Myrtillus, this track has some nice melodies but overall it doesn’t hold up as a whole. The structure is very weird too: it seems like throughout the track you turning on and off different layers with no particular reason.

Let’s take a listen and look closely on what happens at the first two minutes:

Different elements turning on and off

What’s wrong with this? Well, it’s bad for two reasons.

From the listener’s perspective, this track sounds like you just playing around with various loops turning them on and off randomly. There is no development, no storyline, it just goes nowhere.

From the technical point of view, all electronic dance music progresses by 16-bars sections. You can’t just add a new instrument layer at a 7th Bar or make a 23-Bars-long breakdown, it breaks the entire structure of the track. I’ve written the advice on how to make a proper arrangement, make sure to read it.

Criteria of professional production. Part 3: DJ-friendly arrangement

Also, maybe I’m wrong, but it seems like the track tempo isn’t a whole number. To make the track goes along with the metronome, I had to warp it at 136.50 BPM. Is that the case? If so, that’s a total nightmare for DJs, please don’t do that :-) Just remember: always use whole numbers in tempo, 135, 136, 137 BPM... whatever, but with no decimals.

There are more issues in the track, but at first, I’d suggest learning more about arrangement, structure, the “flow” of the track. And the best way to it is to listen to more music around, put some reference track and try to recreate its structure, the same way as painting artists learn by copying other artists’ masterpieces.

How I play: Richie Hawtin Model-1 DJ Setup. Despite that this video has a solo marketing purpose for promoting the Model-1 mixer, it’s still nice to know what happens in the mind of such an experienced DJ as Richie Hawtin.

Track overview in Ableton

George, this is a very weak work. I like how the bass and the high hats sound like, and that’s probably it.

The biggest flaws in your track are detuned samples. While the bassline is in Dm, some of the samples I hear are in G and other tones, producing those musically unpleasant moments.

I suggest tuning all your samples to Dm to match the bassline: plucks, synths, background effects. I’ve written about tuning earlier, be sure to check out that advice.

How to tune samples harmonically

Maybe I am wrong, but it looks like you just put a bunch of samples and synth presets together without particular meaning. For example, that acid riff at 2:18 and 4:09 — is it supposed to be the main theme? If so, why did you put it in the middle, where is anticipation?

Or that arp melody at 0:01—0:20, why it doesn’t appear anywhere on the track after the intro? What was the point of putting it there? You see, that kind of randomness I’m talking about.

And speaking about that arp in the intro, it seems that all of you, Zyce, and Flegma have used the same sample from the same sample pack, which is not cool. There is nothing wrong is using samples, but at least use it wisely — tweak and change it, otherwise you end up like a clone.

Attack of the clones

I suggest thinking what you’re trying to achieve first, what story do want to tell your listeners. And only then make the track accordingly. Take a read to my album behind the scenes to get an idea of what I mean by that.

Vern, I certainly hear a lot of improvements since your last track: there are more clarity now, better soundscapes, and arrangement. Well done!

But as you can guess, there are some issues as well. Let’s go through each of them.

Bassline

The first thing is about the bassline: I feel it has a lack of pressure, it’s too “weak”. I can’t know for sure what caused it since I haven’t seen your project file, but there are few possible reasons: volume balance, equalization, or phasing issues.

Psytrance bassline equalization

Phase cancellation explained

I want to remark that this is not a problem generally speaking, but it is a problem for this particular genre’s sub-standard. Take a listen to a few other tracks’ basses, which are in the same Am key:

If you don’t hear any difference, I bet you’re listening on headphones — it’s a common problem because headphones can’t give an accurate low-frequency response. I suggest checking the bassline on monitors.

Percussions

Take a listen to the offbeat hats that start at the Bar 41:

It seems that the velocity of each hat is set pretty randomly, causing a weird stress pattern. The offbeat hats are one of the key rhythmic element along with the kick and snares, so I would suggest keeping them in a more predictable way.

Rhythm structure basics

Now take a listen to the closed hats starting at the Bar 65:

These driving closed hats, on a contrast, could have a slightly stronger variation, it sounds almost straight at the moment. Besides, the samples of both hats are very similar to each other making almost no distinguish — the offbeat hats are getting lost here.

Nikola and Dalibor are the masters of groove:

Snares

Now let’s go back to the Bar 49 where snare drums start:

Maybe it’s just me, but I feel that these snares have too much “body”, some unnecessary harmonics in the low-mid range. Try to sculpt your own snare by layering few different samples or just cut the low-end with an EQ.

Making a layered snare

Build-ups

My main concern is the lack of energy and overall progression. Even when the track does progress, it’s hard to notice because there are no time indicators for this: some build-ups or at least a crash cymbal on a strong beat every sixteen bars.

I’d suggest adding some noise sweeps, cymbals, snare fills, and other elements that would tell listeners “okay, something new is happening here”. This would make the track more interesting and will help to keep listeners’ attention throughout the track. Here is what I’ve quickly made just to give an example:

Making build-ups and drum fills

Progressive music is all about building tension and then release it, a balance between the “dry” and “wet”. It’s good to learn how producers in other genres do this, especially in Techno.

Listen to these two tracks, they’d be completely boring but Spektre and Alex Di Stefano are the masters of the tension-and-release game:

Keep them coming.

Opinion on Telegram channels from the marketing point of view, and comparison with Facebook pages in numbers

Typically, Facebook pages occupy the primary slot among social networks for public figures and brands, gathering all news as a central hub. I’ve been an active Facebook user since 2011, but the more I use it, the less I like it.

As a DJ and music producer, I’m always looking for new ways of improving communication with the audience so followers can get my latest releases, tours, blogs, and other news. This search led me to Telegram channels, and today I’d like to share what I’ve learned about it.

What is Telegram

If you haven’t heard anything about Telegram yet, let’s start off with a quick 101:

• It’s a fast and free messaging app founded in 2013.
• It has mobile and desktop clients and cloud-based seamless sync between them.
• It’s ad-free and will remain forever free according to founders.
• It has a lot of powerful features like bots, secret chats, groups, channels, and more.
• By February 2016 (a year ago), it has 100,000,000 monthly active users and 350,000 new users sign up each day, delivering 15 billion messages daily.

I’ve been using Telegram as a messenger for quite some time now, but started my own channel just about a month ago.

Telegram me

What is a channel

Channels are a tool for broadcasting public messages to large audiences, similar to what you do on Twitter. A sort of blog within the messaging app.

A channel has as a public username so you can search it within the app or access via browser by the direct link, like telegram.me/dsokolovskiy_channel.

Basically, it looks like just one of the chats in the app. You can share text messages, images, links, and even audio and video playbacks using a built-in player.

By default, when you share a post, your followers will see a push notification. You can also send “silent” messages by clicking on the ring icon, this way they won’t receive notifications but rather just see an unread counter of your channel in the chats list, this is a sort of “gentle” notification. And since all broadcasts are organized by chats, you don’t need to compete for the users’ attention in their newsfeed using cat pictures — they will see your messages when they want to.

Here’s how a channel looks in the desktop app

One noticeable difference between Twitter, Instagram, or any other social media is a lack of interaction. There is literally no way people can “like” or comment on your posts, at least for now. The only thing that makes you sure you’re not writing into the empty void is the views counter on the right side of each of your post.

Is it a good thing? Let’s see.

My experience with channels in numbers

I have a very humble experience with Telegram channels as I’ve been using it only a month now, but here is what I’ve learned so far: per follower, Telegram posts reach a much larger audience than in any other social media.

I think since it’s a messaging app, people treat channels like one-on-one conversations and hence trust the authors. For example, if on Facebook people can “Like” your page just to show some support, here on Telegram people follow channels because they really want to read them.

Just to give some numbers to compare with, let’s take a look at my Facebook page which has about 14700 followers.

On Facebook, organic posts reach and engagement is quite suck

You’ll instantly notice these two quite nicely performed posts with 10k and 13k audience reach and probably think “huh, not bad!”. Well, the truth is such spikes happen very rarely, and besides, we know that Facebook artificially gives your native videos higher priority in the users’ newsfeed in order to compete with YouTube videos.

“Theft, Lies, and Facebook Video” by Hank Green

If you look at the other posts, they typically reach in between 1–3k, let’s count it as 2k on average. That is only about 13% of the total amount of followers.

Just think about it a for a moment: you spend a huge amount of time (and sometimes money, too) on getting a solid fanbase on Facebook, but once it’s time to actually speak to your audience — let’s say, you’re announcing a new album or a gig — only 13% on your followers will see your important announcement.

Now compare this to what I’ve experienced on Telegram:

Yes, that’s it. Having only 74 followers on the channel so far, my posts typically reach as twice as the audience I have. And my top-performed post so far viewed by more than 2000 people (once the counter reaches thousands, Telegram only shows short “2k” without specifics). Imagine if I’d had 14700 followers here like my Facebook page has :-)

How is that? Well, It seems that having no ability to “like” or comment motivates people to share your posts — this function is called forwarding here. And people actually do forward posts — to their friends, groups, and other public channels.

Even those posts which underperform still reach out to about 50~80% of your followers, which is equal to the most top-performed posts on Facebook.

Such a broad audience reach isn’t unique to my channel. For example, take a look at the Telegram’s own news channel: they have 78k followers while their typical post reaches about 250–400 thousand people. That’s huge.

Telegram News channel’s post reach is ×4-5 more people than the number of followers they have

Conclusion

Frankly, I have no idea what Telegram will be like in a few years. I also have no idea where to get the audience, I’m not even sure how most of these 74 followers I currently have found me in the first place.

What I know, though, is that Telegram is certainly worth trying.

On cover image: futuristic art from Telegram.org. All numbers are taken from the moment of December, 15.

***

Update on January 27, 2017

Last month I’ve been using Amplifr for social media analytics, and turns out I have 20% of the social traffic coming from Telegram. But taking into account that currently, my Telegram channel has 10—100 times fewer followers than my other social accounts, it actually means that Telegram has the highest click-rate per follower among all social networking services.

Social network traffic distribution on my website, data from Google Analytics on January 27, 2017

Rob, I have a counter question for you: what would you do with this knowledge? Let’s say, I’ll tell you that I’m using Super-duper monitors by SomeAmazingBrand. Now what, you’ll want to get one of these?

You see, there is a catch: audio equipment sound very differently in different circumstances and environment. Room shape, acoustic treatment, sound card, cables, and even monitors vertical position relative to the ears, among other factors, affects our perception of sound.

If you would like to buy speakers, I suggest doing research. Start off with the price range, then see what manufacturers are reliable and trustworthy, then read more about specific models, their type, power, and size. Hint: for a typical home studio, you’d need near-field monitors with the size of the speaker no more than 8 inches.

Home studio basics

But in case you’re just curious what speakers I have, the answer will be pretty boring. For the last seven years, I’m using low-cost active near-field monitors Tapco S5 by Mackie. It’s not what I would want to use, but rather something that I can use at the moment. I intend to upgrade the monitors in the foreseen future in a favour for some higher grade.

Tapco S5 Review on Sound on Sound Magazine by Paul White

Tapco S5 by Mackie is a fine choice for beginners due to low price

Fellow producers! What speakers do you use and why?