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Take elements of the things you are transitioning to and from and mix them together. If you're transitioning from something that is slow and legato to something that is a little faster and more detached, start altering some of the things near the end of the slow section to be more detached, so that the style change doesn't seem to come out of nowhere. Take themes from the later sections and introduce them as secondary themes in the current section. Essentially, it's just a matter of introducing stuff in little bits before you get there so that it doesn't seem like you suddenly arrived out of nowhere.

Hard to say what to improve without a WIP to listen to. Having just done a 13 minute, 7 track orchestral remix myself, all I can recommend is to place your songs in an order that help you (e.g. putting songs in the same time signature together, be smart about preventing massive tempo jumps, etc.) and take the time in the arrangement to ease the listener into the various sections. The latter can sometimes be achieved by dropping out elements of track 1 and slowly introducing elements of track 2 (e.g. hints of the melody) before fully transitioning into it, and sometimes you can go for a dramatic stop or fadeout and transition the listener into the new section with a drum fill or a transitionary element like a held string note or the like. Again, hard to recommend anything if I can't hear anything. Anyway, your best bet is to carefully listen at other tracks and get some ideas on how others do it. Something like Sam Dillard's stuff might help, or if you really wanna go pro something like Final Symphony (a suite of Final Fantasy music performed by the London Symphony Orchestra) might do the trick.

A few basic tips: Listen to songs that carry out the style you are looking for, and try to make sense of what the structure is. You can even put it into your DAW to try to tempo-match, and then break it down into how many bars until each section is over. Where's the intro? Where's the outtro? Bridge? How are the dynamics changing over the course of the track? Common transitions make use of cymbals and other transition sounds, or perhaps drum fills, but good transitions tend to connect both texture and contour (especially when writing orchestral, which has "only" organic instruments). Not just the density of the elements present, but also, the elements should feel like they're working together. Make yourself write a melodic transition sometime, and with time you'll hopefully develop that (voice-leading) as simply a core skill. You can do a simple melodic transition by writing a melody that sustains through into the next section, but later on, you could improve it by making all the little elements around the lead work together to lead up to that new section. For an example, I tend to share this, since it's what I consider my personal best arrangement. Maybe it'll help. Have your friends listen to what you have and give you advice... including us. That means post a WIP, not just "help me".

OooooOoOOOOooooooOOOoooo!! This will be a fun source to play with! No trolling this time. Probably.

Whats up everyone! I created a video game vocal album called "Video Game Rapper", and this is one of the songs on the album! This song called "Princess Ruto" is a love song dedicated to Princess Ruto from Legend of Zelda. It is sung from Link's perspective. Its a smooth R&B track with a good bassline and has my vocals on it (yes it's autotuned, intentionally)! I submitted it to OCRemix, hopefully it's added! Princess Ruto: https://drive.google.com/open?id=1CU-OQpbDUbqw-i2TlfKYGX0oKQxs1e2q P.S. I'll post more vocal tracks from the album once I release it next week. I am hoping to submit all of them!

While all the other points are really good, in my opinion this is the most important thing to consider when making transitions. I would personally stretch the point even further and say: "Why transition at all?" I think that there's a merit to having a transition between two (or more) songs if there's a justifiable reason to have multiple source material in the first place. And I'd assume that if there is a good reason to have multiple source materials, then it'll probably be because of a good link between the songs which makes the question kind of obsolete. I think that rather than searching for a "transition" it makes more sense to look for a "cohesion". Of course there are some scenarios where you might be assigned to, or could even get paid to combine "contextually preferably uncombinable" things, and in that case I would definitely read the points made above a few times and really think about them because they're all very expertly made and elaborated on. This summer I got a job to write a big band arrangement for someone and she had some very specific form structure in mind that I personally would never use. But since I got paid to do the job, and she didn't really listen to my suggestions to change it to something more effective I just had to roll with it. It happens, and in such cases it's good to be able to do it. But these situations are outside of the point that I'm trying to make at the moment. To be honest, when remixing I think it's better to ask yourself: "How do I get more out of my source material so that I don't need to transition to a different song halfway". And when you really want to add another source tune, think to yourself: "What does this add to the music?: "How is this related to the rest?" "Where do I want to go?" "What do I want to say?" And when you're able to answer those questions with justifiable reasons, then the proper way to transition between songs will naturally come out of that. It's a very context specific thing, and the answer can be many things. In my experience, shifting too many times in one song between different genre's, source material, writing styles and all that good stuff takes away more than that it adds, and it's often a better idea to just write multiple tunes. It might not be the answer you're looking for, but i did want to add my two cents, since I feel that many remixers and writers often overlook these kind of things and tend to jump into quantity rather than quality. Not saying that that's necessarily what you're doing since, as many have already pointed out, you didn't give any examples of your music, but it's something to always keep in mind when writing. And asking some of the questions in the previous alinea might also solve other problems you could be dealing with, such as problems with flow, dynamics, instrumentation, motivic development, style, diversity and musical coherence among many things.

when writing orchestrally(that's a Word? lol)I'm not that great at doing transitions between melodic ideas. and I'm having trouble making songs fit together for this grand epic, I need some help(some one who can think on a grand orchestral level: @BenEmberley , @Chad Seiter @Archangel & @Garpocalypse track list and order somnus ff15 edgar and sabin ff6 in the light of the crystal ff15 kefka's tower ff6 dancing mad(tier 1, 3 & end of kefka battle) ff6 magna insomnia(phase 1 & 3) ff15 coin song ff6 Midi folder: https://drive.google.com/open?id=1-i6ZfROFDw0L2JSTsX_RODjJzSNiBR1d

Just so everyone is clear, I cannot guarantee that I will be here every day until the end of the project. My life is still complicated and my RL has to take priority. That being said, I WILL guarantee that if messaged/PMed, I will respond within 24 hours. Both of you should be syntaxed for your context! LOL

"Transitions", as in, an independent little section or fill that bridges the gap between 2 distinct sections is honestly more of a thing in rock and electronic music. This is something that was always a big topic around here back when I joined, but I actually think a lot of music is made worse by having these little 1 bar phrases and such between two different sections because it creates an odd (or even, depending on song) # of bars in a phrase and feels like it "resets" the tune to my ears rather than creates a flow into the next section. Like listen to these examples of orchestral or cinematic tunes: None of these pieces have anything I would specifically call a "transition". It just goes one section into another. They do however pay attention to two things: Anacrusis, and voice leading. An anacrusis is a few notes before the first measure of a phrase that "lead-in" to it. A very common variant is that, in a minor key, you might have played the 5th and the minor 7th before playing the root on the downbeat of the first measure of the phrase. Voice-leading refers to how the voices (instruments) or lines move to another pitch. You want to avoid creating too many "leaps", that is: movement larger than a major third. You want stepwise motion as much as possible. So let's say that: Sections A and B are both 8 measures long. The melody note in the last bar of section A ends on the root, an octave below where you started. This means that section B should ideally start in the new, lower octave rather than having the melody jump all the way back up. If I do go back up into that higher register for the beginning of section B, than I would create an anacrusis leading into that pitch, with a different instrument(s) above the previous melody in the last bar of section A. Also, if you come back to the tonic chord in the last bar before a new phrase, have a quick chord change on the last beat or couple of beats in the last bar so that it will smoothly lead back to the tonic, or whatever chord begins the new phrase. You can use percussion like timpani and cymbals rolls to accent this or ramp the tempo a bit, but basically: There is nothing terribly special you should have to do to make two sections, even very different ones, flow into each other well if your voice-leading is strong.

So sorry to hear about your loss, Nika. I completely understand as I've lost someone recently too... I hope things get better for you, and I hope you have a reliable network of close friends and family to help you through. I'm also sorry that I haven't had any updates for a while, I'm still trying to get myself back on track. Pun intended.

The trailer has arrived!

Man, do we need more pieces like this! An exploring, wide-ranged take on some of the core FF X themes that turns this into a remix that alternate depth with some moments of looking the storm in the eye and being unafraid in the gathering winds, then sitting down after and contemplating how you're still here. SUPER props for both the opening and closing, which carry all the feels. More pieces need to explore this kind of emotional range. A definite download!!

I know, but I didn't know OCR at that time ( I regret it though, since I was definitly more active at that time :s ), and I only did season 15 of PRC x) Looks like "taking the joke route" is something you do quite often xD I noticed you like to include some pingas in your remixes. That is the cherry on top of the cake for me

Hello, all! Me here. Again. I have been out of commission since August due to a personal loss of someone very close to me. I've been anti-social, shutting out the people closest to me, and throwing myself in full 'get through the day' mode for three months - with a little self-pity for maximum impact. There is nothing like doing everything the grief counsellors tell you not to do - the platitudes lose their effect after a while, and it's amazing how far down you go before you realize where you are and how long you've been there. So, I have let this get off the rails again, and this time, I let it run over our final deadline. I can say with certainty that this project is not yet to the point where it can be submitted, and due to the utter lack of updates in my absence - except @Slimy (final tracks submitted! YAY), @JulienMulard, and @TheChargingRhino, I've received no updates from anyone. That being said, I really wasn't here at all this time and judging from some of the feed I was reading on Discord, some folks are losing faith - so here I am, once again checking in with the project and letting everyone know I'm not dead and neither is this project. Now, we are past the final deadline I set for September 30th. I have to reframe this project to get it back on track and this may mean renaming the project itself. If you still want your submitted track to be included in the album, have faith and I will be reaching out soon! If you are out of patience with me and want to take the music elsewhere (or submit independently), please let me know or I will assume you are still on board. ---- For anyone questioning whether I will see this through, you would be right to ask - but please understand that this project gives me a joy I don't have in other parts of my life right now. I will see this through one way or the other - after all, I always come back, don't I? I'm sorry again for being away. Please have patience with me through this - we're still going to get this done!

Hah, AxLR, this one and Thunderplains weren't the only ones I trolled This one is my magnum opus! http://compo.thasauce.net/rounds/view/PRC223 Might as well share this gem, whilst I'm at it

Sly Cooper music remake from groud-up! Hear sneaky Sly soundtrack with remastered sounds and instruments! Take your Thevious Raccoonus and begin listening to remix Sly Cooper OST!

Hello every ones I'm jmabate from france and I'm a Sega genesis music fan. I've maked somes covers like Musha Aleste, Devil Crash, Thunder Force 2 and 4, Decap-Attack and more to comes. I've eared about OC Remixer on severals music forum, so I came here and share my VGM passion and make collabs. thanks.

Both of these are excellent pieces so I very much appreciate the effort. I would guess that you made this primarily for the early build up into the point between about 0:46 and 1:10 which I find to be exquisite and worth the effort on its own, well done. In the rest, however, I don't hear much synergy. Aerith's theme is very melodic and Vangelis is very atmospheric which I guess is what makes this difficult. The period after 1:10 where Aerith's theme becomes more playful especially with the quicker notes you've added changes the tone a lot and also seems to muddle the meaning of the previous Vangelis inspired part because it is so different. I wish I could offer you more constructive advice, but all I can suggest is that you could try to drastically slow down or even change Aerith's theme after 1:10 so that it works more with the Vangelis tone you have set in the first 1:10. Good luck!

I'm 4fast5u guys. Entry submitted.

No worries. Round turned out to be a success. Cya in the future sometime

If you like chiptunes, I don't see how you could possibly dislike this! So good!

What a freaking epic way to end this competition. Both of these tracks were incredible, and they couldn't be more different in their presentations. Well done everyone. Well done.

So I should amend my statement to be more technically accurate: Sonarworks can not remove reflections from the room, they are still bouncing around, and no amount of DSP can just stop them from propagating. However, the effect is "cancelled" at the exact measured listening position. Sonarworks is an FIR approach, which is another name for convolution style filtering. Deconvolving reflections is totally and absolutely in the wheelhouse of FIR filtering, as reverb is "linear" and "time-invariant" at a fixed listening position, (relatively) fixed monitoring level and fixed positions of objects and materials in the room. So it absolutely necessitates re-running calibration process if you change stuff around in the room, change the gain structure of your system output, etc I can't comment on standing waves but it seems in their paper they noted that it wasn't covered by the filter approach and so they recommended treatment for that. Just from my peanut gallery background in studying EE I think it makes sense that standing waves aren't linear and time invariant and so trying to reverse them through a filter wouldn't go well. Same goes for nulls, if a band is just dying at your sitting position, trying to reverse that via filter is just not smart at all. Regardless, if you were to move your head or walk around, you would again clearly notice how horrible the room sounds (though the fixed general frequency response is still an improvement), because now you've violated the "math assumption", introducing sound difference created by changing your spatial position. This is the disadvantage of relying on DSP calibration (along with latency and slight pre-ring for the linear phase) and is a compelling reason why you wouldn't want to choose it over proper acoustic design in a more commercial/professional studio design (you don't want crap sound for the people sitting next to you in a session!). I think it's a pretty decent trade for home producers and produces much better results than trying to put cheap speakers in a minimally treated room and still having to learn how to compensate for issues. I just see it as more expensive and time-consuming. Compensating isn't fun; its easy on headphones where problems are usually broad, general tonal shifts in frequency ranges. But in a room, and this is shown in the measurement curve, the differences are not broad and predictable, they're pretty random and localized in small bands. In my opinion it's difficult to really build a mental compensation map unless you listen to a metric ton of different sounding music in your room. It is traditional to learn your setup, but I think the tech is there to make the process way simpler nowadays. To be scientifically thorough, I would love to run a measurement test and show the "after" curve of my setup, however sadly I don't think it's really possible, because SW has a stingy requirement that for measurement the I/O for the computer has to be running on the same audio interface and the calibrated system output is a different virtual out, so there's no way I could run the existing calibration and then also measure that in series. All I can do is volunteer my personal anecdotal experience at how it has improved the sound. I'm not trying to literally sell it to you guys, and no, I don't get kickback, I just think it's one of the best investments people should make into their audio before saving up to buy expensive plugins or anything else. Especially because its results are relatively transferrable to any new environment without spending any more money no matter how many times you move, where room treatments would have to be re-done and maybe more money spent depending on the circumstance. And because of the topic of this thread, it shouldn't be understated that SW calibration can drastically improve the viability of using cheaper sound systems to do professional audio work. I've run calibration at my friend's house with incredibly shitty, tiny $100 M-Audio speakers, in just about the worst way to possibly place/orient them, and I'd say the end result really was within the ballpark of sound quality I get at my home room with more expensive monitors and a more symmetrical set up. It wasn't the same, but it was a lot more accurate (sans any decent sub response) than you could roll your eyes at. Stereo field fixing is dope too. @Master Mi I'm not sure what's to be accomplished by linking YouTube videos of the sound of other monitors. They're all being colored by whatever you're watching the YouTube video on. At best, a "flat response" speaker will sound as bad as the speakers you're using to watch the video, and furthermore, a speaker set that has opposite problems that yours do will sound flat, when they aren't flat at all. Listening to recordings of other sound systems is just about the worst possible way to tell what they sound like.

Thank you for the invitation, I never used Discord but I guess it's time I could try it at least haha

Hello everyone! New version here: Even though I was really proud of my track, I felt there was still room for improvements, mostly regarding the "chorus" of the track, which was rather repetitive. I added a few variations, and got closer to the source regarding this part, with a little more orchestral parts. I also worked a little bit on the lead guitar mixing by automating the levels, in order to flatten the loudness variation between parts where only one guitar was playing and the parts where both were. I also added a few bpm to the tempo to get a bit more into heavy territory (nothing too fancy, going from 120 to 126). I know OCR is more skewed towards old school OST (and so I am, I all honesty), but I hope you'll enjoy it, even if you are not familiar with the source!