Mindf&#k

It's an instrumental track I created for my upcoming hip-hop instrumental album under my producer name, JmAY.

The sound is very classically driven, with many other rhythm levels and synthetic leads/arps. The constant beat of the drum almost reminds me of a heart beating as another plays with your mind.

It's in standard commercial (radio) song format as music like this I sell to artists, so if it sounds repetitive or imbalanced that is why.

Enjoy!

MP3: Mind:censored: (Master).mp3 - File Shared from Box.net - Free Online File Storage

hmmmm, sorry, i dont like it, hamm, sonds to common and dont have audio quality

If the album is entirely instrumental, I'd expected more to happen sooner. Unless you're pitching the album as demo tracks, so people can see your work at making beats. Otherwise, I can't imagine most folks would want to listen to just straight beats like this without them being more interesting.

On the other hand, once the song gets going, there is some very nice substance. I see what you mean by saying it has a classical sound. I like the very subtle string pad you have in the background. It is still very repetitive,obviously because of the drum loop, but it becomes more interesting the longer I listen.

In my opinion, you want it to be interesting a lot sooner if it's just instrumental. You don't want someone to be skeptical throughout the song in hopes that they will get to the good part. Hit them with the good part early, and go up from there. Good work. Hope to hear more.

I don't know how many elec. piece you have created but I thing that what needs to be improved in this song can be achieved making more stuff, ...

The Harpsichord. .... I'm not completely sure is ok or out of place ....

And some elements are too loud.

OMWBWAY, I actually took your advice and edited the majority of the tracks on my album so that there is more variety and change-up so the listener won't get bored. You peeped the fact that these instrumentals were at one time demos for artists looking for beats. When I have time I'll upload the new version and I'll give you a chance to tell me what you think.

SYS65, as far as the harpsichord, I think it fits nicely in that it really doesn't occur much in a hip-hop joint. I wanted the classical (or baroque) influence to be prevalent and I think it goes well with the strings and other elements of the song. As far as things being too loud, I'm re-mastering/mixing the tracks as I have big studio monitors and everthing sounds fine to me but I have to remember those who don't have big, bass-heavy speakers like me.

Thanks for the comments, both of you.

As far as things being too loud, I'm re-mastering/mixing the tracks as I have big studio monitors and everthing sounds fine to me but I have to remember those who don't have big, bass-heavy speakers like me.

The problem is not the monitors -- you can get a loud signal on any monitor. The problem with your volume is that you've limited the signal so much that you're squashing the transients. That's what the volume fluctuations and distortion signal. You may not hear this if you are mixing loud and you have a lot of standing waves in the room. Mastering is a very difficult process. I always recommend for people to send their work to a professional mastering house. I know it's more expensive than doing it yourself, but when you hire an engineer who spends all day every day doing it you really can't compete with that kind of expertise. There are a lot of things to consider -- where to cut the sub-lows, how to attenuate the highs. It's more than just trying to make it sound good -- it's how to make it sound good so that it sounds good on most systems.

For my tastes, the track was too simplistic to listen to for enjoyment value but you know your market better than I do. All I can say is that this song has a problem with squashed transients. To fix that you need to raise the threshold on the limiter and lower the volume of the master bus. If your meter is peaking when you're over 0db, then you need to reduce the volume on other tracks until it is not redlining. Once the entire chain of volume is set properly you won't have that problem. Then you can play with the threshold settings again.

Haha. No problem. My sister makes beats and all sorts of stuff like that. So i listen to her stuff, and her competition. SHe's legit.

This track certainly has a problem with mastering. It could either be a case of over-zealous compression/limiting or simply turning all the levels up way too high. Both result in the same thing in any case.

Attaining that "loud" commercial sound while also preserving audio quality is a difficult (some might say impossible) task. I'm no expert on mastering, but I did once come across a plug-in which does a brilliant job at it right off the cuff, though you have to pay quite a lot for the privilege: Wave Arts | Plugins | FinalPlug 5

The track was made in Acid Pro 7 and I did no post-processing to the music. I just tweaked levels/volumes as I made it. I'm going to have the whole album professionally mastered so it sounds the right way. I understand everyone's comments on the sound quality. Thanks for the advice and comments.

Ah, I see. Then the problems I heard was distortion and clipping on the busses. I hope it's not in the audio itself. Do yourself a favor -- you might be angry at me for saying this, but you'll thank me later -- make sure that the master stays at 0db and that there's no clipping on any of the tracks. If you're using a limiter on any of the tracks, ease back on it. If you press a mix like this and take it to the mastering house, they're going to ask you to mix it over. A mastering engineer needs plenty of headroom to work efficiently. Don't worry about volume AT ALL. They can get it the right volume. The only thing you need to do is get it as good sounding as possible, make sure that the tracks aren't clipping, and that there's enough headroom.

Just the advice I needed. Thank you much, sir.

Besides the clipping. I actually liked the song. I think it is the rhythm, and the strings, and the keyboard.

From my viewpoint this would be good background music.

Mindfuck.mp3 - File Shared from Box.net - Free Online File Storage

New version, mastered and normalized without clipping and distortion. Hope you like.

J