3 Concept Sketches

Hi, this is my first post on here and the first time I’ve ever shared any music. I don’t have finished tracks, but I thought I’d put these on here to get some feedback and show what kind of styles I’d like to try and make. The three tunes are pretty varied in vibe.

After listening to other people tunes on here, I realise that I’ve got a lot to learn about the technical side of Renoise. I can come up with ideas for tunes quickly, but forming full tracks and polishing them is not a strength (as you’ll hear!).

I would really appreciate any feedback on these: suggestions, criticism, tips - all welcome. Thanks.

http://soundcloud.com/tepalom/back-stage

http://soundcloud.com/tepalom/brix

http://soundcloud.com/tepalom/balcony

Interesting compositions, quite progressive and crazy bass lines. The bass sound is really nice. The snare and hihats could be perhaps clearer in the first and second track. The last one has good snare and very nice clear sound in overall!

There’s some room for mid instruments especially in the second track. But that’s a matter of taste how much pianos/synths you want to use.

In general, good and interesting stuff! Are these pure Renoise tracks or do you use VSTs?

hey thanks, tomij7, for the comments. This is what I really need to know. When I work on tracks in Renoise, I’m really focusing on just one or two parts at a time. Then when I render the tune and listen to it on the stereo, I feel like something’s missing from it. I totally agree that something is missing in the mid-range. I’d love to try and work some samples in there, but when I’ve tried using samples in the past they just felt superficial and unnecessary.

Also, I’m having trouble with the mixing and balancing of sounds. The snares and bass in particular on some of my tracks are all over the place!

I think I should experiment more with layering synths to give a fuller sound and increase overall sonic density. I use VSTs. I have very limited skills in Renoise at the moment. Apart from using a few standard filters, I really just input the notes. Hopefully I’ll learn some cool tricks from reading this forum.

Thanks again for the constructive comments and encouragement.

I am not pro in layering synths. I generally fill my mids with doubled guitar riffs. Three tracks of guitar, synth chords and vocals fills mid pretty well. But just thrown in different instruments you like. Use panning, use lowpass and highpass filters and some EQ tweaking to get rid of possible boomy or muddy frequencies. That should make rich and full sound if that’s what you want.

And if you input notes by computer keyboard, remember to tweak the velocity column. It depends on VST, but velocity, note-offs, aftertouch might make huge difference. Midi keyboard is of course a big help.

Ok, that’s pretty obvious stuff, probably nothing new to you. I just started my home studio journey too. And yep, this forum hopefully helps you. It has helped me already a lot!