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Sounds interesting. I feel like two per disc -- at the start and end of each -- is enough -- especially if you want to "hide" others within actual remixes. I also think it's a good idea to have 'em play after the remix which will open the disc and before the one that'll close it. How long are you planning each of these to be? I think it is wise considering it'd force us to find someone to produce a cinematic score for each "Drama" otherwise. As a movie-addict, I'm with Lauren and would prefer some music added to them but, as a producer, I agree it might demand too much work. I know my sistah has lots of mics gathering dust somewhere so I have to check if I can get acceptable recordings out of these. If I can, I could be interested in playing good ol' Wolf O'Donnell -- speaking with a deeper voice should help me hide my accent

LE GASP YOU KNOW WHO WE SHOULD HIRE FOR VA?! Phonx. Yeah. That one guy. Should we contact him or no?

I hope that later on they expand this out and introduce Darkwing.

Nice! It's good to see fellow remixers out there. I used to be subscribed to a bunch of remixers on my old channel. Now, I've lost track of many of them and a lot of them aren't very active anymore. I'll check out your vids.

RIGHT HERE. Though I just remake VG music... Anyway https://www.youtube.com/user/mericalgirl1234 (You can't change the actual name, just your username...)

I've been waiting a long time to hear a truly epic remix of this - this one is it. Can't wait to hear what else you come up with!

Not quite where I want it to be, but I'll have it up in an hour or two. Pretty short track overall.

The narratives will be decidedly non-musical. I plan to feature ambient noise or some SFX as part of the narrative, but no BGM. Don't worry, I'll keep you in mind.

Haha, I remember listening to this track in the workshop a couple of months ago! Very fun track with a very strong groove The combination of the guitar and somewhat retro-ish eletronica is pretty neat. Another instant eargasm! Great debut man, hope you'll submit more!

Yes! Can we please do a Thieves of Fate reunion collab?!?!

@Theophany has claimed Life ~ A Distant Promise! @avaris has also claimed Jellyfish Sea! i've also marked two big tracks as tentatively claimed (Scars of Time and Chronopolis). we're filling in the tracklist quickly =) also, per reinhold's update, i've contacted members of Game-Art-HQ (of FFIX project fame!) to assist with artwork. so now we've got some people interested in doing art, and we now need a web designer at some point.

Game-Art-HQ is on board, Lets see if we can build up a nice Music & Visual Art Tribute to Chrono Cross here!

Amazing stuff. Glad you worked through your initial doubts and put your nose to the grindstone - it shows

Oh my God! What a majestic debut! This is one of the most jaw-dropping remixes I've grabbed recently. I'm not huge fan of some of orchestral remixes, but I looooooooove such epic cinematic sonic journeys with a touch of modern aesthetics.This is like watching some thrilling movie, when you're hooken right from the very beiginning and don't want to miss a single second. I bet I'm gonna listen to nothing but this song the next few days (maybe even a couple of weeks?). Guys, download this breathtaking masterpiece right now! And, of course, looking forward to more posted works!

Thanks for the detailed response! Yeah I understand masking and notching/boosting in theory, but I need a lot more practice learning the proper frequency ranges to do it for each instrument. I'm going to revisit this mix and work on it some more. One problem I've had is the same as Trism: My mix sounds really good on my headphones but not as good on my speakers or other systems. I recently learned that my headphones frequency response isn't as flat as I thought, and have added some corrective eq. I've also started playing with a binaural room impulse response vst so I can hear the phantom center correctly in my headphones. I know mixing is best done on monitors in an acoustically treated room, but that's just not in the cards for me right now. Let me make sure I understand what you said at the beginning: You are recommending starting with all instruments at 0 and bringing them into the mix one at a time, using only volume knobs/gainers, until everything is heard well enough, and then apply EQ/compression from there, right? Also, as far as "stage placement," do you think adding some additional reverb to the piano would help it stand out more by making it sound like I've moved it back on the stage? Is that a thing that commonly works? Right now it has the exact same reverb as all the guitars so it's in the same line as them. I promise I got more out of your post than I am asking here-I just need a little guidance to make sure I'm moving in the right direction.

Okay, let me see if I can explain this without sounding like a pompadour wearing hipster. So, width is an interesting topic of discussion in of itself and so is layering of elements, but lets start simple with the idea of masking as this has a lot to do with what I'm about to discuss. Masking is when you have one element of a mix hide or cloud the ability to hear another. So, lets listen to your mix and do some analysis of what is readily able to be heard versus what is more than likely causing it to be masked (best guesses based on the sonic qualities of everything going on). The piano can be heard, but it has no real definition in the mix. It is just kind of there and not really adding to the mix in its current state. More than likely there is a combination of the guitars and drums taking up too much space for the piano to really shine. That is probably the largest masking issue in the mix. I don't know how to tell you to correct this without you actually revisiting the mix from the start. But I can re-suggest starting the mix from zero and mixing up and developing a static mix from that. This helps you find a general level and balance of the instruments that work to keep various elements of the mix audible and not fighting each other for too much space. Don't worry about EQ or Compression or effects at this point. You just want to get something that is generally favorable and kind of what you're looking for from the focus of the instruments. Then after this point you can start to add in EQ to clear up some space and create more space for the various instruments. Now, I keep saying "space" and let me tell you this is probably the hardest thing to define in a mixing context. Not because it is necessarily hard to achieve, but because it is incredibly difficult to put into words exactly what it is. It is kind of the situation of where you know exactly what it is because the big name guys have been doing it so well for so long that you know exactly what it sounds like, and when it doesn't sound like that it is definitely noticeable. Essentially, you almost want to picture a stage or volume or something where all these various elements are playing together. Then you've got to figure out mentally how these various elements are placed on the stage or volume or whatever. Then you've got to work on making the mix of the various instruments sound like what you're picturing. Go listen to pretty much any Pop, Rock, Metal, Hip Hop, RnB, or whatever and just pay attention to where the various elements are situated relative to one another. This is where the ideas of width and layering start coming into play. So, width as I said is an interesting concept in of itself and the general idea is that there are two speakers so there is a fixed amount of separation between the two that is the inherent width of any mix. However, it is possible to go beyond those with things like stereo expanders, but those as you've pointed out can cause issues with mono compatibility. Though there are ways to make a mix that is wide and is mono compatible. Really, the general idea at play here is partially related to the idea of sum and difference of the left and right. The greater the difference between the left and right overall the wider the mix will probably sound. It is also important to note how our brain interprets sound. Most of the issues with mono compatibility are when you play with the phase of either the left or right compared to the other. The more out of phase one is with the other the wider it will sound, but that also comes at the price of compromising the phantom center (remember the center doesn't actually exist). With that being said if you have a very solid phantom center and more or less invert the left or right phase of an element in the mix you'd be surprised at how forgiving the brain is to it. Sure it still won't sound correct, but it starts to get you thinking about it. Additionally, with this we're generally less sensitive to higher frequency material being out of phase than lower frequency material. Use that to your advantage. You really have to use all sorts of tricks to make the brain think it is hearing something that it may not necessarily be hearing. That really brings me to the last point I'd like to make about layering. As I'm sure you're aware of already there is layering different sounds together to make a more complex sound. Well, you can apply the same idea to a mix in not only the stereo field, but also the depth of a mix. You've kind of got to think of the depth like drawing a 3D image on a piece of paper. Is it 3D? No it isn't, but it looks 3D and the same can apply with a mix. It is just an illusion of an element in the mix being closer or further away than another. Lets go back for a second to the idea of width. Now, if you place something halfway panned, hard pan something else, and if you apply "gentle" stereo expansion to something else then the end result is something that will likely sound wider than had you quarter panning, half panning, and just hard panning. The gentle stereo expansion is not likely to cause many issues with mono compatibility either. Plus, if you control the volume and spectral balance of what you pan out then you've also created complexity to the mix where certain instruments appear closer and further from the listener. Apply this same kind of thinking to just depth of the mix and you'll be starting to get the idea of layering within a mixing context rather than a sound design context. Another thing to keep in mind is that if you listen to the big name stuff with these ideas in place you'll likely find that they are wider in the top end and narrow the lower in frequency that they go creating like an upside down triangle. Trust me it'll take time to wrap your head around it, but these are things to start paying attention to. Ultimately, a good modern stereo mix is one of illusion. There are some monitoring tricks you can do to see what exactly is going on. For instance if you mono your monitoring then what you're hearing the sum or phantom center of the mix. If you mono your monitoring and then invert the phase of either the left or right then you're hearing the difference which is really just the out of phase material that will disappear when the mix is collapsed to mono. Now, this out of phase material doesn't necessarily translate to width. It is just what will disappear when you collapse to mono. If you hear a lot of low end like this then that is generally pretty bad. But if you hear some reverb tails or such then it probably isn't such a big deal. You've got to alternate between normal stereo, mono, and mono + invert to really get a good idea of what you're mix is doing. Also, you've got to just experiment to understand what these things all mean to the end result of the mix. The last thing I'd like to suggest is applying things in layers. That is to say if you need a lot of compression on a signal then use multiple compressors for the different aspects of the sound that need compression. This typically creates a more natural sounding result than one compressor doing all the lifting (though it may be desirable artistically to do one layer of compression). Apply the same idea to width. Add it in stages and try to bake it in from the beginning. Okay, that was a lot longer than I expected and I waffled about a bit, but hopefully it makes some sense.