Harmony

In this case, I think what Larry meant by fleshing out your sparse textures is that you don't have many other sonic elements other than the distorted guitar so everything sounds really same-ish. While this is definitely a cool track, it could be a lot more interesting with different sounds. Even if you still want to go the entirely guitar driven route, having significantly different FX chains on some of the guitars would mix things up a bit. There's also the issue of mixing that was brought up. The melodic elements, like the awesome guitar solos, are buried behind the overpowering lower freq rhythm guitars. No excuse for that man -- don't hide your most important melody-carrying elements! Listening for balance in your mix takes practice, but it's essential to producing consistently good tracks. Aside from going back and modifying the EQ and volume on some of the individual tracks, Palpable's maximizer plugin idea might help, but I'd also suggest a multi-band compressor like t-sledge (use one of the mastering presets) which can selectively lower the low frequencies, pump up the mid and high frequencies, and in general try to give you a more balanced sound. EDIT: Here's the link. http://www.megaupload.com/?d=DR1N8OR2 Garret, when you have a problem like that, you can click "Disable smilies in text" to keep it from automatically putting them in.

Fine by me.

Sweet, front page video pimpage! Thanks The folder and naming scheme is very logical and easy to follow so if you had the raw samples, it would be incredibly easy to pick through them and throw them into whatever sampler you want. However, zircon mentioned the possibility of getting this converted to SFZ which would solve both of you guys’ problem. The player is free, the format is even more customizable than soundfonts, and in my experience, the format handles most of the features of the Kontakt library perfectly. tefnek’s demo is crazy phat, check that out if you haven’t already.

My entire musical life has stagnated without the PWM tut that was promised to us. Are you holding out on us, or have you made it and I just missed it?

I'm in. How slightly reduced is the group rate? I've got you covered for a ride if you need it.

Pretty sweet sketch. Once you fill it out and round off the rough edges, it should be a pretty good listen

Happy birthday man!!

I guess my question would be, how do you know that the added sub "compliments it perfectly"? Did you measure the freq response before and after adding the sub and find that you were able to get a flatter bass response without adding any unwanted peaks? If so, how did you measure that? And what about room dynamics. That is just as important as the monitors themselves.

I'm not very experienced with monitors, but it sounds like that would defeat the purpose of buying monitors. You want an accurate response, which you're going to have a tough enough time getting with lower-end monitors. Adding bass from some random other source would probably just make that tougher.

I don't know about the best thing on the internets, but these new recordings are definitely the best thing on the umd.gamersymphony.org corner of the internets. Nice work this year guys, I had a blast at the show.

Amen Break on Groove Bias! Tight work virt.

dblue's Glitch fulfills my fancier gating needs.

This thread mystifies me. I hope you've gotten something out of it, chessmaster.

Yeah, I figured you were in Reason, but that doesn't mean you can't export to something else and master your work there. The last time I used Audition, it wasn't owned by Adobe, so I don't know what multiband compressors they have, but Audacity is free, easy to use, and supports VST so you could load your mix in there and tweak away. All that exporting and loading external programs sounds like a lot of work, but a little bit of a lot of work never hurt anyone

Hey, this is pretty good stuff. My major concerns with it are the same as others have already pointed out. Overly bass heavy and those strings. The bass is a terribly simple fix. I'd consider one of 3 simple possibilities: 1) reduce the volume of the kick/bass. Effective, but might mess with your mixing in unpredictable ways. 2) put an EQ on the master bus and use a high pass filter or a low shelf to reduce the lows below, say, 100Hz for the shelf or 50Hz for the high pass. Problem with the EQ fix is that you'll lose sonic info from other instruments that you'd probably want to keep. The best solution to me is 3) use a multiband compressor and only compress the low frequencies. I've started to do this religiously on my tracks and they come out sounding cleaner and punchier than I could have ever gotten with just EQ or careful mixing. If you don't have a multiband compressor, I think T-sledge is a good one to start with. Pull up one of the mastering plugins and it will compress the bass to a much more reasonable level I think you'll be able to immediately feel a jolt of clarity injected into this mix. As for the string samples, no sample is bad, it's just that you have to use it effectively. In the intro, they sound exposed and dull. In addition to playing with the attack and getting some vibrato in there, you might try automating a filter to give them some life. You can also layer them with a nice ambient pad. Anything to give them a bit more depth and, as said, complexity. Hope this gets accepted soon

and small drums called...tom toms! Hahaha, I can't think of any word to describe that guy as except...adorable. That said, it was pretty sweet when he pulled a triplet tom fill with one hand.

No need to shed tears, my man. I'm sure the happiness of being a wonderful father more than makes up for the ridiculously awesome equipment that you could be buying. I mean, just think of it. That's like a new Les Paul every month! Or, once you get tired of the new guitars, you could be tricking out your studio like nobody's business! WOW! But nah, no tears mate...no tears No, I'm probably better than someone who's never played before, but I basically suck on a real kit. But since you claim epic drumming skills, I say we have a drum off. Keyboard vs. Real Kit to decide the fate of drumming for all eternity!

Here's my two cents About the song: This is good work for a beginning mix...better than my first Mary Had a Little Lamb and Lemmings remixes! As has been said, there is so much more you can do than just adding your own beat under the original. However, I think you've got some pretty cool arrangement ideas in here that go beyond just adding a beat. The sounds are basic and I think that's what you should work the most on. Find some better samples and instruments, read through these boards and get some tips on processing and effects to get you started, but the main thing is just to practice. Here I should also say that I don't like that people assume that the goal of every remix should be getting accepted to OCR. IMO, that's a flawed approach to music making. Just make music because it's fun, and when you get enough practice, you won't need to worry about OCR's standards because you'll have the confidence and capability to easily make a song that will pass both your own standards, and those of this site. About MIDI: This is such a huge misconception amongst new guys. Someone should make a thread and sticky it. MIDI is a specification. It is a standardized way that some people agreed upon to pass information between devices. It doesn't sound like anything. Similarly, GM (General MIDI) refers to a standardized set of instruments and their patch/bank numbers. It says nothing about their quality or what they have to sound like. So for instance, you can have a really cheap Casio keyboard with GM mapping that has a super cheesy drumkit. OR you can have Zircon's new Groove Bias (PRODUCT PLUG!!) drumkit which is top of the line stuff that is ALSO mapped to GM specifications. Again, GM doesn't sound like anything. So, if you all understand that, then Nubioso I'll be the one to bust your balls and say that the fact that a song starts as a MIDI has exactly zero to do with it's quality, and thus the possibility of it getting accepted on OCR. You're right, OCR doesn't accept midi files, but that is primarily because, again, midi only defines what notes should be played and how they should be played, NOT the sounds that should be played. I'll bet that most OCReMixes make HEAVY use of midi, and I'd even bet that some of them are ENTIRELY midi based. About the harsh critique: Haha, yeah I think it was harsh, but when someone reviews as many mixes and helps people out as much as Rozovian, you've gotta expect them to be a little...terse...at times. He ain't got time to baby all you noobs! I kid, of course Back to George: So in conclusion, keep doing what you're doing. I like what you've started with. I use Sonar 6 too and it's an awesome program and you've only scratched the surface of its capabilities. You've got plenty of good advice to help move yourself forward so don't stress out about changing this mix up too much. If you like it, if it makes you bob your head, then it's fine. Improve on the next mix if there's something you want to fix. Be your own standard, and just have fun with it man!

haha, yeah as soon as the drums kicked in I felt like I was being kicked in the teeth with compression It wasn't bad, just very noticeable. Otherwise, fantastic stuff! This mix proves two things. First, OCR needs more DADGAD mixes. Second, Jeremy should start a Christian rock band, preferably featuring all atheist/agnostic members.

Dude, haha! Doug, this is great work! I must admit that it's taken me a little while to catch some of the themes, but once I did, I really enjoyed the arrangement. Two comments, one original, one borrowed: 1) There's a left panned bass drum after about the one-minute mark that feels out of place to me. I know there are no hard and fast rules about anything in music, but I would think that it is generally a good idea to keep the stuff with predominantly low frequencies in the center field. I could see a brief use of the bass panned left or right in some sort of a cinematic cue - it could really make the sonic field feel more dynamic to go along with the on-screen action. But in a audio only music-for-music's sake kind of thing, the constant hard panning is distracting imo. I wonder what the formally trained musicians think about this. 2) Had I not read Escariot's comment, I probably wouldn't have thought of this, but I agree that some chromatic percussion could have "kicked this up a notch." I wouldn't be looking for it in a lead melodic role, but as a supporting instrument I think it may have added some tone to the already rich texture. As said, nice work. DrumUltimA indeed

omg. This is absolutely awesome. Great concept with excellent execution, and hells yeah the ahhhh was baller! I'm really interested in hearing more about the recording process, but I'm a nerd like that. Great work!

You should find a way to save your remix as an .mp3 (or a similar format). That way, when we play it on our computers it sounds the same way as it does on yours

Hmm, I wouldn't expect the tascam to have that problem, but it might just be a bad setting that you're using in Audacity. I don't use it as my primary recording software, so I really can't give you too many suggestions besides the cop-out answer: try something else to see if the problem still exists there. If it worked for Mokram...

Well, as we all know, this Friday is National Impulse Buy day (a.k.a. payday) so I'd wait until after then to start worrying.

This sounds exactly like the problem DpraV was having in this thread, which he fixed using (apparently) sorcery. Black arts aside, I would blame the soundcard, not the software. What card are you using?