Pay attention to the length of your track. Because you are entering in a producer-compo, it is not favourable to produce a DJ-friendly version. Be aware of the goal that you have in mind with your song, so think well about your songlength; don’t make it any longer or shorter than necessary for your track. Triphop and deephouse are styles in which longer song lengths are in general more than welcome, whereas commercial house normally needs a relative short songlength.
Every good track has a certain emotion or emotional pulse. Although hard to explain, everyone will know the feeling that certain songs trigger you to feel a specific emotion. Examples for this are the drive in techno, the aggression in hardcore, impressiveness in trance, laidback feeling in triphop etc etc. Try to define as clear as possible what the emotional goal of your track is, and do as much as possible to actually achieve that goal.
Use samples in an original way. Try not to use standard samples (such as a piano for the lead instrument or the entire 909 drumkit), or if you decide to use them, use them in a non-regular way. The best thing you can do is to generate brand new samples with softsynths or hardsynths. If you lack the knowledge or the equipment / software for this, try to look for samples that aren’t standard used in the style that you produce.
If your song sounds good, but if it lacks identity (the ‘13 in a dozen’ effect), try adding samples that induce a more characteristic sound and identity. Great sounds for this purpose are FX (try looking on internet or generate them yourself with a soft- or hardsynth) or original speech.
Because you’re entering a MadTracker compo, you cannot master your song. Normally mastering can camouflage certain lacking components of your song, but you have to get the best out of your song in MadTracker itself. This means that your samples have to be as good as possible. Check per sample what its function is in your track (such as the low and driving characteristic of a bassline, the groove-inducing characteristics of hi-hats etc etc), and - if necessary - adjust your samples in a sample-editor to let them fulfil their ‘task’ as good as possible (such as adding white noise to a bassdrum to let it stand out better in the mix or sharping up a lead sawsynth to give it more power).
Be aware of the possibilities MadTracker offers you. Check for all your samples if it is necessary to use the volume, panning, NNA’s or its filter / resonance to make it sound better. Furthermore, much can be done with the effects that can be entered in your channels. Don’t simply use MadTracker as a windows-based version of Fasttracker; much more can be done, so get the best out of the program. Check other MT2’s to see what the different codes can do for you.
Channel effects can make the difference, both for the good as for the bad. As slick as it might sound, too much reverb will kill your track. It will make it sound muddy and unclear. On the other hand, a tiny bit of reverb can make your melody sound much more warm and less dry. The same goes for every channel effect; try to get clear for yourself what the goal is of using a channel effect, and achieve that goal. Nothing more, nothing less.
Be friendly to your own CPU, to the judges and to the audience, and route your channel effects if possible. Don’t adjust your effects in order to make routing possible, but if two channels use exactly the same effect with the same parameters, route the first to the second.
Take care with mixing your track once its rough version is finished. Browse through your samples and check if any unwanted pops/clicks/bad loop points still exist. Listen (if possible with decent headgear) to the stereo field that your song has, and adjust the panning of samples or parts of channels if necessary. Evaluate the relative volume of all components of your song. Best thing to do concerning a general check of your song is to finish it and to wait a week before listening it again. You’ll be much more objective at that point. Another good advice is to ask others (fellow-producers or friends with a good sense for quality in music) to evaluate your song in its final version.
A truly good track is good at every point of the total song. Don’t only take care of the good points of your track, but also be aware for lesser components. A commonly made mistake is to make a great melody, but to support it with average beats. This flaw can make the difference between a good and a very good rating.
Once your song is finished, try to perform a frequency analysis with a wave editor. Look carefully to the general overview of your song, and check if certain frequency-regions have too much or too little input in the song. Too much low can make your song sound muddy, whereas too much high in your song can make it sound thin or irritating.
Louder isn’t always better. The standard gain for this compo is 4, and all judges (and all other audience which will download your track) will listen the song with this gain. Listen your song with this gain, and make sure that your song doesn’t clip. This can easily be checked with the yellow light above the master channel in the MadTracker mixer. When it becomes yellow during your track, it has been clipping. Try preventing that; clipping may result in unwanted distortion.
Sample-editors: Cooledit Pro 2, Soundforge 6 or Wavelab 4
Softsynths: Simsynth 2.6, Pro-52B, Absynth, Reaktor, Granulab
Frequency analysis: the three wave editors mentioned above have this function. Furthermore, standalone applications and directX or VST plugins also offer this possibility.
Internet is stuffed with high quality samples, speeches, FX and audio material you even never thought of. Furthermore, MAZ Sound Tools offers a huge archive of audio-related software.
Last: feel free to ask any question at the forum of MadTracker.org. Dozens of people are more than willing to answer questions, clear up issues and think with you to find a solution.
Inge2002-11-04