Souls R us by DMJ: so the first thing I have to

synrgy's picture
Submitted by synrgy on Wed, 2006-10-25 00:13.

so the first thing I have to say is that in today's world of Drum N Bass you just can't get away with 16-32 bars of nothing but a single break..  So the intro definitely needs work.  Way too much reverb on the drums as well.

that sounds like a bad start, but once this kicks in with the melodies, and the bassline, and the other breaks, it's a pretty cool tune..  Awesome parts anyway, but you could stand to somehow make a smoother transition between the reecey part and the guitar-ish part..  It kinda sounds like mixing 2 records together in that way.  So it's kinda cool at the same time as not working.  So yeah, obviously I'm torn on that. Eye-wink

I love the arrangement for the most part, besides what I've already said, but the mix and eq need a lot of work.  The parts sound decent individually, except that as before mentioned, most of them are completely saturated in reverb.  The problem is they don't feel natural when they go back and forth, it sounds kinda cookie cutter-ish.  Before you let that offend you, know that I feel like I suffer from the same problem in my own tracks.

The sub bass and the main drums go really well together, kudos for that.  I would really reccomend some filter or high pass/low pass eq work, particularly on the reece.  If you do a downward filter sweep towards the more melodic section, it'll blend better. It's about continuity I guess.  Though this as per usual kinda goes under the opinion file, so take it with a grain of salt.

I listened to this twice, and this is what I'll sum up with:

Great parts, skipping the drum intro..  I really love it from where it breaks out and on, except for the akward transitions.  GREAT work mixing the sub/drums.  Lay off the reverb.

Eq/Mix - 3.5
Arrangement - 3.0
Total Score - 6.5