Topic: new music: "Animal Defence"

Well, Daniel, I needed a refreshing break just now and your tune delivered. What Now Homeschool?

Dance really isn’t my bag, but that’s not to say I would necessarily refuse working on some of the production of this genre. It can be fun music, and I thought this one was quite enjoyable — it sort of carried me back a few years, which may be some of my own dinosaur showing. I really thought you had all the parts in the right place, too. It also ended pretty well, which can be a hard thing once a good groove gets going. I particularly liked the way you consistently had that synth interwoven throughout.

If I may, I’d like to make two vital suggestions to allow this and following tunes even better expression, since you probably intend more along this direction.

First of all, do yourself a huge favour and never render your MP3s in 192kps if ever possible. This song will sound so much better in 320. Did you know that your work loses up to 90% of the digital music information in 192? Yes, and the ‘psycho-acoustic algorithm’ built into the MP3 format does not do justice in making up for it. In my opinion 320 loses enough already, but for MP3 that’s about the best we have consistently through the music market right now. I fully realise that there are still some websites where you may need to post songs that can handle nothing better than 192, but you can render for them (or often, they simply ‘do it to you’) on a case-by-case basis. Otherwise, do stick with 320, because I can tell some of the ‘air’ got knocked out of the tune. The ultra highs suffered and, for all I know, some of that nice bass you have in there might sound even fuller and richer. (I can’t even do a proper analysis for someone when hearing only 192.)

The other bit concerns the vocoding or ‘robotising.’ Even though some will carry on about how dated and overdone this effect is in music, I think it still has its place, and in your case it fits perfectly here. I happen to know that most listeners still like the ‘candy’ of this effect if not overdone in this and other genres, either. I bring it up now in the event you would like your lyrics to be better understood when robotised, as there were a few lines I had trouble understanding.

Back in days of mostly analogue yore, we tried it on everything, even the neighbor’s hound. One trick you might want to experiment with, in the event you truly do want the lyrics fully understood (there may be cause to be obscure at times), is to try some careful over-pronunciation of the sections likely to be difficult.

It reminds me of the very classic musical, My Fair Lady, where what’s-her-name, Elisa? is made to repeat “the rain in Spain stays mainly on the plain” in dramatic and excruciating over-pronunciation to correct her deep cockney accent and poor diction. So, perhaps try this — it is often a great fix. Vocoding when done properly (as in yours) has that tendency to smear some normally clear speech.

Hope that helps! Good luck with the rest of your dealings in this genre. Very well done, but now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to go practice my dance moves.

Cheers!
Tele

Are you a.k.a. DanYoungMusic on SoundCloud?
That track would get bodies movin’ on the dancefloor, or soundtrack an action sequence in a Transformers film 😀
I feel compelled to say…
@Levendis wrote:

WOOT! WOOT!