My Squarepusher remix

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I had to do it. Partly why I haven't been around here at all.

https://soundcloud.com/sendy/squarepush ... ndys-dream

Lo-fi amens at 138 BPM, singing robots, chip beats, a bit of Minilogue and lots of patient editing :)

Anyone else do one?

Here's the original: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2DAa4PEKtYo
http://sendy.bandcamp.com/releases < My new album at Bandcamp! Now pay what you like!

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I think there needs to be more mids, compression here and there. The percussion is particularily bright. I would hate to call the mix thin because it's well crafted, but it needs more punch imo.

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Thanks for listening and giving feedback. I sort of see where you're coming from, but it's hard to make things punchy and have a complex rhythm and texture. There is a fair bit of compression and I tried adding mids to the drum buss. Ultimately I settled on that icy kinda sound, because it contrasted with the synths and drones, which take up the midrange space.

If I end up using the track on anything, I'll have another go at tweaking the mixing and mastering.
http://sendy.bandcamp.com/releases < My new album at Bandcamp! Now pay what you like!

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I usually hate (well, dislike and skip) this type of music, but I really enjoyed yours, so fair play.
Really excellent editing and imagination kept the track flowing nicely.


I agree with the nub of camsr's point about the drums being too bright and not really fitting 100% with the rest of the track.
However, I don't think compression is as useful as a smidgin of delay / reverb here in getting the drums to sit more cohesively with the other elements. On that basis, I'd seek to push the drums back a touch to gel better with the other instruments.
(In addition, my own personal taste would be to give the overall track a little more 'air' as the overall sounds is a little bit flat/dull on my speakers).

Nice arrangement and attempt :phones:

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Really nice! Some parts remind me a little bit of Venetian Snares, which is a very good thing.

It's nice to see someone do the editing manually, instead of using "glitch ma tune!" buttons.

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@dark water (and the others mentioning reverb on the beats) :

Believe it or not there is a touch of reverb on the drums, the same reverb that a lot of the other instruments are going through. It's not a lot, but enough for it to notice when I switch it off. Sometimes I like to think of the mix as two different worlds that are interconnected, though. The rhythmic and the melodic, seperate but interacting. The ideal of getting everything to sound like it's in a coherent space is perhaps a bit of a cultural holdover from acoustic music, though if it makes it harder to listen to for you, it's a valid complaint. I'll certainly look into it.

And I somewhat agree with you that this genre of music is oversaturated with uninspiring music. Especially today when anyone can make squarepusher-like edits and what have you. To me this kind of music is resting on the edge of a precipice, as squarepusher himself said, it's important sometimes to make music that's bordering on being complete cack, yet just managing to deflect the expectations and suprise the listener. Like finding the balancing point between order and chaos, funky and pretentious.

@NerdMcBoon :

Thanks! I'm not 100% against auto-glitch plugins, but I find a good sampler such as the freeware Shortcircuit by Vember Audio, which is fully programmable and has lots of modulatable filters, effects, start, loop, end point and envelope modulation can let you create glitches which are inherently woven into the composition. The auto-glitchers are great for happy accidents, though, but an overreliance on them tends to betray a lack of technical vision, especially if no care is made to understand what is going on under the hood.
http://sendy.bandcamp.com/releases < My new album at Bandcamp! Now pay what you like!

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Well crafted , enjoyed that , thanks.

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This isn't the music to listen to with a headache! (what I meant to say)
I like this style of mixing but my monitors don't highlight it very well, it reminds me a lot of how I used to sound design drums before I had active monitors and a different room. It's important to get some tone in the rhythm, and some impulse in the melody, to help combine the two.

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camsr wrote:This isn't the music to listen to with a headache! (what I meant to say)
I like this style of mixing but my monitors don't highlight it very well, it reminds me a lot of how I used to sound design drums before I had active monitors and a different room. It's important to get some tone in the rhythm, and some impulse in the melody, to help combine the two.
I do have flat studio monitors, though not super expensive ones. My room has some bad resonances but I've tried to account for them. I'm fairly pleased with the mix both on speakers, headphones and the house stereo in the front room, but next time I'll try your suggestion regarding getting tone into the melody and rhythm and get them to interact. I might need to use a simpler rhythm, one that isn't constantly changing pace and texture, though. That has been known to happen :D
http://sendy.bandcamp.com/releases < My new album at Bandcamp! Now pay what you like!

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I took a crack at "remastering" your mix (which I know was already limited) and tried to make it sound more translatable and punchy. By translatable, I mean toning down the treble a bit so a listener's high shelf filter sounds better, and hopefully made the overall frequency response more even. I also used a dynamic expander to attempt to get more punch from the mids. It was a challenge because I found the mix fatiguing, but I enjoyed it.

http://www.webfilehost.com/?mode=viewupload&id=9845958
the file has the extension .txt which needs to be chaged to .wav ! That was the only way I could use this awesome upload site (which unfortunately has a 60 second download countdown). It's 44.1khz/24bit wav file.
edit: Unfortunately the site did something to the download, and cut off the last 25 seconds of the file... no idea why but I can re-upload it later.

Some notes on the mix, the 3khz and neighboring area could benefit from more dynamics between the drums, to help open up the groove. More separation in the frequency domain (ie valleying) can do this, as can well-timed compression.

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Neat - I'm liking your style, Sendy. I don't produce music of this genre, so I can't really say that I have much in the way of suggestions, but I do generally enjoy chiptune and anything that has chiptune elements to it, and this was a very enjoyable listen!

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camsr wrote:I took a crack at "remastering" your mix (which I know was already limited) and tried to make it sound more translatable and punchy. By translatable, I mean toning down the treble a bit so a listener's high shelf filter sounds better, and hopefully made the overall frequency response more even. I also used a dynamic expander to attempt to get more punch from the mids. It was a challenge because I found the mix fatiguing, but I enjoyed it.

http://www.webfilehost.com/?mode=viewupload&id=9845958
the file has the extension .txt which needs to be chaged to .wav ! That was the only way I could use this awesome upload site (which unfortunately has a 60 second download countdown). It's 44.1khz/24bit wav file.
edit: Unfortunately the site did something to the download, and cut off the last 25 seconds of the file... no idea why but I can re-upload it later.

Some notes on the mix, the 3khz and neighboring area could benefit from more dynamics between the drums, to help open up the groove. More separation in the frequency domain (ie valleying) can do this, as can well-timed compression.
When I downloaded it I got the whole song. Thanks for this, it's interesting to get this kind of feedback. Personally I'm happy with the mix as it is, though I can totally understand how some people would find it fatiguing. I guess I'm just into dense, harsh sounds.

I'll have a go at implimenting your suggestions, putting some EQs before the limiter and on individual channels, and maybe rolling off some of the highs on the master channel. To be sure, I did use a fair bit of EQ and compression - but I'll reconsider my choices or augment them. I'll also try re-limiting your remaster to see how that sounds, and my parents want to hear it so I'll get to hear it in a living room on a typical consumer hi-fi.

Thanks again for the constructive criticism!
Last edited by Sendy on Thu Jul 28, 2016 2:39 pm, edited 1 time in total.
http://sendy.bandcamp.com/releases < My new album at Bandcamp! Now pay what you like!

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davidstiles wrote:Neat - I'm liking your style, Sendy. I don't produce music of this genre, so I can't really say that I have much in the way of suggestions, but I do generally enjoy chiptune and anything that has chiptune elements to it, and this was a very enjoyable listen!
Thanks! I also make real chiptune music, designed for original hardware. Feel free to have a look around my Soundcloud channel, or check out this one on Youtube:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lTf2lvGA500

Do you make chiptune music or fakebit? Have anything you think I might like?
http://sendy.bandcamp.com/releases < My new album at Bandcamp! Now pay what you like!

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Starts out a bit slow/repetitive but develops really nicely. Well done!
A well-behaved signature.

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Sendy wrote: Thanks again for the constructive criticism!
Sure! Thanks for listening to my remaster, I am attempting to improve my mastering skills on my very humble listening arrangement (old KRK rokit monitor), which I feel lacks fidelity but has a certain truth to it, or maybe familiarity. I tend to dislike limiters on the master, and since your mix was already limited I decided against it. The changes in frequency response made the mix more present here, sounds less "scooped" and a bit less fatiguing, but I am interested in your impression of it also.
If you have the Limitless limiter, that would probably be the best option, it can help level off some of the "instability" of the transients.

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