mr_skitch

I like your drums sampling alot. You had some good sequencing stuff and some good fills/breakneck stuff. However the production needs to step up a little bit. The drums need to be a little more up front and punchy. Also, some counter melodies and other musical arrangements need to happen or else people will call it a midi rip w/drums. You have a very slick and dark idea going. With a little production polish and some creative arrangement I think it will do just fine.

You can make ok samples sound great with a little tweaking. What you need to do is go visit webiste like http://www.tweakheadz.com/ and just grab some basics. Obviously you know how to input midi data, so your already ahead of alot of people. As far as rythm stuff, whatever program your working in you need to have your song lined up with clear indications where beat one is and so forth. I always have things divided up by 1/16th notes which is about as crazy as I want to go. And if your not sure, just start everything on beat 1 to get used to it. Keep on fighting bro. You've obviously have some talent to write music and know how to tweek stuff to a small degree, so just listen, read about it, and play around with things. Don't let anyone tell you to quit. I was tone deaf as a kid and was rejected from musicals and all sorts of stuff growing up. Now I play lead trumpet at Portland State and have played around the world. Dont take no for an answer.

Another update.

Yeah, sax samples always sound the worst in my opinion. The only plugin that I've found that sounds good, and barely at that, is Liquid Sax. Its about a 7/10 in my book. Im sure you can find a sax player to burn down some of those riffs. I'd give him/her a few days to look it through as there is some pretty quick passages. Also, do you use a midi keyboard for date input or a graphic editor? or both? Sometimes graphic input can get sounding too mechanical and stiff. Keep up the good arranging though!

Alright so I'm double posting, whatever. Just updated the sample to a more conservative arrangement of the opening, but I'm having trouble on where I should take the piece. Originally I had it in mind to bend it over to more of a daft punk sounding electronic piece with strings woven in, but others are telling me to keep it a string arrangement, which is fine, but eveyone does that! Opinions?

I really dig the arrangement. Its more of like a blues quartet/quintet if you ask me, but still a sweet tune. Very nice with the drum fills and solos too, definetly have some sequencing chops for sure. The only thing I can think of that is bad is the samples aren't great, some might complain its too general midi sounding? Which is every loop makers problem, but maybe a little dynamics here and humanizing there and I think it would be great.

Lol! I guess I was bracing for alot of negativity and took it the wrong way! Lets see what comes out of late nite remixing...

Didn't mean to beat a dead horse with another Nights mix. I'm actually throwing out the whole thing and doing it over, trying to keep some of the stuff I've done since most of it I don't like BTW, isn't there only one Nights mix online?

I love how you get the strings to sound real. Very well done especially with the reverb. You're definetly headed in the right direction with the arrangement, now all that needs to be done is some production stuff. First, the meldoy gets muscled out alot by the string sections so just do some mixing there. Second, when there is repeated 8th/16th/whatever passages and there on the same not I try and "humanize" them so it doesn't sound like a computer is doing it. Other than that, sounds good so far bro!

Ok, now things are starting to pick up a little bit. Here is a pretty solid almost finished almost mastered version of the tune. I have some form things I'm going to do, plus some little flute runs and trumpets attacks here and there, but this is pretty much the foundation. PLEASE, give me some feedback as I'm serious about getting something submitted/approved. And as always, thanks for listening! New, Version 2.0- http://www.ramp.pdx.edu/~jgriff/files/String%20Dreams%20DemoV2.mp3