Tensei

I think that aside from personal opinions, one should pay attention to how the style the mixer was aiming for was executed, which in this case, is near flawless. The cheesy guitar chugs, the distorted rapping/singing/growling and the harmonized clean singing all are VERY common elements in J-pop, and even though I despise this kind of music, and don't like this particular song very much either, the whole execution and quality of both arrangement and production should be able to shine through any genre-bias. It's easy to just flat-out say that it sucks, but the mixer had an idea for the style mix, and IMO nailed it perfectly.

Well I'm not going to lie about this, I was disappointed, at first. I really expected a ~10 minute epic that would kick the ass of the black mages mix, especially with all the great remixers on it, so when I saw it was 3-minutes, and started with a chiptune-intro, I didn't have very high hopes for it (nothing against chiptunes, I just didn't really expect it here =P). Of course, after hearing the Elfman-esque marcato strings entering, things changed, and I realised this really wasn't meant to be a Black Mages-killer, but a mix in itself. Personal opinions aside, this is extremely well executed, though perhaps not too interpretative (which is probably because of the exact chord voicings sung by the sampled choir), but all the elements work surprisingly well together, and each element is produced/ sequenced/played with near-professional skill and attention to detail. Unexpected, but very good nonetheless!

Hah! So Snappleman does have the skills to back up his thrash-talking after all. Holy shit I am listen to it right now for the first time and this rocks on a whole new level. There's just so much going on and the production is amazing. I love the kick drums punchiness, the mad synth soloing and the pristine lead guitar. So far I've heard two tracks from the project, and if they keep this quality up, I might have to kick the whole album down to my MP3 player. =P

Hah, I kept an eye on this one since I heard it in the demo medley. The usual ska melange that pretty much became LuIza's trademark makes another appearance. Very bluesy overall, though some of the more rocking parts ticked me off by their (intentional) dissonance, but this is more of a personal opinion. Bass is very gritty and sounds great, guitars are very good, drums are punchy, but the bass is what does it for me in this mix. Great job altogether =P

Yeah, go ahead, rub it in, I really needed that =P Anyway, in the immortal words spoken by El Sixto: LEAD GUITARS GO! I'm mostly just copy+ pasting, in the end I guess I'll record all the repeating parts separately with minor improvised variations to keep stuff going. Anyway, still waiting for a .wav from Cerrax, and still no decent mixing =P

Basically, you're going to want to shell out some money on a decent DAW or at least something similar, because that's pretty much the beating heart of a remixer's tools, and there's not much of a free alternative to even the cheaper ones. The two most often used DAWs here would be Fruity Loops and Reason (though the latter isn't a DAW in the exact sense of the word) so I suggest you take a look at those two, and maybe download the demo's to test them out. I know you probably want to stick to Finale with the notation stuff, but especially percussion parts are so much easier to do in a step sequencer than in notation. In terms of instruments and samples, most DAWs have a decent array of built-in VSTi's and effects, and you can find a lot of half-decent stuff for free on sites like kvraudio, so you don't really have to spend your cash on things like that just yet. In short: Get a DAW, start learning, have fun mixing.

So there I was watching this video playthrough of LoZ: aLttP, when suddenly this absolutely bad-ass metal remix of Ganon's theme starts, which quickly segues into an arranged version of the Darkworld theme, and so on. The video in question is this one, and the song mentioned starts at 2:24. I was wondering if anyone who recognizes it could point me into direction of the artist and the songs name. Productionwise it sounds like an official remix to me, or at least a VERY well executed amateur remix. Thanks for your attention =P

Since you all seem to like this song so much, I've done some live guitars. Also, Cerrax hasn't responded to my PM, and I'm really dying for feedback. A few notes: - Some timing issues, especially with the clean guitar. Seriously, SCREW fingerpicking. =P - No proper mixing, due to having to work with an MP3-backing track, thus the 'mixing' occured in audacity, which doesn't exactly have an effective limiter for multiple tracks, so yes, there's clipping. - The Phasered guitar was an idea to have it sound like a soaring Arwing, tell me what you think. =P

Same here by the way, I've already said this, but I'm re-emphasizing: if you need guitars I could do them for you too, if your other collabs wouldn't work out.

You can do some amazing things even with free/cheap/cheesy samples/soundfonts, but you it will probably never sound like a real guitar, so you can pretty much forget about that, sorry. =P Electric Guitars really aren't that hard to get recorded, and I'm sure there's lots of people available who can play something for you. For now, just make sure you finish your remix using fake samples, and when it's done, find someone who can play it for you. It's way better than spending hundreds of dollars on expensive guitar samples, and the result will ALMOST always be better.

By the way, wouldn't it be possible to release it in basically two versions? I like the idea of an epic 10-minute Rock Anthem along the lines of Bohemian Rhapsody, but if you'd want to submit it that would of course be hard. So I thought that since these kind of (Progressive) Rock Songs often tend to be divided in pretty clear cut sections, it wouldn't be a far reach to have one big 10+ minute epic anthem telling the whole story ( In 2 or 3 movements), and then have the movements as seperate songs as well, which could then be submitted with proper encoding. Anyway, it might just be a stupid idea, but I really like the idea of the 10-minute Rock Anthem as it would be something that's very different from any other projects up until now, and I think cutting it up in parts would make it look much more like other site projects.

I know this is probably not the best example, but Green Day is generally not considered classic rock, but their album American Idiot is set up as a rock opera. Same goes for some of Dream Theater's work, and the already mentioned Ayreon. Even though they should perhaps be labeled as a Punk Opera and Metal Operas respectively, but that's not really the point =P

Oh I must have skimmed through the replies here too quickly because I saw multiple references to Ayreon and I thought we were going to go by that, but I'm perfectly alright with classic rock too of course. =P

By the way, wouldn't some night-wishish sections be welcome too? I know we're doing the whole prog metal dealie here, but when I think of epic combination of rock and classical, I think of this.

TAKE ME TO THE DANGER ZONE Sorry, I had a topgun flashback =P The lyrics are generally quite cheesy, though the vocal processing is decent, and your singing voice ok. Still, there's something about it that doesn't sound quite right. Guitars are obviously fakey, but drums are decent. I suggest you try to take up Sixto to play guitars again, or try to find someone else who would be willing and able to (me, possibly, though it won't sound as good as Sixto). Arrangementwise, this is well above the bar with some good sequencing and awesomely cheesy orchestra hits.

Wow, I haven't seen this before? How ignorant of me =P I think Avaris has pretty much covered most of the criticism, but I'll give this a fresh listen in the morning and see what I can come up with. In the meanwhile I'll say that the section after the half-way point with the WICKED synth soloing absolutely stunned me. While the first half sounded pretty good, nothing really stood out for me, but the contrast it had with the synth solo is what really did it I guess. Great job there. =P

I'm chiming in on this again, because I think I definitely wanna participate now that this thing is starting to develop. =P As I said, It'd be great if you could put me down for guitars alongside Fishy, because you're probably going to want at least two guitar players to have some variation in the different guitar tones and for having variety in the soloing styles. If necessary I could do some arranging as well, though you're probably going to want to restrict the arrangement job to as few people as possible so you get a consistent song. If you want a sort of resume, I could send you my arrangement of Bloody Tears from Castlevania 2 through PM (I'm not posting it here because it's currently in the judging process) Edit: Oh whoops, I didn't see you had already put me down there.. silly me, well if you want to hear some of my work eitherway, just say it =P

If I might make a suggestion, maybe you guys could try doing something with the OST from the 3 NES Castlevanias. Castlevania's music is definitely rock, and the series whole baroque theme and musical motifs can definitely be molded into an opera. =P (Yes I know Rock and Opera does not equal Rock Opera, I'm just kidding) Anyway, if anyone needs moar guitarz, I can definitely record something, so feel free to hit me up for this.

http://csd.varlew.net/ct/ctsheet.php This is what I like to use, it's not exactly piano music, but it's a decent enough transcription of most songs from Chrono Trigger. I'm pretty sure you can find piano arrangements of most popular VG songs through google, which will undoubtably keep you satisfied for some time. Also, as a personal preference, I have to say you should check out Bladiator's work here http://www.ocremix.org/forums/showthread.php?t=3480 Both the songs are amazing and were a real pleasure to learn for me, I've been playing for about a month and a half, and it really feels like I've made some mad progress by learning Chopinesque Kirby. =P I don't think the transcribing of midis is going to do much good for learning piano. After all, the melodies tend to be rather simple, and it will quickly become stale if you don't have a piece which really gives you interesting patterns for both the left and right hand, you got to keep yourself challenged. =)

Ah geez, you're right, I was thinking layering would have been more along the lines of recording the same guitar multiple times for a fatter sound, but of course simulating two different rhythm guitar players is layering too =P

Amazing work here, I heard this first in the WIP forums, and it was already very good, except it had some issues with the reverb and muddiness, but it's great to hear that those have been replaced with almost professional-quality production.

Well I never heard about layering already recorded guitars, though it does kind of make sense when doing those heavy chord chugs, but I generally thought only synthesized/sampled guitars get layered to prevent them from sounding too thin, anyway, I don't think that's really the problem here. Anyway, the way I do things is I hook up my guitar to an M-audio fasttrack, though I'm pretty sure any Sound interface with a guitar input can do fine. I then run them through Guitar Rig 2, record the rhythm guitars twice with two different guitars, pan one of them 100% right, and the other 100% left. That way you can have quite a lot of things center-panned that would normally cause muddiness together with the guitars (Bass Guitar, Kick-drums). After that I import the .wav recordings into Audacity to delete all the noise at the parts where I'm not playing, and then the edited .wav file gets imported into Reason (though I'm pretty sure that can be done in most other DAWs) and add distortion/saturation, compression and EQ so they fit well in the mix. Granted, Guitar Rig 2 doesn't sound as good as the real thing, but it makes it very easy to record stuff.

Does the station have some online streaming feature or anything like that? I'd actually love to hear some OCremixes through the radio, but obviously I'm not going to be able to pick up a local U.S. station here in the Netherlands. =P Anyway, if my mix that's currently in the judging process gets accepted, I'll post it here, feel free to use it how you like.

There've been numerous site projects here where the only motivation for the mixers involved was getting more exposure/credit, so how exactly is asking for a mixer to write a movie score different from that?

I almost thought you forgot about this song, good to see you back dude =P I agree with most of what OA said. The vocal doubling is cool, but the vocals still sound too up-front and exposed/cheesy in some parts, so I think a hint (more) reverb would help them blend better. The guitars still suffer quite a bit from production issues. Some of the heavier instrumental parts really expose the muddy low-end, and it becomes hard to distinguish the single notes during parts like 3:58. The higher lead tones overall still sound very cheap, but I'm afraid you can't get it any better purely through processing. The lick at 0:06 sounds very sloppy, as if you've put delay/ loads of reverb on it or something, the previous version sounded better. The lead guitars at 4:58 sound pretty good though, so I'm not sure what's up with the varying quality. =P The general balance has a lot of emphasis on the guitars and vocals, and the drums kind of get drowned out during busier parts, up to the point where you basically only hear cymbal sizzle and everything else is just a huge wall of sound. Also, bass is non-existent, or simply not audible at all. I think this needs still a lot of work in the mixing department, since I really want to be able to hear the rapid kick-drum rolls and distorted bass, and not just sort of vaguely feel them, if you know what I mean. =p I think a good idea would be to take a good listen to an Amon Amarth song (or whatever band has a similar sound), and try to mimic the way their song is produced, paying special attention to the vocal processing, the volume levels, and the general EQing and mixing. Arrangement is of course as great as ever, and the riff/section at 2:35 kicks absolute ass =P