Made Neurofunk tune after 8 years break

Hi, thank you very much. I will try something. I remember putting mostly like 2x chorus on bass, no reverb.

Snare has some reverb, just a little and I was afraid it will be too much. I think I want to spend like 10 hours more maximum and perhaps it is also good to think about sending this to a mixing engineer.

I feel there is always some limit and the only retrospective helps to fine-tune details. My time also costs something and I could spend this time on a new tune.

I currently work with exported stems. I think I could try that Zynaptic plugin to “unreverb” a track. Never tried that 😀

The bass has like 5 layers I exported to wav and spent a lot of time on another processing. So it is difficult to change it…perhaps I can have this in mind next time on another work (I could change the drum pattern though).

Okay, I think I’m nearly finished. You said it has some psytrance stuff or feeling I was not aware, so I went more forward with this :-D. Now it might be even more experimental, but after the years I found it’s better to do it as a hobby by myself and don’t expect anything from anyone.

What I did (in case you want to make some tutorial on production):
– applied several amounts of saturation & distortion like onion layers, applied Soothe and Gullfoss for smart peak removal & deess

– the sub-bass was boring and once again I convinced myself to rebuild it with a classic sine wave layered underneath, I used my Roland JP-8080 as I found very nice sounding sub bass patch (Serum did sound quite boring for me)

– added cymbal loop with slight reverb mixed around -20dB …it’s there only some parts I want to make more intense and it’s not annoying much

– used Plugin Alliance Shadow Hills Mastering Compressor Class A together with T-Racks automated EQ (analysed some Rregula song by EQ and applied a 70% difference on my master, neat “Landr style” trick with custom options!) followed by Fabfilter limiter

– scavenged some Sample Genie presets and made some stabs here and there to accompany my lead synth, so it’s not boring

– for samples, I found Sample Genie is good to start a project and build around that, but when I need to find only something I can add to my project and something that would fit and is not too much over-mastered, I found the best is 20Hz Sound sample packs

– I talk to a lot of mastering engineers and paid some consultations – no one in your mastering tutorials mentions the trick where you boost your Master volume (before compressors) by 1, 2 or 3 dB. Let compressors work more on the drop, then gradually decrease. This helps to create that impact and make it sound big.

– also stereo is important, I spent a lot of years on this, my favourite is Nugen Stereoizer, but it’s good only for one element in a song, otherwise it starts to fly all over. Better is to apply UAD Roland chorus. But recently I found this: SideMinder ME – Dynamic Stereo Width Maximizer – Mastering Edition. It works as a multiband limiter for stereo. It has preset called “vinyl”, which will boost mids in the stereo and keep highs tight. Something opposite I was doing all the time and for D&B I feel this sounds better. Also having a stereo limiter effect is quite different approach and I don’t know what it does, but it does what I need

https://soundcloud.com/cyberluke/drum-bass-demo-kalimeso

Not exactly. On master you never have one compressor. One compressor with big gain reduction is not optimal. First you should catch the peaks with opto compressor. Then you should use some discrete compressor to finish it. Also you often use mastering EQ & saturation.

That’s why turning knob on compressor is not a good way. But to simplify and answer: Yes it would be like turning up the input gain on the compressor, but do not touch threshold at all. That’s the key.

So in practice it means automating master fader, if it is a pre-fader, or putting some utility plugin with volume control (better use native plugin, so it does not distort if it cannot use 64-bit internal precision as your DAW).

The whole thing is described here in Cubase: https://youtu.be/IR7WV_F0GCQ?t=811 …I use it in Ableton

Just one more argument against the compressor, if my 64-bit internal precision stuff above would fail: Also, imagine you would hard-wire this automation to your compressor and then you decide to switch positions in your mastering chain or just try out “this new mastering compressor on the market”. It’s not the best practice to tie yourself with fewer options if you can keep more options and editability.