Harmony

HAHAAHAHAHA, perfect

In case you didn't realize, most of the remixes on this site were not created by the original authors of the source tunes. So, NeoS's question and my response to it don't apply. To clarify my opinion: Working on a song you created a while ago might be fun, and it might result in some cool new improvements, but I think that if your goal is to continuously improve yourself as a musician (as is my goal and I'm sure plenty of others'), making a new song will almost always beat dredging up past WIPs.

No. I think time is usually better spent creating something new.

Nah, you have a bunch of Mesa impulses in the UM Cabs folder. I just didn't know that a Rectifier was a Mesa product.

I’m afraid you may be right.I’ve thought about making it the floating household media PC for use in the living room or wherever, but generally if I ever find enough free time to listen to music in the living room, I’m much more likely to want to use that time for creating music in my bedroom. Sharing the workload with my main DAW has always sounded like an awesome idea, but you guys make it sound like more headache than it’s worth. That’s a shame really. Someone should work on making that process much more seamless; with the low price of PCs these days, a product that easily facilitated the connection should turn a nice profit. Headache or no, I still may give it a shot, if not in a formal way then possibly by making the lappy a piece of dedicated offline audio editing/mastering/authoring hardware connected over a LAN. And analoq my friend, is a life without The Simpsons really worth living?

I'll get you for this mockery DJP, and your little dog too! I will say that Folding@Home isn't such a terrible idea, but I wouldn't want to burden the molecular dynamics folks with my ridiculously mismatched processor/ram machine (how I got it to work in the first place is beyond me).

Alright, I admit defeat. I've poured a coupla hundred bucks, some super glue, and lots of tape into my Sony Vaio to keep it alive for 5 or so years as my main school/work/mobile PC. However, new problems are starting to show up and to really bring this baby back to life I'll need ~$300. I'd rather just get a new one. If I shell out for a new harddrive and keyboard ~$120 it'll be ok, so I'm wondering what suggestions people have for an Intel 2GHz, 512MB RAM, aging laptop. I'd like to dedicate it to music, but in what capacity? This video was a pretty slick example of what one could do, but all I have software-wise is SONAR and FL Studio I'm not sure if I could get something similar going. Any other ideas?

I just tried out the Wagner > keFIR > impulse combo, and great jebus this is the greatest thing to happen to my guitar since I bought it. I’m in utter awe at how realistic these sound. I guess I should say “good” instead of “realistic” because I’m not experienced enough to really compare these tones to any of the actual setups. Which brings me to my questions sixto (or anyone). I’m coming from a strictly self-taught acoustic guitar background and as a result I know jack-squat about guitar amplification. I only have a general but vague idea of what a “header”, “preamp” or a “cabinet” are and how they come together to create the final tone. So, clicking through this extensive list of impulses is fun, and I can pick off a few things that I do know in the descriptions (SM57 = mic, off-axis = mic placement) but I’d like to be more systematic about it. How do different factors affect the sound? Does off-axis typically give a warmer sound? Larger cabinet sizes are better for what? What’s “tweed”? Why do people typically choose Mesa vs Marshall or _____ vs ______? Etc [*]I gather that a preamp feeds into the cabinet (or cabinet sim here), but what if I want a clean sound? Traditionally, do I take the preamp out of the loop, or do I just turn down the drive of the preamp? [*]Why would the mix of keFIR be anything except 100% (full output)? [*]What impact do the eq/tone settings on the guitar itself have? Should I just set them to neutral and mess with the eq on the preamp? Does it matter? [*]Sixto, you made an awesome demo with a Rectifier impulse, but didn’t include it in the impulses you gave out. What gives? Thanks!

Musical technique can disappear faster than muscles atrophy. Don't let your skills slip away thinking that it's just like riding a bike. From personal experience I can say that it's not.

That's ok, it all comes with experience. Even if you don't hear any flaws in song after song that you make, you'd be hard pressed to find someone who doesn't improve after enough practice and repetition.

I think this is one of the best and easiest to read free guides to mastering basics that I've read. It works for everyone but it is especially useful if you have Ozone. If you haven't already read it, it should at the very least point you in the right direction for the questions you've asked: http://www.izotope.com/products/audio/ozone/OzoneMasteringGuide.PDF

Getting old sucks huh? Have a great day DA and Pongball

Absolutely agreed. I think it's the completely wrong way to go about things if you're new or unsure of your abilities to try to write "OCR quality" music. It is my personal belief that we all have the ability to create great music, but it simply takes time to train our ears, develop our styles and sharpen our techniques to the point that other people will want to hear what we create. If you start out by trying to meet someone else's arbitrary standards (i.e. OCR's standards) you're effectively attempting to bypass some of that learning process by attempting to adhere to the style and/or techniques of those standards. While I think this can be good if you're really close to those standards in terms of ability, if you're not quite there yet then I think it makes the whole rejection process frustrating and not all that useful. For anyone who this doesn't apply to, great. But in the end I think the best motivation should come from within. Don't write for OCR. Don't even "remix" if you don't absolutely want to. Just make stuff that sounds good to you, and kill yourself to try to make it sound as good as you possibly can...then move on to the next song. Don't submit it anywhere, and don't seek approval from anyone. Learn by having fun with music, because it is virtually impossible to lose inspiration or motivation when what you're doing is truly fun for you.

I barely remembered that one, probably because I wasn't good enough to focus on anything except "don't die don't die don't die" But it looks like you have your answer. Good luck on the mix Rayza.

Checked out a video of that fast mutlti-take comping, and indeed it's pretty slick. I have no idea why SONAR doesn't offer the same thing. Although with SONAR's track layers, the same can quickly be done at the cost of a few more mouse clicks. 20mins is a bit of an exaggeration, yes?

1) nice, I like it. 2) hmm. I'm a sucker for a poetic mission statement. You know, the type of thing that you'd feel good about ending by putting a little dash with your name next to it. Nevertheless, the new blurb certainly gets the point across. 3) nice, I like it. Keep those updates coming for the new year. I am glad to see that as the visibility, popularity and number of talented contributors to OCR expands with each passing day, so to does this site’s professionalism, stylistic appeal and ability to better serve its countless supporters and fans. - Harmony

Generally the advice is to try the demos of each of the products you're looking to buy, then decide which is right for you. If you have enough money that you're considering buying Sonar, then the sequencers in that price range really just come down to personal preference. But to support my good friend Sonar, I'll say that I think that it is a great product and you won't go wrong with it. There are (sort of) 4 versions: Home Studio, Home Studio XL, Studio Edition and Producer Edition, any one of which is easily capable of making great music. I think the Home Studio line has been discontinued at version 6 (although they have upgraded the XL version recently), but you'd still see years of life out of that if you buy it now. This comparison chart is good for figuring out which version is right for you. The major limitations of the Home Studio line as compared to the other 2 pro versions are that HS: has a limited number of audio tracks has no ReWire capability (it can't work directly with other sequencers) doesn't have audio snap (an awesome tool if you plan on recording a lot of audio) can't directly add effects to clips, only to tracks. If you can live without these, then go for the cheaper Home Studio products. The XL has a bunch of additional plugins (instruments and effects), some of which are pretty nice. If you feel like you have to have those features, the difference between Studio Edition and Producer Edition are similar to the difference between the XL and non XL versions of Home Studio. I have Studio Edition 6 and I absolutely love it.

So I figured that if I was gonna be involved in a VG music website, I'd better make it clear that I'm more interested in the music side of things. I'd say 65/35 split. Anyway, "Harmony" fit the bill. However if I had it to do all over again, I wouldn't pick a singular English word as a handle. It makes searching the forums for posts about myself impossible

Nice, guitar advice from Sixto. Thanks! I've used the SA suite for a little while now and I absolutely love it. I wish it had stereo output for processing stuff besides guitar, but that's a pointless gripe. I'll try out the other goodies soon. Do you regularly use any of the plugins you mentioned in your setup?

Cool, the more info the better. (wow, looks like the Genesis is coming up on it's 20th birthday!)

I dislike Macs for all of the reasons mentioned so far, and more. I haven't really worked with one for any significant amount of time, but every time I've tried, it's been a headache. I can understand not being familiar with the OS, but for a product with a fanbase that constantly touts that "it just works" I would think that the learning curve would be shallower. That said, in order to get the best of both worlds at work, I am constantly switching between Windows and linux on my pc. Windows has the graphics processing power and document authoring stuff I need, and the ease-of-networking gods continue to shine on all flavors of linux. Macs however seem to have a good helping of both, which, in spite of the learning curve, is appealing to me. In fact, I'd say 30%, of the engineers I run across in my academic wheeling's and dealings sport Macs. I guess as with any platform, the choice depends on the application.

Nice. Really enjoyed the flanged synths, especially the that main e-piano; I've gotta try that out sometime. Also cool are the subtle vox here and there (doesn't matter that I have no idea what's said at 1:17, it's slick). Even though you've got a clap or something to balance out the right, I'm not a fan of the hard left snare (or the rim shots for that matter). Seems like you're playing the panning game with the wrong elements, since the e-piano sits 50% right for pretty much the whole track and the main buzzy synth plunks itself in the middle and sets up permanent shop (panned delays don't count, sorry). Other issue for me is the overabundance of reverb. I'd cut that in half, work with the track a while in its fairly dry state, then start adding some of it back once you get used to that sound. I think you'll find that it sounds better balanced and more inviting with a little less verb. p.s. the tempo changes in Jenova are hot.

There are only a handful of games that give my love of Secret of Mana a run for its money, and at the top of that list is the Myst Series. I was the guy back in ‘98 walking around with a Myst shirt on, reading all of the novels, and dreaming of one day having enough money to make it to the Mysterium conference. In honor of this mix finally being released on OCR, you may have noticed I’ve even thrown together a quick Riven sig! Anyway, this is some difficult material and even though I was hoping for the best, I was doubtful that it would turn out to be a good track. I’m happy with the outcome. I think that the mix of instruments sounds a little raw, in that they don’t feel like a cohesive unit at times. For example, the drums, the strings and the piano around the 3:30 feel like they were all recorded in different rooms. The other minor grip I have is with the marimba. I think the sample is fine, good even, but again I think the mixing hurts it. It’s got some stray frequencies that make some of the notes sound off key to me. I think I enjoyed the first section the most. It absolutely captures the feel of Myst, and I’d like to think that the repetition and sparse nature of the sounds through 2:10 is an intentional tribute to the feel of the game, rather than any failed attempt to pull off some radical feat of remixitude. Overall the arrangement is very enjoyable, as I’m a big fan of layering themes whenever possible, even if only subtly. Short and sweet transition out of the first theme could use a little more love, but in spite of that and my previous comments, I love the main drums during the second half. The processing makes them sound like they’re right out of some stage production of this or that. Sequencing is top notch, especially 3:37, which is almost too perfect, but still believable IMO. That is one odd ending, but I won’t complain. I’ll just say that this is a great first OCReMix, and with all of the stuff you said you’ve learned since this one, hopefully you’ll come back with tons more. FYI, I’m also a big fan of Tomb Raider if you’re looking to get some more cool points from me

Two of the biggest supposed problems with Soundblasters are 1) poor converters (problems with recording): this results in more hiss and other junk in your recordings if you're plugging a mic or a guitar or something directly into the card. 2) audio coloring: this means that instead of trying to reproduce the sound as accurately as possible in terms of the frequency spectrum, the SB will often try to make whatever sound comes through it sound as good as possible, often by adding some low and high freqs that can throw you off when trying to mix correctly. I say bah to both of those "problems" since the SB signal to noise ratio isn't the best but also isn't the worst, and anyone who works with the card for a little while can train themselves to work with the audio coloring to get reasonably accurate results.

Sounds like a ground loop to me...especially with the Soundblaster (I've got similar probs with mine). Give an audio sample of the buzzing and someone here would be able to make that determination for sure.