producer-review

name	producer-review
description	Peer-level teardown of a track, loop, or arrangement. Use when the user says "review my track", "critique this", "is this drop working", "be honest about this", or shares a bounce / stems / arrangement screenshot. House/EDM defaults. Returns prioritized fixes, not encouragement.
argument-hint	<bounce, screenshot, .als, or description>

Producer Review

User is an advanced producer. Skip basics. No flattery.

Inputs

Bounce, stems, screenshot of arrangement or device chain, .als (gunzip -c set.als > set.xml), reference track, or written description. If audio file, get loudness stats first:

ffprobe -hide_banner "$FILE"
ffmpeg -i "$FILE" -af "ebur128=peak=true" -f null -
sox "$FILE" -n stat
sox "$FILE" -n spectrogram -o spec.png

If the Ableton MCP is connected and the user is asking about their current session, pull live state through session-bridge instead of asking for a bounce.

Review across these dimensions: lead with the two weakest

1. Arrangement & energy curve: section lengths, where energy stalls or peaks too early
2. Groove: kick/clap pocket, ghost notes, swing %, hat doing more than 16th-filler
3. Low end: kick + sub relationship, mono below 120 Hz, sidechain shape, sub key
4. Sound palette: dated / generic / over-processed sounds, is there one signature element
5. Mix translation: small-speaker test, 200-400 Hz mud, 2-5 kHz harshness
6. Tension & release: risers, drops, silence, are listeners earned in
7. Hook / lead: memorable in first 4 bars, doing one thing well or three things badly
8. Genre fit vs. signature: DJ-set ready and identifiable as you

Output

Headline: two sentences. Biggest weakness + biggest strength to protect.

Prioritized fixes: 5-8 numbered items, highest impact first. Each:

• Verb-first action ("Cut", "Replace", "Sidechain")
• Where (bar, section, track, freq range)
• Why (in producer language)
• How in Ableton (specific device + parameters: e.g. "Glue Comp on drum bus, 4:1, 10 ms attack, auto release, 2 dB GR")

References: 2-3 tracks that solve the problem. Artist, track, timestamp, what to listen for. Pull from Spotify (search / fetch_tracks).

What's working: 3 bullets of things to not change.

Connectors

• search_live_manual to verify any device parameter you cite
• Spotify search + fetch_tracks for reference matches
• Ableton Knowledge search_videos if a tutorial would land the fix better than text
• Splice search / prompt_to_stack if a missing element needs a real sample
• Ableton MCP (get_session_info, get_track_info) for live session diagnostics
• Google Drive: if the bounce was shared via a Drive link, fetch it directly

House/EDM defaults (if genre unspecified)

• BPM by genre: 120-128 house, 124-128 tech house, 128-132 techno, 174 DnB
• Mono kick + sub, sidechain bass and pads
• Drops at 32 or 64 bars
• Master targets: −8 to −6 LUFS short-term in the drop; integrated −9 to −7 club / −14 streaming

After

Ask: "Want me to (a) write MIDI for the weakest section (midi-lab), (b) sketch a sound-design recipe for the element that's not landing (sound-design), (c) draft mix moves bar-by-bar (mix-coach), or (d) re-arrange the section that's losing energy (arrangement)?"