halc

http://albums.halc9bit.com/album/zero-g Hey again, everyone! I'm happy to kick another year off in style with the release of my new album, Zero-G! This 10-track collection of glitchy, dubby, chiptune-infused beats, clocking in at just under a half an hour, is my longest, largest and most concentrated original offering yet. As usual, I'll just let the music speak for itself. As always, any and all support is greatly appreciated. Enjoy the music! Album artwork courtesy Emunator. Such a stud. <3 Check out the BIG version here.

tough vote. the source is great, and this is a great arrangement of it. I agree with the production concerns; the guitar struck me as being really dry at first, the bass and acoustic drums feeling thin/dry, but as the song progressed things really came together and I found myself enjoying the soundscape quite a bit. borderline for me, but YES

I didn't have any inherent problems with the arrangement, it was really dynamic and full of interesting ideas but I must agree that the production is an issue. not sure what to say about those guitars, but they are not well mixed. the rest of the stuff could make for some interesting soundscapes with some EQ and effects work, although I definitely recognize a good few of these presets. as Liontamer said, the sounds and mixing are amateurish. looking forward to hearing some more arrangements from you and seeing how your mixing improves. NO(resub)

not much to add to what everybody has already said about this mix. I agree with most of the criticisms the other NO's left, in regards to the backing track feeling 'atonal' and the melody out of place. definitely an odd arrangement, however the production is above the bar. can't sign off on this one, though. NO(resub)

happy christmas indeed.

thanks everyone for the comments, and of course djp for the christmixpost. definitely an oldie of mine, glad people are still digging it. :3

nice try, but I already beat both of you to it.

make it 7, yo. YES

agreed with the muddyness/reverb comments, pretty sure it's the overcompression of the master doing that. the track feels plenty loud, but there's still some headroom. see if you can back off the compression a bit and then boost your individual instruments as well as cutting out the unnecessary frequencies in their EQ. you should be able to get more clarity from your sounds this way. I agree with the concerns with the arrangement sorta dragging on, but overall I think things click, and you took a nice direction with the style. my main beef is with the mixdown, but expanding on the arrangement a bit would only make this song sweeter. NO(resub)

haha. great mix title. technically I this submission goes against our standards, either way: still, I gotta agree that what's here is neat, the chiptune drums resembling the ones from the source were a nice touch to the soundscape. pretty underdeveloped though, arrangement-wise, it felt like it was over long before it should have been. NO

thirding the arrangement concerns. perhaps a breakdown is in order? I can't say the source was impossible to place; those bells at the very beginning were taken from the source, and I'm hearing some other nuances throughout the track, but it definitely seems far too liberal for our standards, if not wholly original for a good portion of the track. in terms of production, there's some nice, lush sounds in this track, but the mix was a bit flat, and sparse. the drums didn't have much punch, and the lows and highs were both really reserved. anyway, enjoyed the track, and it has some nice moments to float away to, but ultimately this isn't quite what we're looking for in terms of arrangement. hoping to hear some more submissions from you as you improve your craft. NO

hrm, a little torn. have to agree that as far as production is concerned, I'd pass this. I can't really expand on the arrangement any more than Emu already has.. the arrangement of the individual sources was handled conservatively, but were nicely personalized. the medley-itis doesn't really bother me as much on a personal level, but I agree with most of his critiques, and as such I feel like I should side with the NO's here, as much as I want to pass it. anyway, a very impressive first offering here, to be sure. a resub that expands on the arrangement of the themes or tightens up some of the more abrupt transitions would probably flip my vote. can't wait to hear your next submission. NO(resub)

cool, starcraft needs some love. didn't give this one an extremely close look in terms of arrangement, but offhand I was definitely recognizing the themes at play, which were melded nicely. I'd call it an exaggeration to say you can't hear the bassline, I can definitely hear that bass guitar. it just doesn't have any bass. anyway, agreeing with most of the crits already mentioned. the mixing and EQ is definitely the biggest issue with this mix, but theres also some pretty unpleasant intonation or intervals going on (see 1:48-2:10) dunno if that's due to the note choices or the guitar being out of tune, but it's definitely bothersome, to my ears anyway. NO(resub)

not a very cohesive blend of sounds. it's obvious you were going for, but the bass and especially the drums were cheap sounding, and the detuned synth felt really out of place to me when it first dropped, however that wasn't bothering me so much by the end. the sidechained sections also felt a lot tighter to me for some reason. anyway, Emu definitely made some good points concerning the sounds, which is not in that they are bad (all the organ stuff was pretty nifty, btw), but the sequencing/processing just isn't expressive enough. little things, for example a few note slides or a filter automation here or there can go a long way towards making your melodies more effective. keep working at it. as the others mentioned, you are always improving. NO(resub)

yeah, definitely with you in terms of loving the R/S/E soundtrack. your sunken ship remix from a while back is still my favorite of yours. as usual, this mix is pretty solid as well. the drums had some nice fills but chilled on the same groove for pretty much the whole track, and I actually thought the soundscape was a little sparse in comparison to your busier works, but overall this is pretty good stuff. solid production, really dynamic, adventurous arrangement. nice work. YES

yeah yeah, this is embarrassing. apologies to my teammates for not even being in touch, I really meant to try and put something together on thursday/friday but some stuff ended up happening and I just wasn't able to do it. really, really didn't care much for the source tune either (also regretting the one I picked ), so anything I could've come up with would have been really forced, if not a glorified midi-rip. anyway, yeah. sorry, fellow Beats.

no coincidence, this was entirely intentional.

wow, you're absolutely welcome! that's quite a lofty review; very glad to hear that the track resonated with you on a deeper level. thanks!!

epic, as always. thanks for sharing.

thank ye muchly for the comments, everyone. <3 yeah, my mixing job on this is pretty shitty by my own standards, looking back on it anyway. it's a good thing Bryan's arrangement was so hot. he actually wrote all the sax parts too (including the original bit at the end), which was originally a soundfont. Blake pretty much just played the parts verbatim, giving it his own expressiveness of course. actually, now that I think about it, for some reason he had to send me the parts up like 2 half steps down or something, so the sax bits in this are actually pitched up and timestretched to fit in the key, which created a few off-key notes that I had to individually chop and shift to fit. pretty sure he offered to re-do it in the correct key some time later, but by then the project file had gone to shit, mostly due to some cracked plugins and samples that I stopped I stopped using completely. as for Bryan, he's been pretty active musically, just not on OCR. no original releases or anything yet, but he's quietly becoming a force to be reckoned with.

click "channel" -> "add one" -> "more" -> "refresh" (button at bottom right). you want to do this every time you install a new vst plugin. it should appear in red text; click the checkbox to add it to your list of plugins ninja'd :]

kokiri forest - really awesome. keeping my eye on this. I hope you'll be submitting some of these when you're finished?