listening to the song while writing:
Man one thing your opening got me thinking about was baseline. Like, no one cares if you're doing something fancy down there, although repetition is sometimes nice. THATS WHAT SHE SAID. but what i mean is, just repeating the root note on beat generally works fine, definitely no one's going to call you out for that. but if you write a really nice bass melody it's really easy for it to get buried or just make the song sound screwed up. maybe it's a mastering thing?
anyway i agree that mastering is really difficult, why can't FL just do all the work for me!!! but I think it's very important to be aware that you have problems (and aware of where they are) as a first step. there was a point when i was writing music (and by point i mean '10 years') where i had no idea i had mastering issues at all until someone pointed it out.
i was actually starting to wonder where the problems with mastering even occur, im at 6:00 now and things sound ok. I guess you are referring to the bits around 7:00 where we have these high end pad-sounding things? maybe that's your problem, usually you don't want to have pads fill the high end...
finished, restarting:
i feel like you were maybe a little to harsh on yourself in the comments, the mastering is pretty good, and certainly better than myself (my solution to muddled sounds is to remove instruments until it sounds better :P). i feel like it's important to be able to assess your own stuff well, or you can be like me and think that literally every one of your pieces is your best ever. :D WOW im talking about myself a lot in this review. stoping now. i really enjoy the first time the beat breaks out, it's all very clean.
now my usual criticism, im sure you saw this coming from a mile away, it's just like you telling me i need more diversity of instruments - there's no real lead motif here. no strong melody really jumps out. almost everything just follows the chord progressions you lay down, really. once i get a sense of your chord prog via those vocals at 6:00, i really enjoy it, there's a lot of potential there. i guess the 6:30 synth is a lead, but it's so comparatively quiet for a lead instrument, i dunno, maybe want to raise the volume on him.
hey that instrument in the background at 5:18 sounds really cool.
ok that was a really long review, i think it was just because i decided to listen to the song twice while typing and the song was super long. anyway. keep working on melodies :p cool stuff.