Music Trial Recap (Blog)

[Savage]

Use this thread to discuss the following entry from Steve Pavlina's blog:

Music Trial Recap

[thirial]

hey Steve,

youve done really really well on Enhanced, youve only been at it 30 days? thats pretty impressive! i know how tricky those audio programs are. ive got a lot of experience critiquing my friends songs who over the years have become some of the best producers of electronica to come out of Australia (let me tell you they werent that good after 30 days...) so here is my opinion on a few tweaks you can play around with

the percussions are great, simple enough at the start to not overwhelm the listener but sufficiently complex to keep their attention, the strings are great as well as the melody that comes in at 25 seconds. i like the variation of percussion at 48seconds and 104seconds where you release the tension, the snare at 112 comes in nicely but in my opinion you might want to make it a bit crisper and static until the pads stop at 130 and then add the extra layer of complexity to the snare (you have probably already realised creating intricate percussions that dont become "messy" is incredibly hard, something the most experienced artist are guilty of for the first draft so youve done damn good)

at 130 consider putting the pure percussions between 209 and 224 here so you can release the tension from the previous buildup. then do what you did before and introduce the strings then the melody and once you have those two layers playing together i think you should consider adding another element to the melody that differentiates it from the previous buildup in first half of the song

at 40 seconds i think I can hear a pad increase in intensity in the background but then it dims after 3 seconds? then again at 144, and again at 2 minutes? perhaps at the 2 minute mark make that pad really come to life increasing its intensity and even make it climb a few notes - that will give you a nice breakdown to finish the song on

hope that makes sense because ive never reviewed a song in text hehe

by the way have you heard of the genre of music called Progressive? (Progressive electronic dance music - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia) because to me your song sounds like a beautiful sub-genre of Progressive called Melodic Prog

here are two Progressive songs with very different examples of male vocals that might help you think of ways to incorporate your voice into your songs, this one uses an accapella of Oppenheimer proving that carefully inserted speech can be as powerful as a voice in song
Planet Funk: Tears After The Rainbow - YouTube

this one uses a bit of distortion on the voice to bring it into harmony with the music
Grand National - Talk Amongst Yourselves [Sasha Involver Edit] - YouTube
if you like what you hear and want to explore and study one of the most amazing genres of music ever created then check out the rest of this album which has more male vocals Amazon.com: Involver (Dlx): Sasha: Music

and the classic Northern Exposure, you wont regret it.
Amazon.com: Northern Exposure 1: Sasha & John Digweed: Music

stick to it and make sure you jump on abelton or reason once you have mastered garebandloops and you will be making some mind blowing music in no time!

[Andreas]

I'm going to make a prediction:

In 2013, Steve's workshops will incorporate his music.