crypto_magnum

Mmm! Using those game sound effects like a pro. A lot of people just tack them on, but when it's pulled off well it just makes me smile... and you pulled it off well. Thanks for sharing!

I don't know why... I just never get tired of Bramble Blast, even if it has been remixed to death. Short but very relaxing. I could drift away into sleep listening to this-- and I mean that in a totally positive way. I'm curious to hear how you would develop this if you turned it into a full song. It's certainly a challenging one to tackle if your ultimate aim is to get posted, because you've got to go above and beyond, and really differentiate yourself with a song as insanely popular as this one. That was a nice treat as is, though.

Sounds great to me, though I am not a judge. Only a couple of minor potential issues stick out to me: 1. 1:39-1:48: timing issues... guitar is rushing 2. 1:49-End: I feel like the dynamics don't change much here. You have some interesting chord changes, the clav enters for a bit, the guitars rest for a few seconds here and there while the drums fill in... but over all it feels kind of like a "wall of sound." The longer that shredding goes on without a rest (or an instrument change like in the first half of the song), the more it loses its oomph. Some things I really liked: 1. Nice panning with the guitars. 2. Speaking of guitars, the writing and playing are awesome. I really like this over all. I think you've got something workable here that could pass once you address all of the judge's concerns, whatever they may have been. Sorry, it's too good for me to be of much help at this stage. =)

Hi, all! I'm not a posted remixer, but was interested in taking a shot at that last remaining "highly desired" track, "The Final Decisive Battle." I noticed that there aren't any full WIPs posted in this thread, so Bahamut, I thought it best to send you a PM with a link to my WIP/"try out." I'm not sure if that's your preferred method, so I'm also posting here to signal your attention just in case. =) Thanks for considering, and by the way that teaser is SICK! Really can't wait to hear what everyone has been working on. ~crypto

Beautiful stuff, Iceferno. The only issues I have with it have been pointed out already... but I'd say that the chief concerns here are the length and medley-like nature of some stretches of the song. Other than that exposed and abrupt harp section around 6:40-7:00 though, it all blends so well together... so it's hard to say whether the judges would ding you for including so many different melodies. Personally, I feel that you demonstrated a great knowledge of the series' music and wove it all together expertly in most places, but long songs which cycle through so many different sources traditionally don't fare well in the judging process. Now to highlight the biggest positives: you kept my interest throughout the entire 11-12 minutes, which very few contemporary songs do. 2:00-2:25 was particularly beautiful. I'm itching to hear what you could do with that section if you really opened it up and gave it the huge, full sound of the main theme around 4:15-4:40... but in the context of this remix, I think you made a wise to choice to keep your foot off the gas there (2:00-2:25), since it's not the main/featured source. Lovely work all around; thank you for sharing!

All the best to the ocremix guys working on this-- I'm rooting for you guys, and I really hope you get all of those pledges reinstated or otherwise given back to you from whatever state of limbo they may be in at the moment. No matter the outcome, I'll be making sure that ocremix gets my long overdue donation for the countless hours of enjoyment and education I've recieved here for free.

Actually, for a 4-CD release, $15K is cutting it awfully close. I'm not sure how they would have afforded any studio time at all if they hadn't smashed that goal. Anyway, I think that the kickstarter campaign was a fantastic idea. I hope it brings in more money than they know what to do with.

Another articulation (or instrument choice) to watch is the cymbals around 1:19-1:23. Right now it sounds like hard mallets on a suspended cymbal, which isn't "wrong" if that's what you want to do, but personally I'd try a brighter crash cymbal sound on those four hits. Maybe try doubling the crash cymbal with concert bass drum (but keep it out of the way of the timpani). You nailed the feel, and the execution is pretty good. Enjoyable stuff, evory; thanks for sharing.

Genius! This song matches the clever lyrics of Lover Reef (another mega-collab featuring some of the same artists), and then raises the game by imbuing and delivering them with character... or maybe caricature? Love it.

Wow! So good! For some reason it does feel a little light on the sub bass. I watched it with FL Studio's EQUO VSTi though, and volumes seem close to uniform across the frequency spectrum, so I'm not sure why it's not cutting through too well. Otherwise, it's such a full, intensely interesting sound. I especially love what's going on in the mid to high range. Great use of sounds from the game. I don't speak for the judges, but I feel like this would make a strong submission and sounds up to par with many of the recently posted, official mixes. Either way, it's going on my playlist. Nice work.

Many thanks for putting these tutorials together, Zircon! There's a wealth of information to be learned from each.

Hot, hot, HOT! Talk about restoring the energy to Rosalina's bedroom... this song is worth a thousand one-ups.

The back-story: my fiancée (soon to be wife) hates the traditional bridal march (commonly known as "Here Comes the Bride"), and decided that she'd like me to write something for her to walk down the aisle to. We agreed on 56 bpm, 1 minute duration plus or minus 15 seconds, and the rest is up to me. The deadline is in two weeks, which is why I've marked this project under "Mod Review." I apologize if this is seen as abuse of the system, but since I'm under such a tight deadline (it feels like a huge rush for me anyway), I hope this is okay. Now, on to the song: I used Cannon in D as my starting point, but walked the bass line down to give the chords a different flavor. Turns out that I rediscovered a chord progression prominently used in Final Fantasy. However, the song departs from this in the second half, hopefully making it sound more "original" than "remix." I'll let you be the judge though. Any and all input would be appreciated, from arrangement to production. I don't want to embarrass myself in front of everyone I know, so... better to do it here first and put whatever feedback I can get to good use in the time that I have. Here's what I've got: http://www.davidmatics.com/music/AshleysSongv2.mp3 Thanks for taking a listen-- I really appreciate it!

I love the sound of this new system. Not that I haven't gotten outstanding feedback from regular users on here before (I appreciate every bit of it)... it's just, sometimes your WIP falls through the cracks if it's not from a recognizable game, or you polish it to the point where people run out of suggestions to make, but it still doesn't sound quite good enough to make it past the judges. I think that this new system will bridge that gap. Time will tell whether the workload is manageable, I suppose, but I'm rooting for it to work. The more levels of feedback I can get, the better! Also, I want to give a big thank-you to you three for taking this on. The generosity of the OCR community never ceases to amaze me.

Oh man, this mix is so wrong... but oh-so right at the same time! I love it!

I love it! As for the hiss-- I've run into that when using EWQL samples before too. This happens when you stream direct from disk and your hard drive can't keep up with your sampler, or if you are trying to read the same sample from disk with two different instances of your sampler open at the same time. The only way I've been able to get around it is to render and export clusters of tracks as wave files, then add all of the wave files together in a new project and export those as your final product. It totally destroys work flow, but if you just need to get rid of the hissing for the final version, that should do it (I hope).

Words cannot explain... I love it!

Hi everyone! A quick history, for those who are interested: I posted my first remix attempt here about a year ago. The feedback I received back then was immensely helpful, though I never felt that my mix was quite ready to go to the judges. After a while, I felt it would be better to start working with some fresh material. I started a second remix, hit writer's block, and then moved onto a third remix based on Lufia & The Fortress of Doom. I feel that I've again reached a point where I could really use some guidance. Particularly, I want to know what the weaknesses are, so that I can improve. Don't hold back anything-- seriously, the more criticism the better! Here is the original: And here is my remix: http://www.tindeck.com/audio/my/scnl/DecertoSacrificium-v3- Some specific concerns I have: -Overall volume: too loud/soft? Enough variation? -I'm not confident about some of the transitions between sections; any recommendations for those? -The piano solo section: too mechanical, or passable? -The synth solo at the end: super-cheesy, or passable? -The synth sound in general: too thin or too muddy? Any EQing suggestions? -Too much or not enough compression on the drums? -As per ocremix standards, is the arrangement too close to the source? -Is the arrangement too repetitive? -EQ and panning in general: are certain ranges too cluttered/muddy, unevenly panned, or overpowering? -General instrument mix: should certain things be turned up/down? -The fade out at the end is extremely weak, I'm aware. I will definitely change it, but in the meantime, any suggestions? Any and all comments are appreciated. Thanks in advance for taking the time.

I can just picture Ganon sitting in his dungeon talking to himself and singing "naa na na na naaa." This made the title, "Sane Ganon Mix," especially ironic, and, to be completely honest, quite humorous. If you were going for a The Phantom of the Opera parody, then then concept is brilliant, though the execution and production could use a little work. If you're aiming for a serious tone, probably the only way to execute that convincingly would be to find a male singer who can do opera, and be cautious of making the voice sound cheesy with too many effects. In that case, you might want to take a listen to The Phantom of the Opera anyway... although with all due respect to Andrew Lloyd Webber, I think that the The Phantom of the Opera is extremely cheesy already: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zw9GZNgtiEc Keep in mind, however, that I have yet to even submit a remix of my own to this site, so I may not be very qualified to judge your work.

Wow- these videos are seriously helpful, zircon. Thank you for taking the time to do this. Personally, I'd like to see an in-depth video covering how you mix all of the instruments together into a beautiful soundscape. Specifically, if you could show a bunch of different EQ settings you use for various things (and how you choose them), as well as how you position different instruments in different virtual locations so they sound balanced and don't all bleed together, that would be especially enlightening. Can't wait for the next one, whatever the topic. Thanks again.

Hi everyone. I'm a long-time lurker here. I've never submitted anything because I'm certain that my work isn't passable, but I'd like to change that. So, I'm looking to get suggestions on how I can improve this remix before I take my first shot at the judges. The source is from Zelda: Twilight Princess: http://one.fsphost.com/CryptoMagnum/ocwip/070%20-%20Midnas%20Desperation.mp3 And the remix can be found here: http://one.fsphost.com/CryptoMagnum/ocwip/TwilightRedux.mp3 Some specific issues that I can hear on my own are: 1. Low volume overall (any higher in FL Studio produces distortion) 2. Crackling around 2:33. I've figured out that this is my choir sample; it "pops" whenever I hold higher notes for too long and the sample loops. Those are the things I know about but don't know how to fix (in terms of the choir issue, buying soundfonts is not an option for me right now, but I think I can do better with the ones I have). But besides that, my remix just doesn't sound ocremix-caliber, and I'm having trouble identifying what my big issues are. Anything you guys can point out to me would be greatly appreciated. Be harsh-- I can take it. Thanks in advance.

As for the repeated E-minor chords at 1:25 and 1:37, I think the reason that they sound strange to me is that they are different from what I was expecting to come next after hearing the source tune. I believe the original song goes from F-G-e-(a for two beats,G for two beats). That said, I like your version very much. If you keep the second E-minor, you might want to consider inverting the chord (change the bass note to another note in E-minor). One more thing to consider would be mixing up the rhythm of the bass a little; it's sort of going "boom-chick-chick" the whole time. It works nicely in the beginning, but you might consider changing the rhythm slightly during one of the phrases, and/or adding some filler notes between phrases. Beautiful playing, and I especially like the intro.

That M-Audio firewire looks nice, but if you want to save $160, consider going usb with the Edirol UA25: http://www.zzounds.com/item--EDIUA25 I have a UA25 for my laptop (Dell Inspiron), and does everything I could possible need. Firewire is definitely better if you can afford it, but usb hasn't caused any problems for me so far.

Sibelius is a great notation program... but unfortunately it's not very good for producing the finished product. I also used Sibelius 2 for a long time. One route you might consider taking is upgrading your version of Sibelius and purchasing Kontak Player in a bundle. I went a different route; I purchased FL Studio: Producer Edition and FL Soundfont Player. The total cost was around $115 (academic price). It was well worth it. I really wish I had bought this stuff a few years ago, because I've been missing out.

^Thanks! The demos for those drumline samples sound amazing... I'm going to have to start saving up.