Xaleph

The energy management/pacing of this song is really well done, transitions are well placed, sound quality isn't bad and it ages well (10 years later). Great job DDRKirby!

I really love how chill this is. I realize it’s a WIP but there are some minor things you can do to make it feel more polished. I’ll give more details later but the big picture is that there are subtle changes in percussion you can add/remove/modify to make it more alive. First, don’t change the main kick and snare - that being mostly static gives stability to the piece. The mid percussion (hand percussion and guirro) could have variation of velocity/length/ and maybe some pitch. Additionally slightly humanizing it so sometimes it hits slightly before/after will make it sound more alive. There are some tools that help do this (or you can play it live). How you panned some of the mid percussion, and didn’t over do it is correct and sounds good. I like the subtle transitions, it sounds right. If there is anything I can do to help, I’d love to! FF9 is a great game with an awesome OST and EDM is my jam! I think the funk feel is perfect. Feel free to jump into discord and ping me. I’m looking forward to the next version.

Pro-Q is like an industry standard. I see it everywhere.

I think the change in genres could work - but you'd need to add space for the transition. I have to agree with the other comments here though - would love to see more work from you, especially in that first genre (but I'm biased towards EDM haa haa).

I really like the song and the mix. The only critique I'd have (which isn't much) is that there is a midrange where the frequencies are just a little low or there isn't a lot of instrumentation (maybe over-filtered bass and percussion to give room for synths?) It's just slightly noticeable but not huge. I think overall your dnb music is fabulous and I really hope you do more vgm remixes. We need more dnb imo and you have a really good knack for it.

https://equipboard.com/xaleph if you want to know my gear DAWs Reason Studio Ableton Live Audacity Garage Band Notable VST/REs Objekt (Reason RE - paid) Serum Vital Kontakt (SAC, and others) Spitfire Labs Spitfire BBC Ugritone (Doom & something else?) Reason ( Kong / Radical Piano / Pangea / Klang / Mimic / Thor / Europa) Notable Effects Guitar Rig Pro Kilohearts Reason (Audiomatic / Scream / RV7000 Mk II / Echo / Pulveriser / Sweeper / Synch EM / Alligator) Notable Utilities Psyscope iZotope Ozone Advance / RX Musescore

I was going to give this an official name (something better than "Tools we use"), but I wanted to start a post that lists some VSTs (free and paid) that I know a good number of us use for mixing. This is not intended to be a clone of a list of all possible VSTs, or like 2 people in our community use it so we put it here. It's intended to be a place to find out what others use in our space that we find particularly useful. Just replying with a simple name of a product isn't good enough for me to put it on the list (for the reason I stated above) - though you can always respond with plugins you personally found among the most useful (or just most used in each song). I want to avoid this being a junk drawer that has no real value. The value will come with a curated list of tools that we feel are worthy. For a list of DAWs we use and to find performers of specific instruments, please visit https://ocremix.org/workshop or ask in our discord. Sage Recommended 1. Instruments 1.1 Drums Addictive Drums by xln audio ($159 || complete: $869) [drums] ML Drums by ML Sound Lab (free) [drums] Steven Slate Drums by steven slate drums (free || $119) [drums] toontrack EZDrummer ($179) [drums] Superior Drummer ($399) [drums] 1.2 Samplers Native Instruments Kontakt (player: free || regular: $299) [sampler] [instrument building tool] Heritage Percussion by Impact Soundworks (free) [sampler] [tribal percussion] Super Audio Cart by Impact Soundworks (gameboy: free || complete: $149) [sampler] [chiptune] Shreddage 3 by Impact Soundworks [sampler] [guitar] Free -> Precision (free) [bass] & Stratus (free) [electric guitar] Hydra ($149) [electric guitar] - this one is my favorite of the Shreddage Line Impact Soundworks collection has a lot of instruments difficult to find, such as the Oud ($99) Spectrasonics: Keyscape ($399) [sampler] [piano] Trillian ($299) [sampler] [synth] [bass] Spitfire Audio Spitfire Labs - free [sampler] [textures] [orchestral] [live instruments] Notable Lab Instruments: Arctic Swells, Astral Forms, Frozen Strings, Strings, Strings 2, Amplified Cello Quartet BBC Symphony Orchestra (free) [sampler] [orchestral] 1.3 Synths Native Instruments FM8 ($149) [fm synth] Massive X ($199) [wavetable synth] Reaktor ($199) [modular synth] Odin (free and open source) [semi-modular synth] Phase Plant by Kilohearts ($199) [semi-modular synth] Pigment by Arturia ($199) [wavetable synth] Serum by Xfer ($189) [wavetable synth] Spectrasonics: Omnipshere ($499) [hybrid synth] [wavetable synth] Trillian ($299) [sampler] [synth] [bass] Spire by Reveal Sounds ($189) [synth] Surge XT (free and open source) [hybrid synth] VCV Rack (free || pro: $149) [modular synth] Vital (free || pro $80 || subscribe $5/month) [wavetable synth] Zebralette (free) [spectral synth] 2. Effects Deelay by sixthsample (free) Guitar Rig by Native Instruments (player: free || pro: $199) Helix Native by Line 6 ($399) [guitar amp] illformed Effects: dBlue Glitch (free but may require jbridge) [glitch] [stutter] Glitch 2 ($59.95) [glitch] [stutter] iZotope: Stutter Edit ($199) [glitch] [stutter] Vinyl (free) [vinyl record] Kilohearts Essentials by Kilohearts (free) Slate Digital Fresh Air (free) [vintage exciter circuits and advanced dynamics processing] TH-U by Overloud ($269) Valhalla Effects: Super Massive (free) [reverb] Vintage ($50) [reverb] Delay ($50) [delay] Xfer: OTT (free) 3. Utilities FabFilter (Pro Q 3: $169) iZotope Utilities: Ozone (elements: $49 || standard: $199 || advanced: $399) RX (elements: $49 || standard: $299 || advanced: $799) SPAN by Voxengo (free) [eq analysis] TBProAudio ISOL8 (free) [Mix monitoring tool] Tokyo Dawn TDR NOVA (free || ge: €60) [equalizer] Kotelnikov (free || ge: €50) [wideband dynamics processor] Notes Native Instruments offers a starter pack with several of the recommended tools called Komplete Start (free) Free(ish) DAWs (https://bedroomproducersblog.com/2015/11/11/free-daw-software/ - he updates this regularly): Reaper Cakewalk Sibelius GarageBand Audacity (audio) Cheap Stuff / Sales Black Friday / Day after Christmas / Spring / Summer usually have sales Humble Bundle often has VSTs, sfx, and samples. Heavyvocity has some good textural tools (instruments & effects) Sample Packs: 99 Sounds’ (free) 99 Sounds’ two 99 Drum sample packs (free) To Add To Review SINE Player, Soundpaint, Musio Orchestral Tools, 8Dio NES VST

This was the original above Below is the remix The original track has a lot of room to breathe, very specifically tuned drums to match the synth, and the synth has some mid/low EQ to really fill the space coupled with some noticeable reverb. What you've added, especially around 0:48/0:49 with the bass really grounds the song, making it feel a lot fuller. You'll need to make sure that the song feels full of energy and not just "busy" by adding a little more room for the melody to breathe. Additionally, I would tune the drums in the same keys that the original song is to get a similar effect/feel. Also - if you listen to my songs, I love panning drums - but make sure you're not over doing it. We want it to feel frantic and full of energy - we don't want it to just feel busy and cluttered. To do this, you can pick and choose what's panning, usually you'll want your drums to have relatively set panning locations maybe with the exception of closed hats (as you'll see often that there are 2 to 4 closed hats in this style music each with a preset pan to give the perception of movement, usually between 20L and 20R). I think having the synth pan is fine, especially if the percussion is grounded - again the goal is chaos while avoiding clutter. As a style recommendation, having a low end drum or rumble would really add a semblance of stability in the first 30 seconds to foreshadow your bass entering later. This way it kind of teases that it's more than just this tension you have built up in the beginning. If you want to jump in the #workshop discord channel - feel free to @ me (@Xaleph) if you want to share screens to go over any of this, would love to see this song in a finished state!

Yeah - just had time to listen to this all the way through. It's definitely a sampled mix, which is enjoyable but definitely violates our submission standards. You still have a great structure where you could add your own take (without any samples).

I’m not sure it’s more than 50% like you said. I can still provide proper guidance if you’d like when I’m in my studio tomorrow.

I'm really excited - we have some cool stuff planned ahead!

I really like the take on this song, I think the sound quality is pretty good. You definitely build/break appropriately and it feels good to listen to this song. I'm very very much looking forward to where you go with this after you add more percussion/evolution to the song.

I really enjoyed this piece and have gone back to listen several times now. I love the playfulness, the percussive fills, sfx choices, placement of the arp/melody, transitions, sound choices, pretty much nearly everything. I do wish it was a bit longer, but that's mainly because I just like the song =)

This song when I first heard them working on it had me in tears. I'm so glad to see this on the front page. What an excellent composition and vocals!

I love the intro, piano, percussion - it has a super chill vibe. The mastering is really well handled as well. Not sure how I missed this years ago as @OceansAndrew said - but it's quite good. I could totally mix this into a psytrance theme. The entire song is absolutely beautiful. Great work!