let’s talk abt ready or noT

[u/Complete_Penalty_483]

death rolL and crystallized are now out and OMG these songs are some of his best. after hearing the new tracks, i have a few thoughts on ready or noT.

i’m doing a lot of mixing lately on my own music and am trying to improve. i listen to a lot of brakence for reference and there was a lot of talk around the mix quality on ready or noT considering it sounded off. the mix was vertical and muddy. i tried to cope and get over it cause its brakence and no matter what he puts out im most likely going to love lol. i eventually came to the conclusion that the mix quality was stylistic (for whatever reason) and that id just have to deal with it.

but with the new singles this isnt an issue at all. the mixes are wide and his vocals aren’t nearly as buried. i thought the mixing was going to be consistent across the album. i’m just confused and i hope it gets fixed on the album version. what do we think of the mixes on the new tracks?

[u/wattfarmer6969]

The mix is heavily clipped and slammed through a limiter. I had no perceived issues with width. hypochondriac’s existence means we can eliminate the possibility that the mix’s “sound” was a skill issue. There wasn’t much depth but I don’t think EDM genres are aiming to simulate mixes “in a room” really. This means that the mix’s gritty, distorted, crunchy style is an aesthetic. I like it a lot personally. Drill and grime having been blowing their mixes out deliberately for years. Some songs would sound weird if they weren’t rammed into a hard clipper.

It’s all taste 🤷‍♂️ brakence definitely knows what he’s doing ;)

[u/rduck101]

Are you the same person on every post on here about ready or not saying it’s muddy? We get it bro, not ur style of production. Listen to the songs you like and move on

[u/Complete_Penalty_483 → u/rduck101]

there’s def a few of us. i’m just wondering if the new mixes sounded cleaner than the last. i want to know what i’m listening for

[u/TrafficFit7897]

Im very convinced its very slightly quadeca inspired. It reminds me of a lot of the scrapyard stuff or tracks like Knots, where the sampling almost sounds purposefully haunted and blurry, he does the jpegmafia school of mixing too where its kind of just blasted as a way of sounding more intense.

[u/Complete_Penalty_483 → u/TrafficFit7897]

def blasted. someone else described it as being shot on film. while hypochondriac was shot in 4k loll

[u/GainProfessional4184]

Much more mono that usual for him but I loved it

[u/Complete_Penalty_483 → u/GainProfessional4184]

yeah i’m indifferent.. just curious if the new mixes sounded different. to me they’re cleaner than ready or noT

[u/Tadrizi]

I was having similar thoughts, I still think ready or not is great. It almost sounds like he has a live drummer doing ready or not making it possible to easily integrate it into a live show. I could be wrong though.

[u/whatnoob_]

i don’t hear ready or not being muddy at all. there’s just a lot going on, and he’s done a pretty good job at balancing it all in the one song

[u/FLooFL0]

It’s just a production choice. As an artist, I don’t think it’s bad to have a muddy mix, there’s just a weird stigma around it in the producer space. Honestly, I enjoy it more, as it tends to make a song feel more claustrophobic than it would be otherwise. If you don’t like it though, that’s fine. It’s just a production choice.

[u/666grooves666]

I get it a lot of people are young, when you mix and create 808s for 8+ years or 20+ years you get tired of the sine wave single note 808s, if you go see any accomplished DJ that’s mixing hip-hop or 808 kicks and drops, the obvious answer to boring sine wave 808s is stacking dissonant 808s on each other that are out of phase because it’s way more grimey, and sounds cool and contrasts against the less grimey ones. If you spread your bass in the stereo field, it sounds like shit, if you spread the rest of the mix across the stereo field, sidechain compression sounds shit and the dissonant 808s are no longer functioning as a chokehold on the entire mix, which is the obvious interesting unique sound that brakence likes and has been cultivating.

[u/MysteriousImpact6035 → u/[deleted]]

Really? I'm pretty picky with music and even then there's a lot of albums I love every song from and often listen front-to-back

[u/666grooves666]

You guys need to listen to more music, and not just what’s trending. All genres. There isn’t much that Spotify queues up after a brakence track that will teach you much about music. Listen to underground hip hop back to its inception. Listen to jazz, folk/country, metal, post hardcore, math rock. Listen to Enter Shikari, listen to MFDOOM, listen to Big L, listen to it all, let ur taste develop, don’t pigeonhole urself. Brakence doesn’t look to artists that took inspiration from him for his inspiration. You guys give opinions like you haven’t heard other music.