I didn't really like Badlands, it's kind of too repetitive and "slow" for me to enjoy it, there's no big progression during the song I felt like. Just my opinion though. So far all the other songs I listened to were better than Badlands, really enjoyed "The Creator".

if youre becoming serious as a music producer you should stick to one or few styles of electronic and not all

you can think of it as ur signature or what you will be known for

if you look up http://boilerroom.tv the producers you will find on here generally stick to one or two types of electronic music

ps dont get into "core" music its fucking awful lmao

sound design is pretty good but i have basically 0 experience with synth sound design so I'm not a very good judge.

badlands is excellent imho

you took tank time in a completely different artistic direction

I feel like the intervals you use and the chord progressions you like to try out are what sound the strangest.

also how did you get a grave accent into your "i'd"

it's on the other side of my keyboard from the apostrophe

[unless there is some rule about that particular word that I'm unaware of. . .] <-- super likely

Alot of your music is really repetitive

Care to elaborate a bit more? That doesnt exactly help.

Nope, i am just cant not grammar

you really need to work on your levels first and foremost, also depending on what programs you use i'd say check out some in depth tutorials on compression which is really important

you start every song with a b eat that repeats for the whole song thats what makes them repetitive
and a lot is two words

im really bad w/ production and all the music i write is shit anyway so take this with a grain of salt, but from like a composition standpoint you could really fill out your music

like i was listening to tank time v2 and was waiting for like a bass voice the whole time. try to have distinct voices in mind when you write so it has a 'full' sound while still making sense yknow

also like during the later part when the hits start, the hits don't match the chord tones that are playing under it. i would recommend you take the time to learn chords and progressions and stuff so you can add some variety to your music while keeping it coherent

a lot of writing music is listening to shit too. if you listen to music of the style you're trying to recreate and really study it you'll find it a lot easier to write in that style and sound good. and when i say study i mean like, listen to it thinking: ok it starts with an intro of 8 bars that's just the motif in a high voice with some synth-y harmony playing underneath then the bass comes in w/ rhythm and that goes on for around a minute w/ some variation in hits and stuff until it dies down into etc etc etc

sorry im bad at explaining stuff i hope i helped a little

I'm gonna critique this based on two main facets. Technical/Mixing-wise and Creative/Songwriting-wise.

From a mixing standpoint, all these songs need a bit of work, but this is something you will learn over time and improve on as you continue to produce. All of their mixes are a bit muddy and their frequency spectrum isn't very well balanced between your three latest tunes I am listening to. When you're mixing music, think of it that each element or sound in a song needs to be altered to help contrast/compliment itself with others. It's like a bookshelf and you need to organize the books into it, rather than just throwing them in randomly. To do this, you can use several tools, mainly equalizers, and various forms of compression will do the majority of the work. For a very basic example, if you have a lead synthesizer or bass synth, and a sub bass playing at the same time, working as a cohesive unit, you'd want to add a lopass/hicut EQ filter to the sub bass, to roll off extra frequencies over 80-200hz, and a hipass/locut filter on the bass synthizer to rat out the frequencies that would mess with your sub bass at around the same point. And if you were to add more instruments and percussion, you'd try to find the spots in the frequency spectrum where its sound is abundantly present. You'd add a subtle bell boosting its frequency there, meanwhile on your other instruments you'd add a bell with negative gain to decrease that sounds presence in that frequency area. But don't take this to the overboard, I used to have like 10 or so bell curves on each instrument's EQ either boosting or subtracting gain very agressively, and it made my mix's flat and dry. Another HUGE thing when making music and mixing, is to trust your ears. Know when what you're changing helps the mix, rather than applying changes for the sake of them working in the past or based purely on advice. Also, you're ears will likely get better at hearing these sort of things the more you produce. I'm not really sure how it happens, but now and then I stumble on a song in my library or even listen to one of my old tunes, that at the time I thought was pretty darn good, but now I can totally hear how poorly mixed it is. You're likely already doing some of these things already as I've heard much worse tunes from new producers, much worse. Also! Play around with delays and reverbs, but use them sparingly. Play around with adding bits of these to the instruments it can help, but make sure to note not only how the reverb/delay/saturation/whatever sounds on the element alone, but how it sounds in conjunction with the rest of your mix. This is huge, and proper use of reverb and delay will help your mixes a ton, I can't imagine making music without them, but like I said, use them to polish, not to correct your original sound. As you've likely already heard by know, before you have any plug-ins on your channel strip and its just your raw audio or vst, make sure it sounds as good as it can to start before adding mixing tools vand other things. I probably should have posted screenshots, but hopefully you could get a few things from this. You may already know this, but avoid clipping. There is a threshold of digital audio that is "0db". If you're master output, exceeds 0 db, goes to 2 db, 10 db, .1 db, whatever, you'll hear clipping and distortion that will severely hurt your mix. So, try to watch your levels and you can use mixing tricks with eq's and compressors to help make sure your mixdown is sitting happily just under 0 db, peaking anywhere from -10 db to -.1 db, whatever you are comfortable with, as long as it doesn't clip. This is also a huge thing to know, if you didn't already.

Now, to look at your songs from a musical level, as songs themselves. I'm not sure how to put the main thing I would like to convey, as I don't know a simple solution if you can't hear it yet. Specifically on "Badlands" and "Tank Time", you're going out of key all over the place. Seeing as you can't just hear this yet, I'd advise looking up scales so you know a set of notes to use in a song. Generally, especially in Electronic Dance Music, you'll be following one key of specific notes in a song. Look up simple scales like C Major or F Minor, and try making a melody with only those notes, it will guide you a lot on making better sounding melodies. To be honest, you don't need to learn music theory to write songs with good melodies that follow a key and sound fine, but maybe if you can't hear it, music theory will help you along the way. I didn't learn any theory for my first few years of playing music, but could detect bad notes by listening. Can't really say much else about this one, but no matter how good your production is, a song written with no key intended won't sound good. I hear the starts of some interesting patterns and melodies but they're almost always hurt a measure or so later by using different notes than that which are in the chord progression. I feel like with a proper understanding of what's in key, you could quickly be writing some very interesting progressions and melodies.

Also, I'd like to clear up some misconceptions I see in the responses. In-depth knowledge of compression is not important! A great mixdown needs no compression to make it sound good, compression can be used sparingly to help alter the transients of each element and its pace as perceived by the ear, and compression is heavily used in modern day mastering, however you really don't need this to make clean good sounding tunes.

Seeing as I've mentioned mastering, I'll try not to get to into it, but one day you'll find yourself wondering why you can't get your music as loud as other artists your listening to without distorting like crazy and squashing the shit out of your dynamics. Once a song has been mixed properly (no peaking past 0 db), and is essentially "complete", it is mastered, which is the final polishing of it to make it more cohesive and professional. Most notably, perceived loudness is the biggest change from mastering, as you turn your dynamic, lively mix into a very flat constantly peaking just at 0 db waveform. It's rubbish in general, seeing as it wasn't always like this, but in our time most dance music is heavily compressed at the end to be as loud as the others. I wouldn't worry about mastering for a while, until your mixes are very good. Even amazing mastering won't make a poorly produced tune sound alright. Sooo, I wouldn't sweat this one for a while, and if it's really a pain in the ass once you get there, there's plenty of decent engineers you can pay to do this (a lot of big electronic artists don't master their own stuff).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loudness_war <-- More about obnoxious compression over time e.e

http://www.roboticpeacock.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/OASIS-Supersonic-difference-between-waveforms-of-single-and-album.jpg

If you have any questions about what I meant, feel free to ask as I'm not always best at putting things into words. Also, something I should have emphasized more, keep producing! Have fun with it and you will get better over time.

Oops. My post duplicated, I'm editing it.

mastering is a lot more complex than that, and in the mixing world it has proven to be a rather dark art. EQ is one of the most important factors there. he definitely needs to learn the basics of mixing first thats what he should focus on IMO...like EQ, compression, busing tracks for effects, managing levels without clipping/distortion, creating a good space for instruments, panning etc

the more advanced stuff like RTAS/filters/effects, sidechaining, parallel compression etc he can definitely pick up on later once he has a better grasp on mixing. mastering tracks is really advanced...even some of the best producers will take their mixes to someone who strictly does mastering because they're that good.

Not sure if you read my whole post, but I mentioned almost everything you did, and I apologize for giving you the assumption I was trying to convey that mastering was simple and was only compression/limiting, but like I said I didn't want to delve to deep into it, was just trying to give him pointers of things I didn't understand when I was where he was at.

And tbh sidechaining and other effects aren't incredibly difficult to pick up, and often are a key piece in one's mixdown.

all good, i know they definitely aren't hard to pick up but like i said its definitely better for him to focus on the basics first

@OP some people get trigger happy with effects when they first get into music production and it can make a mix rather sloppy, its best to take a nice subtle approach first so you can see what works best for you...you don't want a ton of different filters/effects all over the place because it can be extremely overbearing and take away from the quality of your song

learn the basics of dry vs wet signal too! and busing out tracks...for instance if you want some delay/reverb etc on an instrument you don't need to apply the filter directly to the track because it can sound pretty awful (not in all cases) but try creating a separate track for 1 or 2 effects so you can send it to your original ones (I.E drums/synth/guitar any sound really) you will notice quite a bit of difference there

All of this information is great! Thanks a ton for the feedback so far guys. Its hard to find good information on how to improve from people who are actually straight forward.

This is the worst piece of advice... Apart from what Casual said about compression not being the holy grail to a great sounding song, technicalities should come last. A great song should sound good, agreed, but if the composition, melodies and arrangement are great then the song will still be massively enjoyable even though it might not sound well produced. It doesn't work the other way around though, you can have a terrible song sonically polished to perfection, and it will still be boring.

I think what Casual said about the songs being off-key should be your main improvement point right now. Try to make simpler songs. Don't start off with an arpeggiated synth preset. Start off with a simple bassline, maybe 2 notes per measure. Then try to play a melody of a few notes on top of that, or an extra voice (pad, high lead synth, something like that). If you're not sure about the melodies being in key, play them in a higher octave, maybe you'll hear better if it sounds right or not. You could try to improve your understanding (but more importantly, "feel") of musicality by learning "dry" musical theory, but maybe it's better to buy a keyboard or something and just learn playing, and build your musical knowledge and feeling by that.

Oh and try to avoid FL Studio stock drumkits ;)

sounds like feedback to me lol

sometimes its ok bc most dub/minimal and deep house tracks follow this guideline

isn't electronic music supposed to be hella repetitive though? l0l

There's no absolute rules in music, obviously. I mean, even going out of key can be a legitimate creative choice. If somebody creates the weirdest shit and no other person on earth can enjoy it except for the creator himself, and he's fine with that, then who's to say he can't? The point is though that most music artists on some level care what others think of their music, and hope that others enjoy their creations. Especially people who post their creations on a forum asking what others think.

A beat can be repetitive if it fits the song or the intent of what the song is supposed to convey, which is in my opinion a more legitimate reason than "the genre's rules, that I'm trying to adhere to, say that I should have repetitive beats" because a genre should be of a descriptive nature rather than prescriptive (categorize music for convenience instead of dictate how music should sound).

the key to audio production is knowing how to use what you have in front of you

that's like handing someone an instrument and telling them to just wing it, in order to know what you're doing you have to learn the basics of mixing which starts with the program in front of you and the hardware/outboard gear you have to use. learning the ins and outs and knowing the full potential of your set up will ensure that everything runs smoothly. i'm sure he came in here expecting just criticism about how his tracks sound but mixing music is very complex and when you're running solo on a project you need all the help you can get...especially if you're a beginner

I guess the confusion is caused by what OP meant with "music producer". Usually when someone says that and then promotes their own songs (instead of a band recording, or a singer for which they made the backing track, etc), they mean something synonymous to "electronic music artist". I assume MasterFloofy is first and foremost trying to achieve that, so his focus should be on songwriting.

If you'd make an actual valid comparison out of yours: it's like somebody just bought a guitar, asks this forum how to make songs with it, and you proceed to tell him he needs to learn how to use a compressor and equalizer. Unless you're making dub reggae, the instruments should be the main priority of music making. The mixing board and effects come second.

To make the point once again, if you take one of Floofy's songs like "Badlands", and put the best mixing engineer in the world to work on making the song sound as good as possible, it will still not be enjoyable for 99.99% of all people because of the musical "errors" in it. However, if you take the same instruments and don't touch the mixing board, and let some composer make a song with the exact same synths, samples and mixdown, it can turn into a amazingly enjoyable song. I don't even know why I have to explain this, it seems like an obvious point.

badlands is great background music imo. Like if i had a utube channel id ask you for the rights. it maybe be my autro or intro of my vidoes.

I gave you a follow for some support, you have potential and have some great melodies that would work out great as game soundtracks. Most things I wanted to point out have been said in the posts above already so I'll keep it brief.

I'd say you have some work on the general structure of your songs. You have a short intro followed by your main melody but you just repeat it over and over again. The kind of music you make works best if you build it up slowly but steady, so your main part really catches people by surprise.
I'll give you 2 examples of what I consider great buildups.

FTL Main theme;
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QHDMqWMzBG8
(great buildup and slowdown, the progression feels like a journey itself thus perfectly incapsulates what the entire game is about. Notice how that opening synth play such a prominent role throughout the entire song with just 4 simple notes)

SHODN theme;
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jC0Tc81y604
(I don't have much to say about this, I just love how the synths are layered and different melodies interact so smoothly)

As far as the dubstep/trap part goes.. I don't think it's meant for you. You have a knack for songs like Tank Time. Slapped With a Waffle and Badlands sound like 'How To Make Dubstep In Fl Studio' tutorials incarnate. I know it sounds harsh but that's how I see it. Not trying to break you down my friend.

Good luck anyways :))

I`d like to thank everyone who participated in this thread. Alot of good advice came from this thread and will surely help me with music producing in the future.