Should I upgrade or just keep practicing?

[LachlanCross]

Hi,

I have been given the same feedback for a couple of submissions now: "instruments sound dated."


Should I upgrade my gear?

Or just keep learning how to use the stock Logic Pro X instruments better?


My submission:
https://www.taxi.com/my/artist/songs/yD ... -get-happy

Listing samples:
https://www.dropbox.com/sh/4zzco4wr4534 ... AvhNa?dl=0


Your thoughts are like gold to me.

Cheers,

[melodea]

Your link doesn’t work

[Paulie]

The short answers: Yes, and yes.

However, practice will not improve dated sounds. Since we can't hear the link, I checked out your profile page. The piano tracks sound great, not dated. But, some of the instruments in your lo-fi track does sound dated to me.

Keeping sounds current is a very common struggle for composers. A taxi member told me years ago that one of the hardest parts is keeping his library updated (since he was writing a lot of EDM at the time).

Good musicianship gets killed by tone all of the time. You can have the best musical note choices, but if your tone/patches stink, no one will care about the music itself.

So, whether or not to upgrade depends on the genres you are targeting. If mostly electronic (hip hop, pop, edm, lo-fi, etc.) you need to keep current by listening to current hits, while keeping in mind that most new stuff you hear on the radio to day was written a year or so ago, if not longer.

PC

[LachlanCross]

In this situation, its good to step back a bit and seriously question whether our tastes are aligned with what are considered to be current sounds, but how can anyone judge what is current and what sounds dated, and who is to to say whether they right or wrong? Well, the best guide is free and all around us - current pop songs.

Telefunkin, I think you nailed it.

Thanks for giving such a thorough answer.

I really appreciate the support.

Lachlan.

PS. I'll look into the links situation for my next post.

[LachlanCross]

Your link doesn’t work

Sorry about that, I'll fix it for my next post.

Cheers,

[LachlanCross]

The short answers: Yes, and yes.

Thanks Paulie,

Yes, that makes a lot of sense.

I'll do more listening next time and upgrade as necessary.

I really appreciate you checking out my tracks too.

I'll fix up the link thing next time.

Cheers,
Lachlan.

[TonySollazzo]

Hi Lachlan - I'm no expert in anything so feel free to ignore anything I say here but I also sometimes get the dreaded "dated samples" feedback and I've noticed that the times I didn't the song had the final mix eq'd very bright. I listened to some of your profile tracks and they seem to be have a similar "dull" mix which could/might/maybe what the screener was mentioning. Please note that this isn't about spending more money to get "mastering", or about changing the balance of instruments in your mix, just in adding more presence to the final mix. I don't know if this will help your next submission but if it does then could you please let the forum know? Good luck, Tony.
p.s. the link you gave had /my/ in it, which only you can see, you need to use the links from your public profile page.