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.

https://soundcloud.com/user151958515/starfighter" rel="nofollow - Here

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

Are you saying there's too much going on at once in some parts?

I'm not very good at mixing. At the moment I'm just writing tunes, then we'll see about properly mixing.

I do tend to overload the piece with parts

I appreciate the feedback

I tend to like using parts a lot so that they integrate more into the piece, rather than pop up once or twice. Then they feel superfluous. I thought adding it there would add to the drama of the intro when it kicks in. But the criticism is fair.

There's a lot going on at the end to be fair. Most of it is meant to fade out but it does get a bit muddy.

I'd like to learn to mix, but it's pretty difficult so I've been focusing more on getting a body of work together first.#That's my excuse anyway :D

Thanks for the response

Not sure what your recording software or playback system is, but I don't get shrill from any of this.

In fact I really enjoyed it. It reminded me of some Klaus Schultz I've heard.

A few facts...

-I'm a sound engineer/producer who has extensive experience working with a keyboard player who had an original Big Blue ARP 2600. It now resides in my basement in storage.

-He recorded an all electronic album which include tonnes of ARP 2600.

http://www.progarchives.com/album.asp?id=18104" rel="nofollow - http://www.progarchives.com/album.asp?id=18104

-Mixing is an art and can really change the mood of a piece depending on how its done.

-Being the composer and performer, you know what you had in mind when you recorded it so you should be best positioned to know where you need to focus.

My suggestion would be to work on the sound stage placement of the various voices. It seems pretty balanced over the JBL near field monitors I have at my desk. Try moving things around a bit and isolating different voices either L or R to give a deeper sound stage. Maybe work on making the rhythm voices more percussive.

the beauty of what you have here is that you can experiment and in doing so discover or perhaps even stumble upon something that make it pop.

Well done keep it up.

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.

Ah, well that's unfortuante. Perhaps mixing can help. That's an arpeggiated part that's integral to my vision of the track. Fair enough if it's not your taste otherwise. I can respect that, and thanks for your feedback

As for EQ'ing...ahhh, EQ'ing. As you may have already discovered, a beautifully EQ'd instrument doesn't stay that way as the tracks build. That's because of the build up of harmonics and overlapping frequency ranges of instruments. As you progress you need to keep revisiting the tracks with little tweaks, including possible reverb and sound stage placement. I find that reserving reverb to vocals and gently applied to some keyboards or guitars, mostly during solos.

My problem with mixing is knowing what I need to do. I an sit and EQ and jsut turn everything up - and hey it sounds better (not always, obviously). But that's not the answer. So it's a bit like looking for a needle in a haystack. I'm not entirely sure how to learn this.

I have updated the arrangement. I think the music itself is now done

Take a track, mix it, change one aspect and mix it again, set it back to the original and change a different aspect. Then start combing and refining. It's an iterative process.

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.

I once played my bass with some drumsticks, but that's because I was busy listening to Tony Levin at the time :D

Sounded pretty good actually.

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.

Although I'm a fan of prog, I think it would be inaccurate to say all the stuff I'm writing is prog (ymmv). 

I've always enjoyed electronic music however. In fact I got back into making stuff because Synthwave is a guilty pleasure, but as it transpires that's not what I'm writing. My influences are across the board, though if i can sound like Tangerine Dream from the early eighties I'll be happy :D Plus I love those old school electronic sounds. 

If you want to hear more in the meantime, I encourage you to check out my soundcloud as I've posted more stuff on there. Some of which isn't entirely finished. You can follow from the link I posted above.

Thanks again

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

https://soundcloud.com/user151958515/astonishing-tales" rel="nofollow - Astonishing Tales

https://soundcloud.com/user151958515/psi-hawk" rel="nofollow - https://soundcloud.com/user151958515/psi-hawk

What would you suggest in terms of improvement?

https://soundcloud.com/user151958515/sunrise-on-zenn-la-1" rel="nofollow - https://soundcloud.com/user151958515/sunrise-on-zenn-la-1