Starfighter, by me (and other musics I make)!

Not done, probably sounds shrill and badly mixed because it is and I suck at mixing. Work in progress, blah blah blah. Greetings starfighter, you have been recruited to write awesome music. Starring my knowledge of the ARP 26000 and some mellotronic love.

Constructive feedback is welcome. Space lasers especially. Bad vibes aren't, but if you don't like it, that's cool!

Not sure this is prog, but it has mellotron! Who doesn't love mellotrons?

Thanks

Thanks so much for the comments. I'm using Reaper on my laptop. I have a pretty cheap midi controller and some decent synth emulations, including an ARP2600 vst that i've been trying to wrap my head around. I'm motivated by those classic 70's 80's sounds, including people like Schulze and Tangerine Dream, and more besides of course.

I'm using a basic set of headphones to work with. By no means are they studio monitors. Hopefully in time I can get something better. So it would be very easy to make this sound shrill without realising it. I am pleased it doesn't. 

Mixing is certainly an art, the problem is I'm not sure how to learn it. There are certainly hundreds of clips on Youtube, too many really. I know the basic idea, but it's knowing what to do and what not to do without getting lost. You could spend hours EQing without a clear idea of how and why. So, as I say, for now, I'm trying to get material written. Enough for an album I can upload to something like Bandcamp. If people want to purchase it, it'll be as cheap as possible. That way, with no small amount of luck, I can make a few quid to upgrade my gear. But I'm under no illusion anyone would pay, and of course it would nee dot be good quality sounding. So there's a ways to go yet.

My advice would be to only use compression on recording individual tracks and only if there is a huge dynamic range you need to control. In big studios one of the main uses of compressors is to ever so lightly decrease the volume of portions of the tracks while solo's or sometimes vocals are present.

At the end of the day don't get too hung up on 'criteria', instead just learn to listen. It will all come together if you continue to experiment and apply what you learn.

I once put a mike inside a dryer drum with the guitar amp across the room and fed that back as a reverb effect. You never know till ya try.

You're on your way. 

I once had a drummer do a paradiddle on the bottom of a tea tin cause liked the sound it made.

Keep posting your work from time to time, I'll be interested to see where you go with it.

Here is a new piece I'm working on. A bit more 'techno' than perhaps is healthy, but a simple fun tune I call: