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How apropos for a vampire themed remix competition, WarMachine and Jorito are ........ neck and neck (Yaaaaaaaaaayyyyyyy!!!)

Since this is a tough round to call, I'm taking the extra time to write reviews and collect my thoughts. As usual, I may come across as overly critical, but on the whole, this was an exceptional round. Going to be some strong competition in the Dracula bracket! The Witching Hour: Production-wise, OA delivers, as always. The A->B->A/B->B arrangement is pretty typical for these compos, and I could have done with more blending earlier on. The blending itself seemed a little awkward--the elements were interleaved but never seemed to really interact with each other. It's a real shame, too, because I feel like the treatment of the minimalistic Castle Center, a tough source to work with IMO, was exceptional, and I would have loved to have seen it get some more melodic components added to it. I Never Drink, Wine: Very thin soundscape, unfortunately emphasized by direct comparison to OA's mix. The buildup to the opening at 0:32 was weaksauce, and again at 2:31. Not much use of Castle Center that I could hear. Interesting use of clips from Dracula, but, except for the title quote (which had no backing music), they were pretty muddy and I couldn't understand the words. The Fury within the Wicked Heart: Orchestral/rock fusion is a favorite genre of mine, but I don't feel this was the best execution. The chugging overdriven guitar doesn't play well with the orchestra, and there are quite a few places where their notes seem to clash or go off-tempo. The guitar is a little too loud, too. It's a little repetitive in places, e.g. the intro goes on for a little too long IMO. The two themes weren't blended together very well as far as I can hear, it's mostly Heart of Fire -> Wicked Child with some original sections. Maybe some aspect other than the melody is being blended, but I'm not hearing it. This Wicked Heart of Mine: You did a great job here of intermixing the two sources, although it sounds like you found some of the key differences challenging. I actually had to listen to this several times to catch which segments were part of which source--they're interleaved so thoroughly that I kept thinking it was sticking to one source when it was really using both closely together. Interesting decision to really focus on the intro of Wicked Child, at the expense of the body of that song, but I think it worked pretty well. Lyrics get seriously repetitive; I feel this would have benefited greatly from real ones. It feels like the balance is heavy on the high end; if you revisit this (and I hope you do), I'm hoping someone in the Workshop can comment on that more specifically. Don't Cry for Me, Vampire Killer: Not a big fan of most of these melodic variations, personally. Just a matter of taste. I felt like the intro and breakdown had the strongest production quality, and that the melodic sections were pretty thin. Might just be a poor choice of lead. Basic A->breakdown->B arrangement structure, no interplay between the two sources. The "hiccup" at 3:10 seems unintentional, since it happens only once, so it sounds like a skip. Dracula's Madness: Interesting departure from your usual chip-heavy style. Not really my thing, but it's well-executed for what it is, certainly up to your standards if not your style. I just wish you'd managed to get Bloody Tears in there earlier--even incomplete, I might have voted for this if it met the compo's basic concept.

Hey, everyone, we're participating in an official Reddit AMA on Tue., Feb. 23rd in celebration of Fair Use Week! We hope you'll join djpretzel, myself, and the legal eagles from intellectual property & open Internet non-profit Public Knowledge for the AMA! Feel free to check out our 2013 self-AMA if you're already in the AMA mood, and we hope to field more questions later this month. It starts at 12PM Eastern US time, and goes until we're done answering every question. I'll keep checking back every few hours for a few days, so you're not too later if you ask a Q a little later in the day or week as well! ASK US ANYTHING about VGM, copyright issues with arranging game music and putting it out for free, how OCR is run, what you want to see or improve with the site, and any other important questions you have!

Great mix, the melody sits nice. The growl bass adds a lot to the quality, I loves its richness and motion throughout the track. Groovy the entire way through Thanks for creating it.

There are pro's on giving someone feedback on their level. To give an example and taking in account Timeaus and my view. Scenario: Let's say I'm a world class pianist and I have to give feedback to one of my student. This student has learned the first part of fur elise by ear and knows the C major scale. - As his teacher, to get him one level Higher, I would give him an exercise on playing the C major scale with more dynamic, staccato, or an arpeggio/interval. We could work on the F major and maybe start the second part of Fur elise which is in F major. This would be a challenge for the student, since it's one level higher than his/her current level. - Same scenario, but the student asks me to give him sheet music of let's say Chopin's Sonate No.2 in B flat minor. This would be way to much above his level. I would suggest him as his teacher to slow it down a little bit and first practice more scales, arpeggio's, maybe first do the Inventione in F - Bach, which might still be a bit too much, but is at a lot lower level than the Chopin piece. This would be a challenge for the student, since it's asking him/her to reflect better on himself. - Same scenario, but this student is clearly scared of failing at learning something new. With every mistake he/she stopped and says "I can't do it". To help this student in overcoming their fear, I as the teacher would suggest the E minor scale and we'll work on the Comptine D’un Autre été, L’Après-midi Yann Tiersen, which is another popular beginner's piece, but not that difficult to play. This would be a challenge for the student, since he/she is facing their fear of failing.

Here. Here's a playlist of videos on synth design. Some of these synths come with FL Studio, some of them don't, so just find some of the videos that have synths that show up in the plugin picker in the FL demo. Watch and follow these videos and you'll get a handle on synth design. There are so many tutorials out there that you're really wasting your time asking questions on a forum instead of searching YouTube -- if you're serious about this music thing, put in the actual legwork!

This sort of reminds me of that Chris Brown album(has that guy ever been relevant?) that ripped off City Hunter. City Hunter: Album cover: http://kotaku.com/chris-browns-zero-artwork-sure-looks-familiar-1739996041

All right, so I've finally updated the list for MAGFest 2016! Not much has changed about the area since last time -- main thing is just two new restaurants (Granite City and Succotash, both of which are good). However, I went through and added some more details about parking, and a few subjective ratings. Your tastes may vary of course. And, I'm still open to other comments and suggestions. See you all at MAG! KF

Not to throw anyone under the bus but I honestly don't see the benefit of keeping feedback at the level of the remixer's skill level. Outside of it being impractical to maintain such a thing even without broad generalizations, part of the benefit of receiving feedback on any forum is possibly coming across information that you had no idea existed, researching the new method or technique, and then making it a part of your unique process. If this was learning an individual instrument it would be much easier to see the point of limiting the amount of information given but speaking just about the writing and production aspects of remixing, the more you are aware of the better. You never know when that one piece of information is going to open everything up for someone so I don't see a point in restricting ANYTHING "based on skill level." However I feel that there should be a logical order to how feedback is given and it should reflect the overall production process based on importance. The broader parts of mixing and arranging (what gets you 80% or more of the way there) should be stressed the most if someone obviously isn't getting the basics. So the flow of information for mixing feedback could look something like this. Instrument volumes->Eq/Compression->Surgical EQ'ing->Delay/Reverb->Automation->Mastering suggestions. 1. Instrument Volumes: Is the given remixer listening to the correct part of the instrument during initial balancing? Do their ears seemed sufficiently trained to hear slight changes in volume? If not then they should know that they need to work on that before spending hours being distracted by processing that occurs further down the chain. 2. EQ/Compression: Are the dynamics of each instrument working for or against what they are going for. (somewhat open to interpretation) Is the remixer cutting freqs they need to be keeping or boosting those they shouldn't? Is the mix sonically organized correctly? (Multiband comp sweeps of commercial tracks can expose a lot) 3. Surgical Eq'ing. Are two or more instruments clashing with each other? Is there something preventing them from being spread across more octaves? (ties into arranging) 4. Delay/Reverb. Is the soundscape set up well enough so that there is an obvious foreground and background? 5. Automation: never stressed enough on these forums IMO and it's the most significant part of making a dynamic mix. 6. Mastering: kept to a minimum because that's what it should be if the mix is solid in the first place. The point of this is to keep someone from hammering away on an incorrect part of the chain and wondering why nothing is working. i.e. over eq'ing parts of a mix that was poorly setup in instrument volumes. Just some thoughts on the subject that i've had when commenting on the work of others. For simplicity I kept it strictly production related but a flow of organized information like this really should pertain to all of the other aspects of this art. Really though i think the mods (and timaeus) are doing a fine job as is. There is a lot that goes into remixing and it's impossible to cover it all in one or two paragraphs. Given the limited contact between us all it's really up to the person posting their work to want to continue to figure things out based on the feedback given and not just post something they did for gratification.

Seeing as composers didn't have a choice in the matter when originally composing for the hardware, it's pretty safe to say that the interpolation is part of the artistic intent. I think with module-based music from Amiga and PC games the interpolation condundrum becomes more up in the air. Players from that era usually lacked any sort of filtering, but it's a standard feature today. Thus modern recordings of soundtracks (Like official OST releases or YouTube uploads) in those formats often end up with some form of interpolation active, which in many cases filters off the rough edges to a serious degree. I find this kind of aggravating since it often feels apparent to me that the aliasing is an intended part of the sound and not just a byproduct. One of the biggest examples I can think of is Isotoxin from Unreal. Here is a video of it with interpolation enabled: And here is a recording I made from the original module without any interpolation: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/66640537/isotoxin.mp3 You can clearly hear just how excessively subdued the main distorted synth line becomes once you start filtering it. The aliasing adds so much brightness to it that it simply feels evident to me that this is how it was meant to sound in the mix, since you can at times barely even hear it in the full mix if all that aliasing is cut off.