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I would like the following things to appear on my official record: This has been the most stressful week of the year at work. This has been the most stressful past few months at work. I've moved apartments in the last month. I hate the gauntlet theme this week. I hate my maverick theme. I have had a few drinks tonight. Needless to say, I will be working nonstop on my song til the early morning tonight, and most of my waking hours tomorrow. Dammit I will not let these things come between me and my compo entry!

One-line reviews. Experiment - Really digging this, especially the sound & the weirdish distorted square? lead, only the bass seems to be playing a different tune at points. Apart from that I like the strange feel. You Know The Game - Vote for change. Vote Maverick. Vote Astley. Tortured by Dreams - Nice combo of black metal cheese and synthy synth cheese. Lots of variation. I do feel it was on the same gear throughout (even with the drop and all), but I think it was all right in the end. I appreciate the time sig change in the drop. The writing in the drop, mainly the bell-y synth was kind of unfocused. Generally the arrangement could've "gone somewhere" more for my tastes. Overall tons of ideas & creativity, unexpected combinations & enjoyable journey. Myth Lab - Admit it, it feels good to rickroll. You did this just to do that. What's with the H in Astley anyway. Anyway, solid stuff. The chord progression in the instrumental part brings a nice sense of movement to the arrangement, the brief synth solo is very nice. I appreciate WillRock's effort, nice that you chose to leave it like that, embracing the process et cetera. Reminds me of OCR Talkback, which I miss. We are Many, We are One - super digging the sound & deliberate pacing. The structure doesn't sound fully realized, starting and ending quite abruptly. Good stuff though. A change in chord progression at some point was very effective. Beautiful Bloody Bats - cheezy listening sounds, but some dark vibe in the arrangement itself. Lots of room left in the mix, nice, it works. Some off-harmony stuff on the e-piano around 1:20? 1:48 the melody comes in really well. I quite like this, kinda meandering but doesn' seem to lose the point. Gate's Secret Dream Lab - interestingly similar to previous track. Much more defined structure & full sound in comparison. Make for a fun segue. There's a couple of chords really off here and there. Otherwise I really like what I hear, nice full sound with good leadwork, good flow to the track. Really need to double check those chords. Lost Chemistry - strange fade before 1:00 mark, seems to kick off only afterwards. Lacks a bassline. Feels like it could use one. Weird harmony 1:50-2:06. I like the overall sound & the driving beat & bell/epiano riff. Out of Time - punk-metal feel, I appreciate! There's a bit where the chords & melody doesn't quite work together (0:47-0:48 & 0:56-0:57) though I like what you're going for. Mixing is murky/unbalanced, structure feels incomplete (I don't mind that it's short) and I think I get what you mean with the title, I still enjoyed it!

Final Fantasy IX is my all-time favorite Final Fantasy game and, in my opinion, has the best music. Listening to this just made me want to play FFIX again and I really wish I could. The music you made sounded great. It was beautiful to listen to. My only wish is that you had made some changes to "The Place I Will Return to Someday" (which is the song you hear on the title of the game). You made them sound exactly the same. I'm not saying it's bad, I was just really wanting to hear something a little different. The second half of the song was my favorite. I loved the tune played when first arriving in Terra. There were plenty of similarities, but you definitely added in some of your own flair. Overall, this was very enjoyable to listen to and I hope you keep up the great work.

Hey! Thanks a lot for listening and leaving a comment Hehehe, I agree the transition may be a bit rough. I'm probably biased because of my love for progressive/experimental rock, where such (and much more crazy) transitions happen all the time. Two separate tracks? Yes.. maybe indeed. I always felt these two different songs go together well since they have similar themes. Also storywise it makes somes sense, with Terra being the place Zidane would eventually return to. However I understand where you're coming from now that I'm listening to the finished song.. May have been a good idea to split them up. Thanks!

1. Let's see a source link so we can compare properly! 2. This is not drum 'n bass. DnB is characterized by chopped breakbeats, punchy drums, and tight bass, and unfortunately this has none of those things. Here are a few good examples of well-made DnB if you'd like a reference point: - https://soundcloud.com/netsky/give-and-take - https://soundcloud.com/logisticsmusic/we-need-nothing-to-collide-logistics-remix-preview - https://soundcloud.com/madukdnb/maduk-ft-veela-ghost-assassin-vip 3. I can tell you're pushing a limiter incredibly hard here--if you're starting from the default place in FL Studio, the Fruity Limiter is automatically loaded on your master channel, and it can make proper mixing very hard to do. You'll want to remove that and then go from there. It's easy to tell there's something there because of the ducking and pumping effects throughout the song when certain things kick in, and it's not helping your sound at all. 4. Your synths all occupy roughly the same sonic spectrum. You'll want to separate them clearly by EQing out any frequencies that aren't necessary, such as anything below 120hz or so for anything that isn't a bass instrument. There's a whole lot more to say, but I don't want to waste the effort if you're going to leave this one alone. If you do want to improve this track, start with those things, and then come back to the workshop--there's a lot of folks in here who can teach you about arrangement, instrument selection, and all kinds of fun stuff like that! EDIT: Whoops, looks like Timaeus beat me to the punch.

Production So, a prevalent issue I'm hearing here is that your volumes are so boosted that it's causing something called overcompression. What that means is that your limiter is rapidly detecting loud instruments and is pushing them down very often. That creates this "pumping" effect which is generally unpleasant to listen to (sorry). That's the "muddiness" that DragnBreth has mentioned (although muddiness really means frequency clutter in approximately the 100~500 Hz range). As for actual muddiness, it's a bit hard to tell, so maybe it'll become more easily detectable once the overcompression is lessened. Also, there's a really weird volume drop at 1:00 for some reason. About the overcompression, I'm just going to take a not-so-wild guess and say that your drums are too loud. Try comparing the amount of pump the track has with and without the drums. Without the drums, I'm highly anticipating that there will be quite a bit less. If so, that's a sign you need to turn them down, at the very least. You should also check your bass instrument, because that's potentially also too loud. Arrangement In terms of the arrangement, it basically just goes right into using the melody without an intro, and I usually like to give my tracks a logical structure. Instead of just jumping right into using the substantial parts of the source tune, I would try to lead into it, transition out of it, and later come back into it. That's a pretty general (and probably vague) way of saying that you should incorporate more interpretive sections in this track that differentiate it from the original. A more specific way of saying it is to just have an intro, a "main" section, an energy dropoff, a buildup, another "main" section, and an outtro, or something similar. Try to make it so if you close your eyes and listen, you can see that it goes to many places (logical progression) instead of in a circle (repetition), and gets higher energy as well as being more subtle every now and then (dynamics). If you want to learn more about structure and dynamics, I highly suggest closely listening to this track: http://ocremix.org/remix/OCR02488 Try picking out the instruments. Whether or not you know what instrument is what, just try to distinguish where they are in space (and where they move), their relative volumes, and possibly their approximate frequency range (e.g. hi hats are upper treble, basses are sub to low-mids usually, leads are generally midrange to upper-midrange, etc). Each and every instrument or sound in this ReMix has its place and role---nothing felt unnecessary IMO.

They call me Ronald Poe. I'm a bassist, guitarist, and Electronic Musician (I use FL Studio and Audacity). I'm a fan of Metal Gear Solid, Pokemon, Shin Magami Tensei (particularly Persona 3 and 4), and especially Kingdom Hearts. I was also a regular at the "Musicians Talk" section on Ultimate Guitar and possibly the most polarizing member there. I also use Musescore for the notation process and use multiple soundfonts (mostly the KH one) and samples with FL Studio. I have a unique style. Anyway I have two questions. First what are some VG pieces with simple, easy, and somewhat repetitive melodies. I'm trying to write better remixes (my first 3 were denied) and want to try something simple. Second, what are some basics of DnB music and remixing. I've researched it quite a bit and still don't get it. I want to do a remix in DnB style but I'm not sure where to start. I've got some decent drum samples. Sorry about how personal this post was (I'm trying to make a better impression here). My questions are easy VG pieces with simple melody and basics of DnB.