Leaderboard

Hey everybody, here's a major update. Short term sad news, long term good. My time has been waning a lot recently, as you've probably noticed by my lack of posts. The majority of my input has been behind-the scenes, while my glamorous assistant @Trism has been dealing with the front of house, as it were. Unfortunately, as things stand, my handle on the little I've been able to do has loosened a lot now as well. Without going into too much detail, life just has a way of making things impossible sometimes and priorities are thrust upon you rather than letting you choose your own. THEREFORE: Rather than let this project and all the fantastic work you've all done so far slip into obscurity, I've decided to hibernate it for the timebeing. I figure that voluntarily putting a pin in it while I clear my theoretical desk is a far better option than let the ship run adrift without a captain at the helm. Thanks for the support so far, folks, we WILL be back. This is just something that has to happen for now

Digging this Markus! I like the reharm on the B section a lot, its a nice contrast from the vamp happening in the A section. Personally I prefer the chord progression from the original for the A section as it sounds a little more calm/mysterious, whereas this conveys a different mood. 100% personal preference however in those regards. I think the guitar could sit back a bit in the mix, and could maybe use some reverb to blend the piano and guitar a little better. Looking forward to hearing more!

Well, I'm not a musician, I don't perform, so take my advice with a grain of salt or three: If you're not being challenged & you're not growing from the performance opportunities, is it really that much of a risk/loss? That being said, if you know these folks & have a relationship, I'd try to assert yourself, propose some changes that would make the whole thing better (seems like having arrangements would be a good start!), volunteer to put in the effort to make these changes happen, and see if you get anywhere. If you do, great! If you don't... do you want to be a part of something you know is fundamentally flawed but which resists any efforts on your part to address those flaws? I'd tend to say no... in which case, maybe commute to Amarillo and see what's happening there, meet some new people, go on some adventures, etc. until something clicks?

Listened to them all... MANY times each ^^ @Etzaen -- Love the intro and outro as well as that "Mega Man Zero" vibe the whole track has. Still, I think you should try and mess around with the Pitch and Mod Wheels to try and make your leads more colorful (especially during the bridge section). The last part also feels like it's screaming for a bombastic solo (I can clearly see the distortion guitar you introduced in the bridge re-appear here for that purpose). I don't know if you want to go electronic or acoustic with the drums, but I feel like your track could benefit from a bit/lots more variations depending on your choice. Other than that, it's pretty awesome and I'm glad Star Fox 2 is having the recognition it deserves -- can't wait to listen to the final version @Thirdkoopa -- With this one, I can clearly see myself in a bar in the 30s, enjoying a drink while the jazz band is jammin' in the background (I can almost tell what it smells like in there). It's a bit too repetitive for me to just sit down and focus on the listen, but it definitely serves its purpose as a ambient piece. I wish the drummer could add more variety in his performance (it's pretty boring there... especially for a jazzy stuff). I also think some instruments are played too loud a few time but it also adds to that "live performance" charm the piece has. Not being my favorite style of jazz, I can't really go deeper with my critique... but it clearly isn't bad at all. @Siolfor the Jackal -- Now, THAT'S what I'm talking about! Some good ol' metal to wake you up and remind you that everything isn't all nice and easy in a Star Fox game Aggressive rhythm guitars, a drummer who hates to be bored and synths for more sound variety -- a damn good recipe I'd personally add a Pad/Synth Strings for the intro to play chords and give more of an Epic Progressive Rock feel to it before altering them a bit at 0:14 to make sure it evolves along with the track. I'd probably be nice to re-introduce the Pad at the 1:50 part (or a portion of it) for coherence but maybe it'll be too much synths at the same time -- since we also have a Synth Lead here too. Then comes the bridge -- LOVE it! Yet another track I look forward to listen to when complete! In the end, I really like how -- with these three tracks -- we keep getting an idea of how much variety the album is gonna have. Keep up the great work, guys!

I've been playing with this a little this weekend. I could use some general feedback on my mixing and instrumentation so I'll be submitting something.

This was a fun little track to play with.

eval: The piano is quite mechanical. Humanize it. The drums are boring. Create a better groove, eg by varying hihat velocities and adding some percussion loop to the background. There are many solutions to this problem. Some better than others. Don't think you need a hundred percussion elements and a messy drum pattern to make it work. Just give it a little more life. The whole thing sounds quite loud. Find some posted remixes with a similar enough sound or style that you can compare levels to. It seems that at the skill level you're at right now, you've got the tools and know how to use them, you just don't know _why_ and _when_ to use them. Find some good reference tracks from ocr's recent years, and start comparing. How loud should the bass be? How bright should it be? How about the hihat, the kick, the rest of the drums and percussion? How about lead, secondary melodies, pads? Is the bass too indistinct when the rest of the insturmentation plays, does it need the reverb gone at those points? Is something too prominent and needs some eq cuts and reverb to be pushed back? What stands out in the wrong way? Basically, learn to listen. Source is there, sufficiently interpreted, and I think the arrangement, albeit messy, is okay. There's some weird (or absent) transitions that could be improved. The abrupt changes _sometimes_ work here. Ones I think must be improved: 0:31, 1:15, 2:00, 2:34, 3:10-ish, 3:22, 3:28, 4:13. I might have missed one, so consider all of them, whether they work for listeners or not. Sometimes, the problem is that the transitions lack signalling, sometimes that their timing seems off by a measure or two, sometimes that the change in sound or rhythm is too great, sometimes just that the next part just begins without any change to the drums (a crash is often enough), sometimes there's just a jump in levels because of the overcompression. Find the problem, diagnose the problem, solve the problem. The writing at 3:20 seems too messed up, though. You might want to go with conventional writing and glitch up the sound instead. There's a loud and annoying glitchy sound towards the end, like a mouse squeek. When it becomes a regularly occurring thing like that, it's more annoying than interestingly glitched. I think you're ending on the wrong note. It feels like the notes were just cut off arbitrarily. Ending with just the bass is fine, but I'd end on a different note, possibly at a different point in the loop too. If you really want to end on that note, write the preceding notes differently so it makes more sense. Your questions: Excessive sidechaining - Not hearing any sidechained compression, but the whole thing is too loud. Overcompression - Yes. Cluttered sound - Not terribly so (except around 3:00, which is a mess), but you should probably separate the instruments with EQ,. Consider which ones are foreground and which ones background, and process them accordingly. Make subtle (or not so subtle) EQ cuts in the background instruments so the foreground instruments have more room to play. Not ready for ocr yet. Seems like you've got all the right pieces for it, in sound design and arrangement, you just gotta shift them around a little. As for mixing, the best advice I can give is to listen and compare.

You're remix is pretty cool and I can't hear any production mistakes. However the mix is a little too long and the limited material would be better suited for a 3 minute long mix. Good job though ...

Yeah, that's definitely much better. Particularly compare at 3:26 between v3 and v4, and you should hear a difference in the reverb tail; in v3 it's pumping from being too loud against the limiter, and in v4, it's just trailing off like normal. Now that the overcompression is lessened, the master track volume (on the master track mixer slider) can be brought back up (by about 3 dB).

This is still overcompressed. What it sounds like is that you simply lowered the master volume and left the overcompression there. What you should do is lower the volume of each individual instrument --- there isn't a shortcut to this. The piano is suffering from the overcompression, so its transients aren't heard.

Well i'll look into it... Your description is better than nothing