I’m taking this ableton class in my college, and since the semester is winding down we are having a laptop orchestra concert in a couple days (thursday in fact). each of us will be playing our assignments simultaneously with our prof the conductor at the helm of the mixing board. that’s all fine and dandy but we have a 2 min solo to play each… and i desperately need to improve mine.
i like it somewhat considering it was made in a short period of time and considering all the fx/levels/knobs twiddled were mostly by trial-and-error. i also know i need more samples and do the transposing part better towards the end… i just need inspiration and some kind of concrete direction to go from here.
Well this is pretty interesting. I am not sure what feedback to give as it is difficult to know exactly what you were trying to achieve or what the rest of the concert will sound like before and after (maybe you don’t know that either?)
What were you supposed to learn on the course? Are you supposed to be demonstrating all that you learned.
I am just a beginner at this, hopefully someone with more experience will post back, but here are some thoughts:
I like the vocal sample and the sliced vocal effects
It sounds like you have reversed samples, these seem to be playing through most of the track and I find it irritating after a while (I would use the reversed sound sparingly as to me it sounds a bit “wrong” which is cool here and there but not for a full track where it sounds a bit lazy)
There is no discernable Melody. I assume this is intentional.
You start to introduce a groove at about 45 seconds in, you could work and improving this (adding or taking stuff away) to get this working into something that will get some toes tapping or heads nodding.
(you could look at side chaining a gate or compression effect to add/emphasise rhythm)
Any groove you have gets drowned out after about 15 seconds by all the other layers of sound, it might just be the reverse effect (or you are slowing things down as well?) but it sounds like you are layering samples that are out of key so it starts to sound a bit messy and this gets in the way of the stuff that works.
What effects are you using? you could experiment with the a low or high pass filter (auto filter) to add some motion and create some space in the sound mix.
thanks for your feedback guys, really appreciate that you actually took the trouble to listen to my shiteous shit. hehe i took your advice about the reverse chords being too long. you’re right… i was being lazy!
as for what other people are doing - i don’t really know what they will be performing either but from the past assignments in class there’s a wide variety. some people have beat driven stuff, some have just kind cool noises…
this is what i have now as the edited. i kinda added these choir samples, hope they’re not too out of place.
i’ll have to shorten it by 30 seconds by tomorrow night. if there are any glaring errors (kinda feel like the levels are abit off..) or any other helpful suggestions for last minute changes, im all ears.
edit: and about the cutting out 30 seconds… there are a couple places i can think of to just delete it off but how do i move everything forward? this must be a stupid question but when i highlight the rest of the track and drag it, it just extends clips forward.
I liked the 1st track. If I had to say, nit picking, I would do something with 1:20. Or perhaps you could throw in a bit of flare with ambient strings etc. or a wobble bass. But since your doing an orchestra and what not. . . .Idk, I think its fine.
It wasn’t shit. I listened to the edited version you posted. My fav part was the last minute or so. Overall I think it flowed pretty well If there would be any part to cut out imo I would say shorten the part with the delay/reverb drum type sounds and transition into the final minute of the track sooner.
