Brian Hazard

I like the piano tone and the overall melancholy vibe!

The drums seem too loud until the main groove comes in at 1:21, especially the kick. Put another way, the non-drum intro elements could come up to put them in their proper scale.

Not a huge fan of the cowbell. SNL jokes aside.

The sub bass is a bit much both from the kick and bass. The bass could probably come down a dB or two, but I like a lot of low end so I'm not offended by it. 😄

The little synth lead that comes in after the main piano vamp gets lost. Then you go into Ableton Live 4-bar loop syndrome, where a new part. I guess 8 bars. But it just kinda meanders alone until the outro.

Speaking of the outro, there's distortion on piano in right channel at end.

Overall it feels pretty raw. It's obviously unmastered, but I'm not hearing a lot of tonal or dynamic control (EQ & compression) on individual channels. Fortunately you picked a solid piano sample so the foundation is strong!

Bottom line, feels like a demo — the seed of an idea, but not a fully formed piece.

Brian Hazard

I guess I'm hearing these out of order. Fluence fed me "Wake Up" first.

Bass (detuned 808?) seems a couple dB loud again, but otherwise the mix so far (one minute in) is good. The kick sits out front of the rest of the drums, but that's fine by me. I have a thing for quiet hats/cymbals.

The piano feels distant, almost vaporwave-y. I like it!

So again, this feels like it's all set up in Ableton session view, and you're just firing off the clips at 4 or 8 bar intervals. There are no chord changes or different sections — it's just one loop with different parts muted at different times.

Again, some cool sounds and the seed of what could be an interesting idea, but you haven't taken it anywhere yet.

Brian Hazard

Alright, third time's a charm, right? 👍🏻

That open hi-hat on the downbeat reminds me of Rihanna "Umbrella".

Love the reverberation around the piano, and the way the drums are pushed to the back. The bass sits nicely in this one.

Timmy 😂

This definitely wins for most interesting chord progression. There's no sense of really moving to a new section, because it all stays close to the tonal center, but it feels a lot less repetitive than the other two.

I was surprised to hear it cut out so quickly when we were just getting started.

I'd say this is the most realized of the three. While it still feels more like a piano doodle than a completed track, there's some sense of forward progression, through the Timmy sample and the arpeggio and then it sits there for a bit, then teeters and falls off a cliff. 😜

The piano chord at 2:25 jumps out of the texture, reminding me that you could definitely use some (more?) compression!

Bottom line, your whole SoundCloud page looks like a production diary or musical dream journal. Either you need a story to tie all those bits together, or you need to start doing the hard work of fleshing those ideas into complete tracks.

Hope that kinda sorta helps! While I don't think anything is ready for sharing yet, I did enjoy spending some Sunday afternoon time with these.

Brian.