Need Feedback, Ambient/Metal Instrumental Song: "Edge of the Mind"

  • Thread starter Thread starter wiryawan
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wiryawan

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Hi everyone, I am learning a lot from this forum and first I want to thank you everyone of you that had commented on my threads before, those comments meant a lot to me and I really want to improve my overall music production skill. Here's a new song that I wrote and recorded few days ago, it's basically a guitar oriented ambient/progressive metal instrumental song called "Edge of the Mind". Any comments will be very appreciated! I also hope that you guys can enjoy this song :)

[MP3]https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/12709731/Lagow/Edge%20of%20the%20Mind%20REMASTERED.mp3[/MP3]

Here's the dropbox download link


Thank you!
 
I actually tweaked the mix and master a little bit, hopefully this one is better:

[MP3]https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/12709731/Lagow/Edge%20of%20the%20Mind%20REMASTERED%203.mp3[/MP3]
 
You have a lot of good stuff here. Your transitions need to be a bit smoother, you have nice changes but they don't move into them as smooth as I think you can get them. Song lacks a theme or at least I couldn't gravitate to it. I think the sound is somewhat muddy and lacks some spark. Try going back to see if you can't give it a bit more shine and see if opening it up in the pans can give it more depth.

I think a little more shone and some minor changes could make this even better. Good little instrumental you have here.
 
Thank you for the feedback DM60. Will this song be better if I boost a bit of high treble on the cymbals and the guitar? After you said that it's muddy and lack some spark, I began to hear it too to be honest, so I really appreciate it :)
 
Before I EQ it, I would see if you can get more with panning. Give it some space, not sure of the compression, but I bet you have it pretty heavy. If so, back it off. Use fader control as much as possible to keep the volumes tamed. It is a little more work, but the results I think you will like better.

If you have EQ on the master channel, I would pull it off, mix and get the sound closer, then do final EQ. As a newby, I have a tendency to reach for EQ way too soon. You have all of the source, so get the mix closer first, then EQ for the final. Your EQ should really just be tweaking the final mix down.
 
I will get back to my mix and experiment with panning. Talking about compression, I compress mostly on the kick drum, toms and the snare, for guitar it's already compressed due to my amp characteristic so I only compress with a very light touch on the threshold. My master channel does have a little bit of compression going on, I will try to make it less compressed.

Thank you so much DM60 for the suggestions! You have been a great help! :)
 
I really liked this from a song point of view. The mix is what's holding it back. The drums or bass sound strange to me when all instruments get going.i don't know if it's reverb thing or delay....something is getting it cluttered.
The leads are excellent. I would love to try to sing over this....great melodies especially at the start.
 
Musically the drums are maybe too busy for the song at times. They don't drive the song as well as a more simple beat might. The leads playing melody need to come up as the rhythm and bass are taking over the mix. Good playing overall on the guitars....
 
yorgo, ido1957

Thank you for the suggestions, I will incorporate your suggestions and get the drum and bass to be more balanced for the next song that I will work on. I think I can make the bass a bit better next time reading from your suggestions but for the drum I guess I'm hitting the limit of what my Hydrogen drum can do. I will try to purchase Superior Drummer 2.0 to replace my Hydrogen drum, not that Hydrogen is bad but the samples on Hydrogen just doesn't sound as good as SD 2.0...
 
Love the song. Nice work. Nice guitar tone. There is a descending minor scale about every 8 measures that really accents the song, but most of the time it is background. Pump that our bring it out, it's great!

There are a lot of parts in the song that the mix sounds too full, like there's no eq adjusting. Other times it rings fairly clean. Figure out how to get the drums and bass to play nice together and get the bass out of the rhythm (love the way that word is spelled) guitar a bit so it joins rather than clobbers the mix. The last set of riffs on the solos are a bit strong. Pull back just a bit.

This is going to be an epic song!
 
Broken_H thank you so much for the kind words and suggestions! Bass, drums and the rhythm guitars are a bit tricky but after reading your suggestions as well as the previous one, I now have a better picture of what they should sound now, I'm going to incorporate it for my next song hahaha! I'm also going to try to have a more focused mix so that all the tracks won't get on each other's way rather than trying to force the tracks to spread and fill as much unused frequency spots.
 
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