Squeak-y Breakbeat-yish song

[Brisbot]

I was going to post this later, in a more refined form, but I'm considering scraping the first half of the song. I'm not quite sure yet, and would like an opinion on that, and welcome any feedback in any direction. I am fairly new to making electronic music, so I'm sure there are many things I'm still a complete newb on. Also, I have no clue how to embed into the forum ^^

https://soundcloud.com/brandon-matson-2/dnb-breakbeat-squeaky-stuff-v3

[MichaelListon]

Very nice track, especially from 1:10 onwards. I'm not much of a fan of that drum loop but your beat slicing is excellent and flows well. The breakdown from 2:00 onwards is lovely, and the dissonance makes it that little bit more playful. I think the higher pitched synths could be doused in a little reverb, but then I'm guilty of using way too much usually. Anyway if that was my track I'd be proud!

[Brisbot]

Thanks for the reply and compliments man! Yeah, the drum sounds are actually what's kind of grating on me. The song started out a lot differently. More into the drum and bass formula because I just wanted an excuse to do it. But it's evolved since then, and the drums are kind of the odd one out. I've been thinking of either cutting out major sections of it and redoing the beginning, or meticulously going through it and replacing it with a better kit. Either way's going to take a while, and I'm going to need to select the right drums. It's going to be simultaneously fun and er... well somewhat difficult

Also, I like to add effects after mostly everything is in its right place. Or at least I try to. I think that's the best way to do it. You're more reluctant to change stuff if you spent time adding it.... at least in my case. IT adds too many variables when you're just putting the stuff together, and it makes it more difficult to pull apart, like writing a large program. Or something.

[MichaelListon]

I like the drum'n'bass style of the percussion in this, it's just that particular kit sounds overly synthetic/cheap. I know what you mean about the lenghty and tedious job of going back through a track's percussion to swap out the original. I wanted to do that with a few songs but I was just overwhelmed by the work involved, plus I didn't think the songs were worth it. That's is really good work ethic for working at electronic music but there is no way I could ever work without effects during the songwriting process, it'd be like working without my favourite instrument. You are right though, the sheer amount of vairiables in terms of effect parametres eats up waaaaay to much of my time when tweaking them on an ongoing basis while composing. If that makes sense.

[Brisbot]

Yeah, that makes sense, and that's exactly what I'm trying to avoid. Heh. I'm currently picking the track apart, and basically all of the effects I could have put in to beef up the sound would have been a waste of time. So I'm kinda proud of myself like that, but still I'd rather not be taking this thing apart. Picking the right drums is actually a bit of a challenge for me. I've been listening through similar tracks to see how their drums make sense.

The problem for me would be step one and two of the "perfect" song writing process, which would be sound design and then making the main melody. In this track, I kept getting ideas, and kept branching off from the 'main melody' and it became convoluted like that. I probably have over 12 minutes of audio which has come out of this track, and I'm about to have several minutes more. Heh.