Leaderboard

SURE, the one round I choose to experiment, so does everyone else I really liked the range of compositions this round, and I am quite surprised I came out on top in the end. NinjaPenguinDan, I *did* humanize the piano! Oh well, I guess it wasn't enough, and listening to my track again I can hear some parts that feel a little too stiff. Argh. Oh well, it's all part of the learning process, isn't it? RonaldPoe, I agree with the others who say that you need to turn up the bass lines in your work. There's something interesting going on there but it's really hard to hear. Maybe it sounds good to you but it's not translating - in other words, maybe there's something wrong with your audio monitoring setup. Personal story along those lines: for the first few months I did remixes people would always comment about the lack of low end in my work even though it sounded fine on my end. I was mixing with headphones with a nice and flat low-end frequency response, so what could the problem be? It turns out the problem was that I was plugging them into my speaker's headphone jack instead of directly into my computer's headphone jack, and the speakers were applying a bass boost before passing the signal along! I thought it was just a pass-through connection but I was wrong. So now I just plug my headphones directly into my computer and things are...well, not ideal, but at least much better.

Some circumstances beyond his control are preventing him from making the thread himself, but he at least was able to keep true to his promise and set the album to be released today! Go buy it and share it with everyone you know, 'cause it's brilliant: https://shnabubula.bandcamp.com/album/cosmic-diaspora

Oh shit, this source. Daaaaaamn I might not have time for it, but I'm glad to see so much representation for it. Good choice!

Also don't forget to check out freesound.org for the occasioanal sample and/or inspiration.

Well that all looks like a lot of money that I don't have haha. Thanks for the tips though. I think I may try recording and processing some of my own sounds by listening to some if these libraries and trying to recreate some of the samples to the best of my ability. I find it difficult to imagine percussive sounds in my head.

I have had 0 time to work on my bonus mix I'm liking what's been submitted so far though!

Thanks man, I appreciate it! Yeah, guitars have a pretty full frequency spectrum, and in general, cutting some of the midrange makes them sit more cleanly in the mix. The main atonal percussions I used were: jangling coins that I just recorded myself with a Samson Meteor mic (thanks, @Chimpazilla!), with some room reverb. tablas and snaps from Platinum Percussion (~$30 I think), with some glitching via dBlue Glitch (stutter + reverses) Heavocity Damage "Armageddon" drums, with a high end boost, some parallel compression via The Glue, and auditorium-esque reverb. The bell percussions were either the main ones, which I made myself in Zebra2 (the FM Variations soundbank :-D), or they were supplementary ones from Crypto Cipher Tarangs (extra layers) or Impact Soundworks' Resonance: Emotional Mallets.

these placement matches sure are fun

@timaeus222I finally got some free time to listen through this. Absolutely sensational remix! The sound design, clarity and playfulness in the stereo field is like ear candy. Honestly this is the sort of stuff i'd love to be able to write, but with guitar in it haha. It seems tricky though. It's like adding guitar automatically muddies everything up. Anyway back on topic, you're tip on using drums as a signalling tool already fixed a transition i was having trouble with. There's still something missing but it's definitely improved it. Matching the frequency spectra is something i've always naturally felt would be a thing, but implementing it is the tough bit. Using instruments from the next section to lead in is also a good call. Again something that i use now and again, along with reverse crashes. I think overall the disjointed rhythmic transitions were what was holding me back most here. Can i ask, i'm trying to move away from just acoustic drums and start using more obscure electronic sounds as percussion as well. Your percussion in this remix is really interesting. Would you be able to give me some insight into how you went about creating them? Sound library, original recordings, processing etc? @AngelCityOutlawI'm looking into voice leading right now. From what i'm gathering it's simply using chord inversions to create "steps" instead of "leaps" in the music that make in sound less jarring. Does it go deeper than this? A lot of the other things i kinda already do without realising, although i'll need to look into the sentence/period structures your mentioning as i have no idea what that is.

Almost at the big day!

http://8bitcollective.com/music/Shnabubula/David+Blaine%27s+Street+Magic%2C+Magfest+DOD+Edition/