Jump to content

OceansAndrew

Members
  • Posts

    6,960
  • Joined

  • Last visited

  • Days Won

    12

Everything posted by OceansAndrew

  1. I'll be honest dude, this needs a ton of work to be even close. Right now it is basically a midi rip with a few extra parts played in general midi. There is no panning to speak of and nothing really flows. You are going to have to do a lot of additional work on this to add new sections, make the beat more logical as opposed to start/stop as it is now To improve this you are also going to need to beef up your samples; there are plenty of good free ones you can check out, depending on what you are using for a DAW.
  2. Very authentic! While it is a good song and I enjoy listening a lot, Chickenwarlord is correct that there isn't enough interpretation for OCR. Right now there are basically 2 sections: a breakdown section with the filtered sample, and a pretty much exact cover of the theme. It kindof goes back and forth between these two, and there really needs to be at least 1, if not 2 additional sections.
  3. Much improved over the original, and it's good to actually see a resub posted. The trumpet is still not quite what I think it could be, but the improvement is very apparent. with brass the issue always seems to be an unnatural attack, but i'm not sure what you can s[ecifically do to this sample to improve it, besides adjusting the velocities of the attacks and modwheeling them as the note plays to get a more natural sounding crescendo. Regardless, this is a step up and I think it'll do much better with the judges.
  4. The transition from the heavy beat to the synths at the beginning was too abrupt. The beat just died when the synths came in. It seems to do that throughout, with no real transition to speak of. The main issue with this right now is that everything sounds so far away. Having elements of the mix far off is great, but there needs to be something closer as well, otherwise it just sounds weak. Arrangementwise, it is too conservative. Ice Cap is a hugely mixed song, and in order for it to even be considered, it has to be something really really special. You have some beginning arrangement ideas, but they are all a little too in the background, as counterpoint ideas. You'll need some more melodic interpretation to push this to the next level. An additional section that progresses the song and brings it to a new area, rather than merely treading water and maintaining. So; get some stuff in the forefront a bit more, and expand on the arrangement. you've got a good start, now to kick it up a notch. My suggestion is to add a more consistant
  5. I would say you have enhanced the mood throughout, and I enjoy the drum programming, but I don't think the judges will pass this.
  6. nice update. I think this is improved productionwise, but there are a few things, like the high end seems to top out at a certain point. the hats and cymbals need a bit more sizzle in some places. The spots where it's somewhat more sparse drum-wise doesn't really need any more high end, but adding some, especially the huge climax right when the big solo hits would kick it up further. It's really good now, and the changes are nice, but i think some subtle lead-ins to that point would make it even better. Right now the strongest points of this mix hinge on effective transitions to new spacial sections. The biggest one is obviously the solo at 2:14, but a smaller version of this transition is at 1:22, and could also use a little bump in intensity right before opening out wide. For the first transition, I think a more pronounced reverse cymbal with a long decay would ease the transition, and for the second, I think a very *very* subtle snare roll and maybe some low end pads crescendoing would improve it. I've already said this mix does a lot right already; the additional parts you've added are filled with hooks; you have a great ear for melody, and the textures throughout are all very interesting and varied. The stuff needed is very subtle polished details. I think others would be better nitpicking production, but besides the lack of a little bit of high end, everything sounds uncluttered and crisp to me. I love it. Good luck dude.
  7. Another Phoenix Wright mix on the wip boards, this is pretty great to see. I'll leave out the stuff you mentioned, you are correct with all of them. Starts off with some cool drums at :25, and after a solo; I guess it would be; another breakdown. The intro is way way too long at this point. It is 2:17 or so out of a 4:06 remix. I'd cut it to about 1/4 to 1/3 it's original size. Once the mix eventually gets going, it relies far too much on the percussion and doesn't evolve through the music itself. There needs to be additional sections and parts to fill this out in the style you are going for, as of right now it's pretty verbatim with an amazingly long and drawn out intro.
  8. Skrypnyk is right that this needs some more aggressive percussion throughout. In the intro it's not a sour note per se, but it doesn't resolve properly. I also agree that the intro is generally superfluous, and either needs a stronger melodic connection to the piece, or needs to be axed. I realize it is the chord progression used later, but the shift is too abrupt.I'd prefer you keep it in, as it is a good attention getter, but it needs a better transition and some more connections with the synth. After your china cymbal 4count the beat needs to be kicked up huge. That's a pretty strong statement the cymbal is making, and there really isn't much of a payoff right now. Synths throughout are nice, but for the second half don't really build. They develop, but there is a division between the few spots where you are trying to build up dynamics, and where you want things to be a smooth plateau; right now the mix is suffering because of that, IMO.
  9. As an arrangement sketch it's good, but a finished version will have to have a lot smoother flow, right now the tempo shifts too erratically for it to have a lot of the intended imparct. Productionwise things are too smashed forward, but soundwise things are good. I say go for it, just make sure to personalize it more as you work on it.
  10. doesn't work; invalid stream key.
  11. streaming is an issue which is probably why you have no comments yet. Dl works so lets go. Things start out good with a pretty lush soundscape and some generally non-annoying sound effects, but suddenly a dry dry dry piano comes in and destroys everything. Not only is it dry, but the timing on it is really bad. This goes on for awhile and then a bunch of pretty weak transitions bring in other sections, usually consisting of animal noises. There is some interpretation but generally it doesn't seem to have much to do with the source and in a lot of cases isn't even in the same key. Samplewise it is a huge mixed bag, with some really nice pads and atmsphere, and some truly grating and abysmal pianos. Near the end it sounds like you sampled the actual piano from the underwater theme, and I was grooving on it for about 3 seconds before the giant piano volume spike that pierced my brain. Why in the hell would you do that, at that specific frequency? Not cool. From there you pitchtune the piano into the wrong key again, i'm not sure of the fascination, but I have to say this mix has a lot of issues. I'd work on the aforementiond. You said this was an old one so it might not be indictive of your current skill, but I didn't like it. Sorry.
  12. Funky for sure, but it seems like you have only a single riff here and not a compete remix. Work a little more on this and then bring this back to us. The sounds are good, and there is a lot of room for additional elements, it just needs to be longer than 15 seconds.
  13. I love this song, so great source selection right off. Samples are generally well used, though some seem a little crammed together. I suggest widening a few parts, such as some of the epianos. Some of your additional parts are very nice hooks, but they repeat too often and lose their appeal too quickly. Also, the counterpoint added to the B section is overpowering the original melody. Mix them up a bit, or make them a little longer in length so you dont have to repeat them as often. Most important though is that loop going over and over and over has got to be switched up way more frequently. It is what is really killing this. There is no way this would get passed with that loop as is. Overall this is pretty good, but you'll need to adjust a few things with your arrangement and either get several additional loops, or write some of your own percussion parts.
  14. I'm in agreement with the crew that this is way too vanilla in the sound department. You've done some nice arrangement with the instruments, but the production needs to seriously be kicked up. You have lots of cool additional parts, but your stereo field is way too narrow on most of them. they sound like they are constrained into a bunch of seperate rooms rather than sharing one space. Your samples are really generic, but expanding the field will help them out a good deal. I think you should do this before you try to EQ anything. Once you have a space where most of the stuff isn't so packed together you can worry about frequencies. The percussion start and stop at the beginning is pretty cool in theory, but you have to make it sound like it's supposed to stop, rather than abruptly chopping. Add an open hihat sound to the last hit in the fill and it will make it sound way more planned. The violin is pretty cool for the most part, but in the velocities in a lot of the notes are too similar, making it sound unrealistic. This is a good start arrangementwise, but production has a long ways to go. Define your room sound a bit and we can start really digging into this.
  15. I'll be there, got my plane ticket already and just need to figure out rooming logistics with Proph so he can sleep in style and not as Taucer's bitch. If Avaris is not coming we'll probably have room for someone else.
  16. Awesome start, this could really go places if it got a bit of TLC. The strings are really dry, and mixed a little off. The bass is way overpowering the rest of the section, and that's not how it should sound. Bring out the violins and violas, and also push the bass a little further back into the soundfield. it's the real culprit for the overly dry strings.
  17. Some pretty good stuff, I like the source a lot. your piano sounds a little thin, like there isn't much of a room sound at all. The velocity seems pretty static for a lot of it as well, i'd vary that up a bit so the song rises and falls. The left hand seems content to just play arpeggios, which is ok, but they sound very mechanical, as the song goes on it gets really boring. Then there are times where it cuts out and there's no bass at all. Though it is rumored that I hate treble, this is not true. However, this song needs some more bass, some more midrange as well. Things are generally very empty in your soundfield, and though you do some nice changeups in the piano melody at times, the rest of the song sounds simplistic and undeveloped. Even something as basic as changing up the left hand arpeggios to occasionally do chords and add some additional synths would make this feel a lot more complete. Speaking of synths, the ones used vary in qualuty from pretty nice (the opening sustained synth), to not-so-nice, with the synth that comes in at 1:21, which is cool that it does some nice panning, but it's an octave too high and a little lowfi sounding. You have the right idea for getting started on arrangement, and I think you have the chops to really improve this, but it needs to be filled out way more.
  18. Just finish your remix to it's full potential.
  19. i've started on my BG, I kindof like the idea I had last time of redrawing parts of the game itself, so it's going a top down style drawing; it's the area in chrono trigger where those bird throw rocks at you (getting the masamune? it's been so long im not sure) http://oceansend.com/5502/2007/CTsketch.jpg
  20. Vocal timing has issues, but you know that. Things get a lot stronger for the second half, so I suggest redoing the first half after you get warmed up. Vocal treatment is pretty awesome in a 80's britpop style. I dig it. I have to say I am a fan of the vocals, but you need some harmony in places. Some 3 part harmony added in some of the chorus phrases would make this way more epic. Your voice sounds really good with the style, and the material fits the starfox style very well. I dislike the guitar sound, though the part writing is really good and interesting. The clean guitar sounds a lot more natural than the distorted, but the distorted sounds decent in the rhythm parts, it's just the attack on the lead that messes with it. Things also seem a little flat productionwise, though I can show you a super quick and easy trick for that. I don't think this will pass with the synth guitar, but the arrangement and vocals are there IMO. If you want some live stuff and El Sixto is busy I could record them for you; everything in this song is well within my abilities, and I have a new gear setup i've been dying to try out, but havn't had the chance to do so yet.
×
×
  • Create New...