Tensei

Very well, no use sitting on this for any longer, submitted. Thanks a lot for the useful feedback everyone! I should've said Tweek did most of the intro as well as all the string sequencing

So it's a matter of personal taste whether you like the solo or you don't. It's not in the wrong key, it's in the right key for what I was trying to achieve. I ALWAYS follow my ears, I never let myself be guided by musical theory. I quit musicology because they represented musical theory as rules, not as guidelines. The only use musical theory has for me is to look at things in retrospect and tell other people what I did at a certain point in a song. So I'm afraid no, I'm not going to change something because it's wrong according to theory. If nothing else, a shift/modulation to E is at least HEAVILY implied. The backing chords are E, G, A, B, which are all part of the E minor scale. What's important here is that the first chord of the progression becomes the E, rather than the B as it was the case in the riff before it. Of course, due to the use of power chords these same chords would fit in the B minor scale, which is pretty much the case in the previous riff where the B is the first chord played. Apparently I liked to toy with this ambiguousness and created tension by approaching dissonance with the synth solo. There, I did it, I came up with a retrofitted theoretical explanation of why I did stuff. Do I win a cookie now? :3 Edit: I also don't approve of your questioning of Liontamer. Contrary to your reasoning, Larry tends to be one of the most consistent judges with some of the most useful criticism. Your 'because he doesn't play an instrument' is ignorant, Darkesword doesn't play an instrument either afaik, that doesn't make him any less capable as a musician/composer or jdgfgt for that matter.

http://www.tindeck.com/audio/my/awod/Corroder-of-Time-Combined Done I think? And yes, I know, I need to practice more guitar instead of just making remixes, I used to be able to rip through sixteenth note runs at 160 bpm like nobody's business

Look at the tools at the top of the piano roll, to the right of the loudspeaker (playback) is a pictogram of a grid, if you click on it you can set the note values to 'snap' to.

I agree that the flute melody sounds really really random. You shouldn't try to make a melody by following rules like " It repeats itself a lot and it's all in the same scale", you should make melodies based on what you hear in your head and what you think will stick with other people. :/ Something about the rhythm of the melody is really messed up, it seems like the notes are all coming in a beat too late or something, you should really set your snaps to 16th or 8th notes when you're writing stuff in the piano roll. I like the general sytrus-preset atmosphere though, so work on that melody

This is pretty much bullshit. Compression is generally something you should add at the very end, and definitely in moderation, you should NOT have to use it on every instrument. During the mixing phase I ALWAYS lower the levels of everything until nothing clips (you can just turn up your monitors to compensate for this) then I apply maybe some gentle compression on the tracks that need it because the dynamic differences are too big(Bass guitar is a good candidate). Drums are a different matter of course, but that's because the sound of pretty heavily compressed drums is one people are used to, so if you compress your drums correctly it will sound closer to commercial mixes. It's during the mastering that I focus on making the song as loud as possible (without going overboard), using multiband compression (but still with a low ratio!) and a lot of make-up gain. Finally I run the whole thing through a limiter/maximizer and if you did everything right you should be at the same level as most commercial CD's.

Thanks for the feedback. About the synth solo, it's a very tweaked z3ta preset (Juno Square or something it's called) ran through a guitar amp sim. The synth solo really doesn't sound that bad to me, I write by ear but I was definitely aware of the weird scale usage (mixolydian pentatonic iirc). Yes, writing in different modes can sound dissonant but I honestly don't think it's all that bad here, on the contrary, IMO it gives it an interesting edge it wouldn't have if it was completely on key.

Right, proper update now. http://www.tindeck.com/audio/my/udsz/Corroder-of-Time-Combined Only a few things left to do now: - Add proper Cello/Strings - Record Guitar Solo - Clean up a few little fuck-ups (lead guitars at the end are too loud, transition to the second clean part.) - Any other suggestions? Listening to this only now (now that the arrangement is done, because stealing is for suckahs ). Absolutely not a fan of prog, but this is has some great guitar playing and is pretty cool in general, thanks for linkage.

This can be summed up as 'Frattowned' Death Metal musicians who respect Yngwie immensely? LoL!

Composition is a fickle mistress. For some people the ideas just come naturally and others have to approach it systematically. A few general pointers (that work for me, again, this is different for everyone): - Conceptualize before you start. Think of the musical genre you're aiming for, the instrumentation, listen to some bands whose sound you're trying to recreate, get some melodic ideas in your head etc. That way you can immediately start composing once you sit down behind your sequencer. -(Shamelessly stolen from Darkesword) Divide your instrumentation in groups. There are very few musical genres that are exceptions to this rule, but usually you can say that there's a bass instrument that plays the lowest notes of the chord, a 'rhythm' instrument plays/defines the chords, a lead instrument that plays the melody as well as percussion of some sort. Familiarize yourself with the role of each of these four groups, what you should or shouldn't do (chords on the bass-instrument, ouch), and how you can utilize each of these groups effectively. - Plan ahead, keep a keen sight of the entire song, don't write it measure by measure. You need some kind of structure (even if it's as simple as verse-chorus-bridge) so your whole song seems intentional and not just a random sequence of musical idea's. - Do NOT SKIM ON PERCUSSION. Seriously. Especially if you're emulating an acoustic drum kit. Percussion is important to such an extent that it can make an awesomely catchy tune sound repetitive and bland. On the other hand, if your percussion is dynamic enough, you can get away with a relatively boring progressions/melodies (there are boundaries of course). I generally spend twice as much time sequencing drums as all the other instruments combined, so that should give you an idea of the importance of percussion. - Similarly, the bass gets underestimated way too often. A good bassline does not only fill out the song, but it gives it a better rhythmic feel because of the amazing interaction with the drums.

Gonna have to make this quick, I made the final part in a seperate project file and I haven't had the time to put the two together yet so I'm posting it here seperately. As per suggestions I have added a softer section with clean guitars and four on the floor bassdrum as well as a synth solo (the guitar solo will come before that but I still have to record it). There's some timing issues and a few minutes of silence I forgot to cut off, but meh. Here's to being almost done! http://www.tindeck.com/audio/filestore/w/whky-Corroder%20of%20Time%202.mp3

I don't think many people here are capable of pulling off harmonized J-pop style vocals (Jovette Rivera - Crossroads is an awesome exception to that though), but I'd definitely love to hear someone prove me wrong and do something like this.

I have explained it already

Congratulations. You lash out at people who don't read your pagelong rants but you miss the first reply of the thread.

K. 1. You make fucking pokemon analogies. 2. You misspell my nick. Twice. 3. You know shit about my remixes yet you talk shit about me. 4. YOU MAKE FUCKING POKEMON ANALOGIES. 5. You're breaking the rules x7 by posting 7 times in a row. 6. You're a retard for assuming anyone is going to read what you just wrote. 7. I make fucking awesome remixes, just because they're not 'Sloppy guitar noodling over someone elses backing track' like you like to do doesn't make them aimless. People like them, thus they have a purpose. 8. YOU MAKE FUCKING. POKEMON. ANALOGIES. HOW OLD ARE YOU EVEN?!

This is awesome, I'm a sucker for catchy music. I'm pretty sure the female vocals are the guys pitchshifted voice which makes it so much better

Step up, about $300 bucks up from Cubase SX iirc. I think one of the touted features was the ability to edit your music to video clips and a lot of support for 5.1 Surround sound stuff.

You have great ears, I DID change the melodies around a bit, though it's probably not entirely on purpose. I transcribe the melodies by ear, sometimes I make mistakes and then I decide that keeping the mistake would sound better Comments on the Cello are noted, Tweek told me on IRC he'd be happy to sequence it with EWQLSO for me in the final version, so it'll be all good.

I played live bass this time I quickly slide up and down along the low e-string on both rhythm guitars Yah I don't know, I don't want it to be too prominent, because it's not really intended to be metal

Too bad I'm doing a Chrono Trigger mix then

http://www.tindeck.com/audio/my/dqqa/Corroder-of-Time + 1 minute, added instrumentation in the form of a Shamisen and a Cello. I forgot to cut off the guitar samples at the end so ignore that My pc is buckling under the load so I'll have to make a seperate project file for the soloing sections +outro (and possibly the intro section) but I think this is almost done in terms of arrangement.

Uwe Boll?

What's wrong with the overall sound is that everything is panned left, especially the drums and bass get annoying if they're not centered.

Eh? Check your connection.

http://www.ocremix.org/remixer/snappleman/ I don't see how you could miss that, buddy