NEW EP - 90s / Old Skool House Flavour
NEW EP - 90s / Old Skool House Flavour
Looking for a label interested in releasing… feedback welcome!!
Just a word of advice, quite a lot of labels don’t really like music being public if their going to sign it. Best to keep it private and send to labels if you want to get it signed.
Will check this out later when I’m home.
True… was just thinking i’d get a few listens / likes on it first then put it private. D/L is turned off tho.
Any thoughts appreciated 
I need this track in my life! Good job, Max!
Those listens/likes are what is going to tell labels you didn’t send them the link exclusively…
The track is ok, I kind of like it, but there’s some things that somewhat bother me: Sometimes the vocal samples feel more like they’ve been stacked on the track rather than really belonging there (if that makes any sense to you… 
). Also I’d rather cut the use of the samples back quite a bit. Right now it almost seems like you feel you need to use the samples a lot to make/keep you track interesting. It’s just a bit too much.
Even though the track uses some very well known samples, I feel like it’s missing that ‘special something’ that would make me buy it.
Btw., if you could point me to where you found that First Choice samples, I’d be really grateful.
Thanks for the feedback
Yeah it’s quite busy on the sample front… I suppose i could strip it back but I dunno i just feel like I got to add the sounds i feel / have in my head.
Did you check out the other tracks on the “EP” btw? Same sort of vibe so maybe you will prefer one of them… or not.
https://soundcloud.com/djmaxone/good-vibrations-max-one
https://soundcloud.com/djmaxone/some-people-max-one-mastered
I mean yeah you’re right, i’m gonna turn em private I think.
The First Choice samples are off an old vinyl acapella record I have that’s got a few classics on it. All the female vox sample on the EP are from it. There’s loads on discogs.
Cheers man, you got any productions btw?
Mx
Cheers dude! Appreciate
When it’s mastered i’ll ping you a copy.
The hats in the first one you posted lack the snap, there a bit loose, could do with a sharper snare in there too. Just to solidify the groove, as it’s there but could just be a bit tighter to carry the track along. Then when the ride does come in, it will lift it instead of keeping it at the same level. And I agree, I would stick with just the female vocal snippets, bit too many popping in here and there. It seems a bit too busy at the moment to let the groove carry the track.
The drums on the second track are a lot tighter, they definitely work well. But again, there’s a lot going on in the track, various little synths and noise effects which actually detract from the groove. Strip the track back a bit, work on solidifying the groove, the drums and bass will carry the track.
The third one, get rid of the vocal at the beginning, doesn’t work, and leave the intro to run longer before bringing vocals in etc I would say just keep the female vocal sample in, strip back some of the effects in the background during the main bit, the track doesn’t need it.
Overall solid efforts, just need to have confidence in the basics of the track, so that you don’t overfill them with too much.
Anyway, good work, hope my comments help.
All good advice, appreciate.
Ideally I’m trying to get into my mates studio (he’s South Soul Project - signed to Black Butter) and get a few hours with him to work on the mixdown and help strip it back / tweak it. Think you need to just bring in a pro ear to get that pro sound. All the DJs back in the day used to use engineers (MJ Cole was a big D+B engineer before going alone) and I think that collaboration is the way forward.
He likes the tracks and is gonna play one of em at his gig tonight so i’m gonna go down and see how it drops on a system to a crowd. Could be interesting
Best of luck, Max. The track was missing something, but I’m no producer and couldn’t specify. Solid track, nonetheless. Glad you had these other dudes elaborate. Tell us how it went last night!
Thanks mate, producing is hard and so subjective really… I mean i hate nearly every track i listen to so even released tracks aren’t perfect and are open to criticism.
But i agree with most of what has been said so far. I’m gonna tweak em, re upload them to sc again but as private then hit up some labels.
I know they aren’t a million miles away.
Your definitely close to having a solid EP, when you re-upload, keep em as private and hit up some labels. Best way is to send an email with the private set link, and as annoying as it is, keep it to one label at a time, and play the waiting game. Once you’ve sent them to a label, leave it a couple of weeks, if you don’t hear back send them off to another one, some will get back to you some won’t.
And your right there is plenty of crap that gets released, with the advent of digital only labels, its a lot easier to get stuff out there and a lot cheaper and so quality control has dipped.
But good luck!
I like the vibe. I think amadeus has some good points what you could do to make your tracks better, but it’s not like they’re not already good.
Working on some stuff, but don’t have anything I’m completely satisfied with, yet.
Seriously though, I would strip out the samples. They really don’t add to the track in my opinion. Just go sample diving and look for some add libs and create a groove that compliments the track with that. Would get better results and will it will definitely catch a few more ears for being a bit more original instead of relying on the novelty fact of using a well known sample.
You’ve definitely captured that garage/jack feel that is all the rage these days, but like others have mentioned it’s definitely missing something to polish it off and bring it all together. A nice two bar chord progression maybe, or try and have a bit more fun with those strings. Just something to put over the top of it.
Another suggestion for a young artist trying to get on a good label, have your bloody Soundcloud up to date! I don’t want to see tracks from two years ago on there UNLESS they are already released. Every once in awhile I’ll just go browsing through Soundcloud groups just to see who’s out there (I’ve found a few good guys who are still staples on my labels). When I find a track that catches my ear I immediately go check out there page.
Do they have tracks released? If not what’s their current body of work looking like? Is it consistent, or did they just get lucky some how and catch lightning in a bottle? Is there Facebook and possibly twitter account looking good?
People say they want to get signed and make a living doing this, but they don’t present themselves as being professional. I’m not looking at how many followers/likes they have, just want to see if they are in this to win it.
Take this as advice from some one who runs two labels (one a personal project, another I’m getting paid to run) and deals with artists every day and gets sent a decent amount of demos.
Cheers and best of luck!
Hey Jason,
Thanks for the reply
Appreciate your points. I think i will have a go at stripping out the samples or finding some more obscure ones.
So Im not actually young tho btw, i’m 36… but apart from that I thought my soundcloud was up to date, also why wouldnt i have old stuff on there? it’s a record of old stuff.
However, I was toying with the idea of coming up with a whole new production name… kind of like [but not on the same level of course] that shadow child did when he was dave spoon etc.
Maybe open a new sc just for that and keep my max one account with everything on?
Not sure…
You’re young in the business, as far as being new and all. And old stuff might cloud people’s judgments especially if the production quality isn’t on par with your newer stuff. And I want to just see recent stuff on there as well to show your active in the studio and are actually working on your craft.
If I’m going to invest time, money and energy into an artist, especially a new one who has no previous releases, I want to make sure they are ontop of their game, are fully active in bettering themselves and really want to make a go at this.
If all I see if 4 tracks on their Soundcloud page over a 2 year span with a handful bedroom mixes, that’s not really showing me that you’re being active in the studio.
Ok I’m certainly not a massive producer but I have had a track released on Dizzy Funk already.
http://www.beatport.com/release/program-the-jam/984430
It got a lot of support from Inland Knights, Kinky Movement, Sonny Fodera etc
It was the second track on Inland Knights podcast and the mix their management (Elite) used at the time. My track come in at 5.45
https://soundcloud.com/elite-music-management/inland-knights-autumn-mix#t=5:45
So I do appreciate the pointers no doubt… but i’m maybe not as wet behind the ears as you think. It’s just my day job directing means it’s hard for me to dedicate enough time to producing.
My mate South Soul Project [Black Butter] dropped Every Day Of My Life at Catch last Friday and said it went down well btw… but i agree it needs tweaking for sure.
Cheers again for the comments.
Will take them on board
Max, can we be buds? 
Cool, then take my advice and apply it as we needed, along with what most others have said on here and you’re well on your way