. But I'm not *super* well versed in mix advice so we shall see what Blighter says.
Great job this week though! I did the chorus and I like the twangy country guitar around that 2:06 mark
Thanks brother, I appreciate the feedback, and listening so closely. That twangy country guitar was a couple loops in the Logic sound library. I picked them after failing to play anything resembling a guitar solo about 18 times. haha.
Hey, nice one this week! I like the melodies and hooks you've got in here. background vocals, very nice. I hope you don't hit that brick wall.
Mix comments: Your rhythm guitars are very dynamic. If you turn them down in the mix, it will get buried in places, but then some parts poke out a little more than they should to let other instruments come through. Compression on the guitars with a fast-ish attack will help you tame this. A fast attack will let less of the initial transient through.
When each track is balanced pretty well with itself (e.g. not too dynamic), then it becomes much easier to get all the tracks to play nicely with each other, because things only poke out when you want them to. Part of this is good performances, part of it is good editing (e.g. clip gain to raise/lower sections of a track to keep it even), part is good processing (compression, compression, compression).
I am still learning as well, so don't take anything I say as gospel.
That kick drum sounds really good. I definitely feel the thump in my headphones. The bass guitar sounds really good too. I like the funk rock feel of this one. The vocals sound great as well. I like that blues rock melody in the chorus a lot! I also really like that (sounds like guitar played with a slide?) lead riff at the end.
Guess studio headphones are the way to go, because it sounds really good from where I'm sitting.
- Devieus
