The most important research for me in this project was talking to producers semi-regularly throughout the process of making the songs. The main way of contacting them was through Instagram message and proved for the quickest answers to my questions. By far the most helpful producer was Stranjah and he made a video back in January after I asked him about designing a kind of synth called a ‘frog bass’ which was extremely helpful, and I ended up using the sound in one of the songs,
Another person who came to my aid about frog basses was a producer called Formula. I sent him a message asking about how frequency shifting changes the sound and he replied explaining what the effect does (shifts the frequency of every frequency by a set amount) and different ways to use it, which again was incredibly helpful. He also gave a little bit of feedback on the retrograde song that I made too, saying he really liked the call and response between the 2 basses.
A producer named Latte also provided me with advice on frog basses, showing the best wavetables to use inside of the vst serum and the effects different envelope/lfo shapes have on the sounds shape. In the end I actually used these pointers to make the basses in Solestis sit slightly in front of the beat which ended up sounding better because it gave the drums more space to cut through.
A producer named Posk gave me feedback on another song that I didn’t end up using for the ep. He said it was well made, with the low end and sub being engineered to a high standard, however there was a little too much going on inside of the mix, especially in the drop, and there were not enough sound effects inside of the song.
https://www.dropbox.com/s/ek36yk6s7d994x8/Kill%20Em%20final.wav?dl=0
A legendary producer called traumatize really likes the song I made called retrograde. The feedback I received was a video of him listening to the song and saying he liked the snappy drums which sat on top of the basses very well. I sent him a download link to the song so I can only hope he uses it in the future, promoting my music further.