Hi! It's been quite a while since I last compose and post on this side, let me start with a quite tense music.

The story is about a group of adventurers that find out their village burned down from afar after they are back from a dungeon.

Hope you like it! feedback/critics are much appreciated!

https://soundcloud.com/mychiilist/fire-from-afar

He mychii,

I liked your track but not overly much (not being harsh just honest). One thing which I would like to point out was the difference in reverb between the drums and all of the rest of the instruments. The drums sounded like they had a lot of reverb (or the samples are just like that) . It made the track sound a bit like it didn't meld or combine properly together I think if you could fix that up it would sound better :)

-Caleb

Hi Caleb, thanks for pointing things out, appreciate it! yeah I'm still trying to find out how to dry the sounds (if that's what you mean). Any tips on how should do it? I can't seem to find a way to make them to have less reverb (I didn't add any reverb effects nor find any settings from the instruments, so I'm kinda stuck ).

To be honest I have no idea... the only way I think you could would be to add reverb to everything else but thats not always what you want haha just play around with it in audacity if you have the sample file? (as in the sound file).

Yeah probably I'll try that. The drums were suffered from being drowned by the other instruments, so yeah it was kinda a problem back then. Maybe then it was too loud that it expresses the reverb being loud as well, or I'll just have to find better drum instruments hahaha. Thanks Caleb.

Pretty good man. Only critique I have is the drums are a bit too loud. Fix that and I think it will be perfect.

Pretty good man. Only critique I have is the drums are a bit too loud. Fix that and I think it will be perfect.

yeah the drum uhh.. quite challenging to take care of. Thanks for noticing, it convinced me to reduce it a little more.

Nice track. I agree with the critiques suggested by the others. There's a lot of reverb and low end mud going on in the percussion and it could certainly benefit from more clarity and balance. It seems like you were going for really powerful drums to drive the emotion, but the end result is too muddy and sloppy. I would suggest toning down the reverb and using eq to cut some of the muddy and boomy frequencies. Maybe you could experiment with other ways to add that power such as layering more similar drum samples to increase their frequency range. This is one of my goto tricks every time I have something that lacks the power I need. Often times it's just actually just the samples lacking specific frequencies that you need. In my most recent track I used two different sets of timpani samples plus a sample set of sub bass boom. I blended them all three together with separate eqs and light reverb then had them playing together as a single instrument. You would never know I'm using three sample sets from just listening to the track. I might also suggest experimenting with a very light bit of sidechain "pump" compression applied to the strings. This could create the illusion of power without actually having to turn the drums up or the strings down. It might work, or it might sound corny and unconvincing. It could be worth a shot though.

Keep in mind all of this is only mentioned for improvement / educational purposes though. I still thought it was a solid track! The composition is quiet nice.

[Edit] I missed the post where you said you didn't add the reverb. I'm assuming they just came with the sample then. I would find some good timpani samples to layer on top of it, then turn the original sample down and cut anything that's too boomy. If it doesn't work I would discard it completely and find something different. A sample with that much reverb saturation may be better suited as a climactic buildup sorta thing rather than a percussive element that runs through the whole song.

Thanks for the feedback and thorough solutions JonasB! yeah I think I'm too dependent on the instrument itself regardless of its weaknesses, hoping that it already throws its best sound. I still don't know either I have to get better instruments or playing with frequencies/layering as you suggested, nor still scratching whether my current instruments are already the best that I got. But I think I'll go for the cheaper solution first (playing with freqs/layering! :D). Still learning how to mix stuff better.