Level 99

Rozo pretty much nailed everything I was going to say.

This sounds pretty cool as a first-draft WIP, but it's got a lot holding it back if you're aiming for the OCR bar. Opening is atmospheric, but you can totally make it even more atmospheric. Stretch that out, add some more ambient noises, really build up the suspense. Once the strings come in, I can already tell what your main issue is going to be: samples. Really, this needs some higher quality samples (there are free ones out there that should do fine). Just spend some time hand-tweaking and really getting up to your waist with getting the sounds and sequencing just right. There's a lot of free soundfonts and soundpacks for synth1 (which is also free), so there's no excuse to not improve these! The fake guitars are, like, REALLY fake. Recruit a real guitarist to give this some flavor. When doing guitars, it's very hard to get by without either getting a real guitarist or paying for a good sample pack like Shreddage. Sequencing on everything is pretty stiff, most predominantly the synths and drums. Speaking of drums, they're quite muffled in this mix, so possible seek out another set (a set that would be great here is something like HardRockDrums.sf2. Again, just go out there and use google resourcefully and just try things out. You'll know when you've found a few winners cause they'll just start to really improve the mix. This is also a bit on the repetitive side and never really gets going, so consider doing more with the arrangement to spice up the flow. You've got a good base here, seriously. Just gotta get down and dirty with the "vamping"

Still needs more of this. Further more, it needs better transitions and a good deal more attention to detail. This is still quite the empty mix, and while there's lots of potential, the samples aren't high quality enough to warrant this low amount of processing. Also, some more layering and subtlety would do very well. I'm still source-searching here so that may take me a while, but since this suffers similarly sample and production-wise to your last song I reviewed, I'd suggest going to watch some tutorials for sample processing and mixing on whatever your current choice of DAW is. How I started with getting the sound I wanted was by listening to an artist I wanted to sound like, then trying to nail their sound using various techniques. Do this and it will also likely help your understanding of song structure as well! Keep it up and please don't give up on this stuff, because as I said before, you've got potential here!

Same thing here as with your other one. The production is fine, and the song is enjoyable, lots of emotion in your arrangement and you pull the slow-and-heavy weight very well. It really depends on how well the source is received, and this one a little bit more so than the other is harder to pick out because of how slow you made it. Short of rearranging it, this song is at the point where it has the best shot it can at passing, so go for it.

As a song in and of itself, I love it. No production crits from my end. Only issue would potentially be source usage because of how long you let it drag. It's iffy, but short of actually redoing the whole arrangement to make it snappier, this has the best shot of passing for what it is. Go for it.

Yeah, I saw that. However, the steam trade update actually broke my Spiral Knights. If I start steam up, and try to go into SK, I just get a brief flash of the character select screen followed by a no-error exit. The only solution I've found thus far is to disable Steam Community In-Game, load it up, back out, then re-enable it, load it up, and bam, fully working. PITA but at least it doesn't keep me from playing. I got very worrisome because my account is tied to my Steam account and can no longer play with Stand-Alone client ;_; I did pay for some energy last month and that has made getting some of the tighter upgrades a breeze. Still mostly 3* items with a 4* sword, but haven't had the chance to do a JK run. If anyone else is still playing I'd love to give it a shot with four people. Vilecat's about the same level of progress as I am so one or two other same level people could probably do it, right? Also got Zircon to make an account yesterday, so he's got a bit to go but should probably join for some runs. That new locale sounds really awesome, hope it makes it into rotation when I'm upgraded enough to play. Edit: totally forgot, name is LevelNinetyNine on SK.

We need to migrate the RSS over to the new site anyway. I'll give Brushfire the FTP access info when I can get my hands on it (at home this afternoon). However we should definitely just get the RSS off of the other site since DEVEN IS NO WHERE TO BE FOUND. News to me, and my bad for being incommunicado this week. Edit: Also, while we do have much fuller reign over 8bitx OCAD wordpress, we're limited to a version number due to the database on their web server. So we'd have to find a plugin that is compatible with the version of wordpress we're restricted to. I guess that means a nice weekend of research.

Edit! Get me a source breakdown on this please, because is it is, the production is pretty nearly done. I just want to double check the timeline you give to make sure it's adequate.

Get a link to the source tune please?

Sorry you don't feel like finishing fixing this track. If there's issues and you just feel done, that usually merits the thread being changed from mod review to finished. Looking forward to a finished song from you...whenever that happens!

I haven't even listened yet and I can tell you I like it just because you used the word Glockenspiel. I don't care if the mix actually has a Glockenspiel but I friggin' love that instrument AND that name. [don't get me wrong, I'll listen to it after I clear out the Mod Review backlog]

Yup. That's it right there.

Episode 68 - It's That Month Again Go to the link to see the detail, but just know that we're celebrating DRUNKEN PODCAST MONTH!

Okay, I gotta say that during eval, I was raving about this song. Sure, there's some timing issues as a result of so much being done in a live-feel style, but none of the shortcomings take away from the SHEER UNIMPEDED AWESOMENESS of this song. It is smooth, funky, in your face, and will wrap you up and toss you onto the boogie with slick bass, great brass, and killer synths. Without a doubt this is my favorite track on the album, and I can not agree more that I want to hear more from SirJord. Now, if you'll excuse me, I need to go dance.

If I ever needed a nemesis, it'd be you. Your shining head and complete lack of hair reflects the sun which blinds me and nullifies all of my hair powers. Have a great day, you sexy beast.

This Sunday, hipsterplease from Geekdad joins us to inaugurate the annual September is Drunken Podcast Month. BE THERE! 8PM EST

Yeah, that was pretty much a dickish move.

I've gotten everyone's messages about this. Anyone who fails to receive a response in a timely manner from the co-directors will be not subject to the cutoff date but have something more flexible. When these things are out of your hands, you won't be treated unfairly. Furthermore, everyone who is affected by the hurricane and whatnot is given leniency.

I like the way you think.

The track that needs to be fixed still isn't ready, as far as I know. Can't wait around and have albums gathering dust while that finishes. I believe we told both you and Murmeli Walan that not even last month.

Thanks for the feedback. That being said, I would have loved to have dedicated every slide of every powerpoint we showed this year JUST to Larry getting engaged so I had an excuse to repeat that picture of Larry's face over and over and over and over. On a serious note, we do try to come up with a panel that is accessible to both newcomers and regulars, which is why we request additional panel time when possible. Squeezing everything into an hour was very difficult, and we had to unfortunately cut short things like the Q&A, Name That ReMix, and, as of recent, the live performance of ReMixes via OCR LIVE. This time not everyone involved was able to make it, but even then the setup and test time would have likely taken a chunk out of the panel and not allowed us to do the CheetahMen 2 competition. Q&A is usually when people get to ask things like "how do you make a ReMix" or "what software do you use". The reason for that is because the answer to those things is very specific to the person who's answering. Anso uses Reason and his workflow process is probably 90% different than mine, since I use Sonar and incorporate more live instruments than he does, which in turn is also likely 90% different than how BGC does it, since he uses FL Studio. It is a good suggestion to potentially start applying for a "How to ReMix" workshop where we can go into these things in greater detail, so it is definitely possible to address this in the future. We did add the information on how a song BECOMES an OC ReMix, which a lot of people aren't intimately familiar with, so that was at least something.

Glad to see you haven't changed, skafag.