(Trance/House) Feedback on several projects

[Senseo]

(Trance/House) Need Feedback (Newbie)

For some reason, i never completed a project. None of these very small projects are completed within one day or even week. I start when i feel inspired or when i know how to continue. I keep doing small increments. Like i do one melody this day, 2 weeks later i come back and improve it. 2 months later i feel inspired and complete it. But i don't really know what's all needed in producing a song as well. What i have been doing for the past 2 years is simply using plugins and messing around till i got a melody i like. Then look for another plugin that fits the first melody. Then mess around with the sound levels till it feels somewhat balanced.

I'm using FL Studio. I've used Logic Pro X for sometime but i could never produce a somewhat good sounding track, even though everything was easy to use and i have no idea why.

In the following link there are basically 2 songs.

Untitled: I'm stuck as i don't know how to continue with the song.
Untitled0.1: Started as untitled0 and untitled1.
Untitled0: One melody is put at a lesser volume than at untitled1.

soundcloud.com/ilias-joels/sets/tracks

The melody, do they sound good?
Is the rhythm correct?
Does it sound balanced?
Does it feel empty or to much?

Any feedback would truly be appreciated. rhythm

 

[ASLIN]

Untitled: I'm stuck as i don't know how to continue with the song.

Kick is solid and thumpy! Add some more cymbals or a hihat loop. Maybe incorporate some pad chords and piano to make it more interesting.

Untitled0.1
I like this. It's chill and good harmonics. Same here add more stuff with automations, add a bridge with other chords to give the listener a break, then go back to the main chords
Maybe add some vocals? Hard to say exactly which direction you wanna go with the track but you got something there
I also have lots of small ideas and mini projects that i tend to go back to. That's awesome!

 

[beyond_horizont]

Untitled: There's definitely something you can make out of that!

I generally would advise you the following: Before you start focussing on arranging, start to work on your basic idea, which you can later spread out, alter, reduce and extend at certain spots.

One approach to do that, is

1) to build an 8 bar loop first, which contains most of the main elements you want to use. These could be single ore several layers of the following: Kick, hi-hat on the off beat, rhythmical hat(s) and/or shaker(s) in-between the off beat hi-hats, claps and/or snares, percussion hits or percussion loops, bass line, lead line, pads, chords, stabs, ambience sounds, white noise, spot fx etc. (for instance you can check out the labels in your DAW's sample library as well as some pre-sets within synths etc. - at a later stage you might rather look for a few more unique sounds which you've build, recorded or re-sampled and altered yourself).

2) to get an idea or a direction for 1), take a track you like as an example, listen carefully to its sounds, search for comparable ones and start to jam. The goal is not to just copy something, but to find a direction and some inspiration.

3) When you have a loop with a few elements which work together (at the beginning you should probably also have a look at a spectrum analyzer to make sure that your layers are spread across the freq spectrum), copy your 8 bar loop a few times and connect these with some small fills, make some tiny changes here and there or add some single hits for example (listen to the track you like for some potential ideas).

4) When you are quite happy with your result so far, you can build a basic arrangement. One relatively simple strategy could be to copy the 16 or 32 bar loop you've created before until you reach the track length that you prefer and then start eliminating blocks and elements here and there.

5) However, since your track should not be just a succession of repetitive loops, you could experiment with filtering sounds in and out, you could use simpler (esp. at the beginning and the end) or more complex variations of your melody (after a drop e. g.), add one or maybe two longer breaks etc. - also here one of your favorite tracks can be an example how to build tension.

When you practiced a lot and are satisfied with first results you should learn something about mixing. I think nowadays there's a lot of good tutorial material out there.

It's btw not that important which DAW you use, as long as you feel good about it's workflow and above all: learn to use its features.

Keep it up!