Astral Field, a pop tune. Comments welcome!

Opening sounds great. Good sense of depth with the bass synth mixed low, and layering of background sounds.

The lead synth killed it for me. I hated the patch. And the thing never stops playing for one second. More musical phrasing, and a smoother sounding patch, are needed. The subtlety and balance you achieved in the intro were blown out of the water as soon as that synth came in.
 
Robus said:
Opening sounds great. Good sense of depth with the bass synth mixed low, and layering of background sounds.

The lead synth killed it for me. I hated the patch. And the thing never stops playing for one second. More musical phrasing, and a smoother sounding patch, are needed. The subtlety and balance you achieved in the intro were blown out of the water as soon as that synth came in.
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Thank you for your comment. I must admit I was a bit hesitant to post this one as I also knew there were flaws.
I agree on all counts you mention. Except I like the lead synth patch sound:D Thanks again for your honesty.
 
I think the synth lead might come down a bit, it kinda dominates when it comes in.

Sounds a bit like old genesis, I guess it's instrumenral prog rock. :D
 
easlern said:
I guess it's instrumenral prog rock. :D
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Haha.

I think the biggest problem is there isn't enough variety in the song. I'd make it shorter, or add tension. Recording wise it's fine.
 
Nice overall ambiance. Lead sound is too harsh, and need softening. It has the feel of early Jarre so I'd look there for examples of softer sounds.
 
Thank you guys for your comments. Again I agree. There should be more variety and it is long. Normally I do a bit over 3 minutes long tunes. Anyway, nice to know there was something good in the tune.
 
I guess I felt about like everyone else does. Except I didn't mind the lead synth quite as much. It did sound kind of dated. Like transition music in an early 80's movie.
 
not a bad mix, to my ears. i thought the lead was too loud, drowned a lot of the rest out.

i'd recommend writing shorter lead melodies for your hooks. it isn't recognizable. with a song like this, you want the listener to be craving that infectious melody and to return to it. it's mostly a long solo throughout
 
I'm like the lead tone (but then again, as a Wisconsonite, I like my synths like I like my food: cheesey) It probably is loud, relative to everything else tho. Overall, the track does meander a bit. Could use more variety.
 
Steve, you are right. I like the chorus and the bass but the rest is not so good. I try to make better in the future with Møre variety.
 
I think the lead tone is perfect. I'm only guessing but it sounds to me as if it's a softsynth or a VA??

I think some layering and other FX that could give it a bit of preamp grit would make it pop, and thicken it up. If youre A/Bing your tracks I think Com Truise gets some nice tones that you can compare sounds with.

I like the repetitiveness and simplicity, I think the mix sounds good as well...my only gripe is when youre using only a few tracks you need to really work on the sound design, thats what gets the listener...also reversed cymbals (I overuse them too) are getting dated...maybe think of another way to transition or add interest, like a impact sound through a ping pong delay maybe. I have to physically stop myself from using reversed snares or crash cymbals in tracks, then have to restrain myself again from replacing them with white noise ramps :D
 
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Thank you Earl. I used to use crashes a lot but in the future I will use drum fills. The lead synth is a Fm8 my fave. I use it too much.
 
I think its probably my favourite NI synth.

Even if its my virus TI I layer anything thats not analougue.

Try copying the part out into three layers, then slightly adjust the OSC tuning, or filter res etc in the other two layers, it really thickens it up. Then run it into a bus with a preamp emulator. Its subtle, but itll give it that analougue weight. Musicrow do a freebie that might be worth checking out if you dont have one. I use acoustica nebula for that hardware sound.

Nice to hear some electronic music in here.
 
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