LegendofSymphony7
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Posts posted by LegendofSymphony7
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Source was easy to recognize for me, maybe because I'm not a fan of the time sig adaptation on Blind's and Leifo's track on the FFVII project.
The genre-jumping works well if both genres are well produced, but in this case, neither seems to be. The whole mix seems to lack in the high range. In the intro, only the toms reach far enough to sound good. The orchestral bit after the intro needs more stuff going on. It could use some more textures. Add some chords to some of those empty sections. Even short notes octaves would be better than nothing. Staccato stuff, something to fill the holes in the frequency range, and the space between notes.
The rock section needs some serious production fixes. It's drowning in low mids. More highs. Also, there's a few instances where you should fix the timing, it's not as tight as it should be. Bass guitar sounds terrible, needs more bass, less guitar. And more punch. The guitars are mostly just noise, tho someone more into the genre (and guitar processing) should advise you on how to fix that.
Overall, I've got mostly production issues with this, which is a good thing. Means the writing is decent or better.
More compression on the drums, more high range in the EQ, fix the writing, fix the guitar processing, and you''ll have a significantly improved wip. Good work so far, I like it.
Now I'm asking myself questions about what instrument to use for the new textures... Could a flute add something that fits? another violin? Maybe a synth?
You can blame the lack of highs on the quality of our mixer, as well as the quality of our speaker cables. We had to filter out the higher frequencies to reduce the static, hum, and hiss. Now would be a good time to get a job...
Our guitarist/bassist was a bit of a fool to add distortion to all but one track -- and that guitar track had the toughest effects to work around. I'm going to destroy that effects processor of his, I swear it.
We're glad you liked it, though. With enough work, we hope you can love this piece.
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So, after being a pair of idiotic teenagers for two years, we (the Legend of Symphony) have decided to actually use the WIP forum before sending DJP any more absolute junk -- and trust me, even though we only tried three times, we tried with stuff so bad it would make an anthropomorphic trash can vomit in disgust.
Anyhoo, I suppose I should be talking about the mix in progress. Well, it's an arrangement of "You Can Hear the Cry of the Planet" (aka "City of the Ancients" aka anything else you can get from roughly translating the Japanese title), with a bit of a feel from bands like Tool or Porcupine Tree -- I am aware that the two are not exactly separated at birth when it comes to sound schema, but that's what we've heard from people who've listened to it. It's nearly finished, but there's always room for more polish.
So, without further ado, we give you 'Tools of the Ancients'.
Any advice would be appreciated, and we will be reworking and improving upon this piece until we think it works.
NOTE: The tune is being hosted on NG using a user name different from our OCReMix handle. This is not a theft of someone else's work.
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To my knowlege, instrument tracks are only for midi. I could be wrong, but I'm pretty sure that's how it works. Also, with an instrument track, you have to have a sample or a VST loaded to have any sound at all. Pretty much, it's just a midi track whcih is why I believe that is the reason it's only for midi keyboards.
The Xpand! plugin is the new one from Digidesign
Okay, cool. I'm glad I got this working, thanks to your advice. I can finally kiss my crappy Line-in on my sound card good-bye.
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Oooooooo, an instrument track and not a Mono audio track?
Could that be it..? I'll give a Mono audio track a shot and see if it works.
The manual said instrument track, though I may have misread it.
EDIT: It worked! Thanks so much, Tweek. My music shall read across the boundaries of the Internet to you as soon as it can.
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How many tracks are you using? Just the one right now or are you using a master fader or an AUX tack?
Just one instrument track, though I suppose I could throw in a few... useless, more or less, tracks.
I wonder if the track type has something to do with it. I can't trust instruction manuals with no troubleshooting on an issue like this.
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And when you start the playback to record, the blinking "R" button goes to a solid red?
Yup. Solid red.
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Does the track start turning a pink color when you start to record? Meaning that when the marker moves, everything in between where it started and where it is becomes pink?
It turns blue. This might be a matter of my computer's Theme, though.
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And like you said, the area that you're recording doesn't show any kind of wav? It's just a straight line?
Also i added another question to my previous post, check it
.Not even a straight line. I get zilch.
I'm using a Monster 5' (whoops, I marked it 5 in. in the specs!) 1/4" cable.
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Hmm. That's very interesting. When you start the playback to record, do you hear yourself still (as you did in the record mode before playback) or does the sound cut out?
Yes, I can hear myself. But when I playback after recording, I get nothing.
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You may have alluded to this, but I want to clarify: before you start the recording and when you're in the recording status (i.e. the "R" light is blinking but you haven't started the playback), do you hear anything coming out of the speakers? I'm assuming you do if you're able to fix the gain meter so that it doesn't clip.
However, if you can't hear it and your doing it just from sight, then you'll need to check the output of that track/channel and make sure it's being routed out of the Mbox outputs. You can do that thru the mixing window and thru the sequencer window if it's displayed.
I didn't allude to it, but yes, I had set the track for recording status. The light was blinking. What I can hear coming out of my headphones (I should probably hook my speakers in) is what I'm playing on my keyboard.
The output is being routed out of the MBox outputs. In fact, I can hear myself playing through the MBox (via headphones/speakers, of course). But what I'm playing isn't being recorded.
I'm trying again just this moment but to no avail.
And just to clarify, I'm plugged into the TRS jack. And I have the MBox set for the TRS/Mic jack.
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Okay, so I just got the Pro Tools Ignition Pack (MBox 2 and P.T. LE 7.0) and I hooked it up as per the enclosed instructions. However, as I was recording (using a Roland ep-5 digital piano), Pro Tools seemed to not be picking up the recording. In fact, in the region area where time had been consumed for recording, there was nothing recorded there.
Yes, I had the volume up. No, my speakers weren't/aren't muted. Yes, I set the gain so that clipping wouldn't occur. Yes, the mix knob is balanced to hear both input and playback.
I suppose it would help if I listed my system specs, just in case someone else has this problem and a similar setup:
Windows XP Professional SP2 [sadly not Genuine, though I don't know how having non-Genuine Windows would be an issue]
AMD Anthlon XP
1.09GHz
512MB RAM
VIA '97 Audio Controller (VDM) [i've got this weird feeling that my sound card is an issue -- Heck, I don't even know what I've got]
Philips MMS 223S/17 w/Built-in Radio
NVIDIA GeForce2 MX/MX 400
Digidesign MBox 2
Pro Tools LE (7.0)
Roland ep-5 Electric Piano
Monster 5' 1/4"-1/4" cable
I'd really like to know just what's going on with this thing. $450 is a big loss for a product you can't take advantage of.
And if someone else has already submitted something about this, I'm sorry for spamming. I searched around the OCR ReMixing threads but found naught.
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I don't believe it. Nobody else finds ties to Tool in this piece? That's what I was thinking when I first heard it.
Very wonderful piece, zyk0. Please, bless us with more awesome music.
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Quite impressive, DS. Sort-of like how 4 measures of 7/8 (2-2-2-1) equal 7 measures of straight-eighth 4/4, eh?
As for the 13/8 at the topic starter, the song the thing I played comes from is mainly in 12/8 for the verses and moves into the chorus in 13/8, which lasts four measures (as long as I played it) and goes right back into 12/8.
Verse 1 lasts 12 measures.
Verses 2 and 3 last only 8.
Between Chorus 2 and Verse 3 is either a breakdown or a bridge (I can't really decide) in 14/8.
Chorus 3 has an extra beat on measure four of it (making it 14/4) for the sake of a fill.
So, taking the total beat-counts from Verse 2 and the next chorus (12 measures [8 in verse, 4 in chorus]), that makes 148 eighth notes. If you translate to 4/4, that's 37 measures, and in 6/4 it's 24 and 2/3 measures. Freaky math, no?
And if someone wants to know the drummer of the band in question the song derives from, look up Tool, go to any Tool fanpage, and check for a bio on Danny Carey.
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There isn't any 13/8 in Oblivion :/
I didn't mean that Oblivion. I meant something along the lines of "from out of nowhere". Obscure time signatures you thought a remix has never seen before.
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Writing odd time signatures is actually easier (at least for me, and, I've heard, for John Petrucci, not that I compare with him) if you have terrible rhythm and imagine weird melodies without even realizing it. The only real suggestion I could make is to listen to a lot of music in odd times (Dream Theater and Symphony X spring to mind) and try to emulate them before venturing into that area yourself.
Since I'm a sucker for odd times, there are a couple of methods I've developed to handle them:
1) if you're writing in a time signatures that otherwise disrupts the flow of the song, you can have a pulse on the drums accentuating the beats of an even time signature. Say you're playing in 13/16 and it feels really odd compared to the rest of the song, you can have the high hat play on every 8th note (that way it will play the upbeats on every 2 measures) to prevent listener's fatigue. [Good idea, can I borrow/steal it?]
2) if you're writing only a part of your song in odd times to make it sound progressive, don't hesitate to alternate time signatures. Dream Theater's Hell Kitchen and Dance of Eternity are good examples of this. [schism by Tool is another.]
3) A good way to have an odd time feel and keep a groove on is to play different time signatures on different instruments. For example, have your drum play in 4/4 and your guitar/bass play the same thing in 7/8. At each fourth bar of your groove, you'll be at 32/8 for the drum and 28/8 for the guitar/bass, so just do a four 8th notes fill to keep the instruments together. [Tool is actually notorious for this in the opposite effect. Drummer Danny Carey plays drumbeats that in 1 measure map out a drumbeat to cover up to three bass and guitar measures.]
4) Another good way to handle odd times is to think geometrically with your guitar. Say you are playing in 9/8, you want to find a cool lick, think of a 9 notes pattern. For example, in 9/8 in Em, you could do: E-F#-G-A-F#-G-A-B-C and repeat one octave higher after. The lick I've done in my solo on my Xenosaga mix was originally thought out in 9/8, but was adapted to /4 because the song would have sucked in 9/8. It's a really cool lick I often do, and I could transcribe it if you want to.
anyways, good songs to listen to/analyze if you wanna get a gasp of odd times:
Dream Theater: Hell's Kitchen
Dream Theater: A Change of Seasons
Dream Theater: Octavarium
Dream Theater: Metropolis part I
Dream Theater: Dance of Eternity (technical massacre)
Symphony X: Communion of the Oracle (see tip #3)
Symphony X: Fallen (see tip #3)
Andromeda: Parasite
Andromeda: Reaching Deep within (see tip #3)
Andromeda: One in My Head (best odd time shit I've heard in all my life at the end, no the tempo doesn't slow down
)Steve Vai: silkiest smooth odd times I've heard (11/8)
Joe Satriani: Echo (also, silk smooth 5/4)
Yuji Kajiura, Xenosaga Ep2 soundtrack, Communication breakdown: parts in 4/4, others in 5/4 and, if I remember well, other in 6/4 yet extremely smooth.
You're forgetting another real band (they're good, I don't care what anyone says) that plays a lot in odd time signatures (and since I'm saying this, no one can guess what the drumbeat at the top is from anymore): Tool. The link at the top? It's the chorus from Schism, a single from their 2001 album, Lateralus. The song dips into 12/8, 14/8, 13/8, and at times 11/8 and flows smoothly. Another example is the album-title song Lateralus. The bridge from the intro to the first verse goes from 9/8 to 8/8 to 7/8 (for all you math junkies: 987 is number 16 in the Fibonacci [sp?] sequence and the vocal pattern also loosely follows the sequence) twice before going into a more permanent drumbeat.
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It's alright... I'm a terrible beat-boxer and an even worse TEXTUAL beat-boxer.
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I dunno. I use Tag&Rename 3.2.
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I'm not really sure how to go about this, since I haven't done it before. In theory, though, I guess you could if you press record inside FLStudio.
I've got a Rolan EP-1 electric piano (it's a keyboard with piano, e.piano, vibes, organ, and strings). You can record and then replay the last thing you recorded on it, so if I tried the theory in question, I wouldn't have to play it on the spot.
My Roland's with a MIDI-out jack and a MIDI-in jack, but I have no MIDI input on my computer, so I guess I'd have to get one of those USB MIDI 1x1's to test it, then, wouldn't I?
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I might have.... "forgotten", let's say... to hit it. Ha, silly me.
And yes, I have a piano, but it's downstairs in it's own sort of room, and my computer is way upstairs. I really don't know a lot about recording anyways. I'm guessing I'd need a pretty good quality mic? And even if I did, I really don't know how I'd get any recordings onto my computer.
Anyways, that aside, would you have any suggestions as to what exactly is "much more high-end". I'm sorry if I'm sounding like a real beginner (which I guess I am...to composing for the computer anyways), but I really appreciate all the help.
Okay, about your recording of pianos.
First, is your piano an actual piano, or is it an electric keyboard? If it's the latter, just pick up a guitar cable or something and a 1/4"-1/8" adapter and plug that baby right into your line-in jack. Then, of course, plug the other end into one of your line-out/headphone jacks.
If it's the former, you will need a mic, obviously. Don't talk to me about this one, since OverCoat's got the best idea.
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I'm not sure if you're actually going to get answers, but your best bet is to actually ask the remixers themselves. If they have time, they'll probably give you some tips on what to do, if not go in-depth on how they do what.
And as far as software goes, I highly recommend Fruity Loops (now known as FL Studio). It's easy to use, has the ability to render MIDIs, has its own VSTs (and VSTi's), and can export in MIDI, WAV, or MP3 format. The only problem is it tends to get expensive if you try to buy it retail (look for wholesalers online. I happened to to find the $800 Macromedia Flash v8 Professional, a computer graphics software, for just $250.). I'd say, though, that you can make quality music with the stuff you've got. I know I can with the stuff I have floating around my computer (still waiting on judgment for my latest possible ReMix).
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Actually, I'm just bad with triplets. It's actually doo-doo-doo-cha!-ding-dicha-crash!-ding-dingding-cha!-ding-dingding repeat.
Oh, and fifty moot points to the poster who can name the song that beat came from. Fifty more if you can name the band and drummer.
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Okay, I thought the topic was obvious, but I guess it's not. It's offering help with 13/8, not asking about it. Sorry about the confusion...
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I've come to notice that there are no mixes in 13/8, probably because it's such an awkward time signature. Actually, it's not that awkward if you just consider the accents.
Check this out (recorded this morning in my own home on my own drumset):
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There's some other things that make finding the tempo difficult, too. For one, it's the genre of the music that sometimes sets it apart. From some of what I heard, most techno/trance/lectronica is either in 120 or 140 BPM. All rap is in 120 is it's fast, 60 if it's slow, and 90-107 if it's medium. For rock, metal, or punk you're just gonna have to know the band's average BPM (The average for all music, though, is roughly 120), although punk drummers tend to pull the tempo double-time. (As in 4 on the floor and snare on every *and* when you count 1and2and3and4).
My best advice: Tap your foot every time you hear a bass drum kick followed by a snare. Of course, this probably only works for 4/4 or any meter/time signature with 4 beats (i.e. 6/8 can't be done like this unless 1] you know it's in 6/8 and 2] you're willing to tap your foot in a dotted quarter pattern for two measures. For 3/4, the waltz time signature, you're just gonna have to waltz it).
Oh, and by the way - You just took advice (if you bothered to read this) from a drummer.
Final Fantasy 7 'Tools of the Ancients'
in Post Your Game ReMixes!
Posted
Joe Brown here. I recorded both the guitars and the basses (as there are more than one) in this tune; Josh thought it would be more appropriate for me to respond because of that.
I first would like to thank you for listening and constructively critiquing the current issues in the mix. If I had the money, I'd be running out of a Marshall JVM205H head and not a Crate GLX212 combo on the guitars. The bass... well, being that I was using my friend's equipment (and I shall not be using his processor anymore. xD), I really can't do much about that.
Second, the ending as written is very different from the ending as executed, and I had attempted to get that Tool-esque payoff. Guess I didn't hit it quite on as I should have; but we gotta go back into the studio anyway! Heh.
Frankly, I'm surprised that no one has attempted a remix in this vein yet. A second one we have in the works is for Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver, and it, too, carries the Tool sound (I think it hits the mark a hell of a lot closer than this mix does), but up until I get new equipment, I don't think I'll be trying anything else until this mix is perfected with what we have in hand.
Thanks again for your P.E.A.C.H.ing!