Nutritious

Can't say I like this OST very much. What I do like is the filtered intro segment in your track. Synth bass sounds pretty nice Right off the bat, the mix sounds pretty hot in the mid-high (1khz-2khz ish) levels. The hats, kick, and snare are all pretty loud in this same range. Mixed with the lead synths and, to a lesser extent, the stab synths and it can sound pretty cluttered and a bit piercing in the more busy sections. Interestingly, the converse seems to also be in effect where there sounds like a bit of a frequency gap in the low/mid-low range, somewhere around 100hz-400hz (most noticeably in places like :18, 1:16 & 1:44 where the track feels like it should be more filled out). The rhythm guitars could fill out this nicely, but currently they're pretty top-heavy. Maybe layering a nice sub bass with the current bass line alone would do the trick. Arrangement-wise, this does keep it pretty close to the vest. The overall style/sound & groove is pretty similar to the original. We do get some good expansion in the writing and transitional parts, which helps drive things along. I liked the percussive changeups at 1:33, which was wholly unexpected and creative. Yeah, I hate to beat a dead horse, but the ending sounds super lazy (straight-up mirror copy of the intro) and audibly cuts off too soon. The track would be much better served leaving your listener with a better impression in the end IMO. I'd like to hear this one again with less of a top-heavy mix as well as a better fleshed out ending. It's possible I'll be in the minority with my vote and other won't see these as significant issues. Either way, I'd like to see this one on the front page. NO resubmit, please

Could be intentional, but the initial hit sounds a bit distorted. Not sure if it's due to levels or just an effect you've added. I was a little hesitant in the beginning as I was on the fence as to if the various elements were meshing well enough together. I'm still not 100% on it, but it did seem to come together more cohesively as the track progressed. Definitely an interesting style. I agree with Kris on the loud hi hats and dry general soundscape. The dryness probably contributes to my "meshing" point above. Larry hit the nail on the head with his lead crits, though like him, it still does the job for me. The more I listen to this one, the more it's growing on me. Liking the subtle elements that keep popping in and out as time goes on. Good interplay between parts in the intro. Minor point, but it felt like it was getting a bit repetative around the 3 minute mark, despite the relatively short overall track length. Thanks to Larry for the source breakdown. That first minute almost kills the track in that regard given that it's only 3:32 long. Wouldn't hurt to try to incorporate a bit more in the intro for future mixes. What is there is a solid mix of strong connection and personalization. All in all, it's groovy and I like it. YES

Yeah, Kris is right. The balance between parts is all over the place here. Ranging from really loud ride cymbals & shaker to washed out sax/brass parts and the soundfont-ish electric guitars. I hear what you're trying to do with the delay/reverb effects to mask the sequenced sax leads, but the tone is super buzzy and doesn't come off as a live instrument. There's a lot of clashing in the 1-2khz or so range, which seems to be the convergence point for the saxophones and guitars. I also will echo the concerns on the repetition of the arrangement. Really would like to hear more variation in the writing as well as more personalization in part-writing. That said, though, using an effect like that delayed sax lead in some sort of down-tempo electronic or trip hop context could be really really cool. In what's meant to be a live loose jazzy setting, though, it's really hard to make something like this work well. Props for what you're going for here, though, because I really do like the concept. NO resubmit, please

How...what...but... it's THE Silver Surfer level 1! How have you not heard this before. You're so dead to me. Joking aside, pretty much on board with both votes so far. There's a lot of room for arrangement interpretation to get this away from what's essentially cover territory. I do like how we began to hear your original ideas near the end of the track, though. Despite the overall mix sounding relatively quiet, there are times during the big hits where there's audible distortion in the soundfield due to problems with your levels. You've clearly got potential as a musician, but this one would need a pretty big overhaul in both arrangment and production, I think. It's up to you, but in the past, I've found it's a good idea to set a current project aside and work on various tracks to get a well-rounded skill-set with mixing. It also helps you avoid spinning your wheels on a single track early on. Totally up to you of course. Good luck and I'm sure we'll be hearing more from you soon. NO

I really like the concept of this track. Definitely also hearing the Deadmau5 vibe here. Mainly co-signing with Kristina's vote here on repetativeness and needing more development. The guitar lead is super quiet and isn't cutting through to what it should be. I'll add that overall the mix feels a bit "dark" overall, as many of the lead and backing elements are lacking in mid-high/high range eq presence. I feel like the whole track could use a moderate volume boost. Cool ideas, keep working on it NO resubmit, please

Wow, yeah, that piano is really rigidly sequenced and pretty hot in the high end without much low/mid range body. When everything kicks in, most of the elements (except perhaps the side-chained noise channel) sound really centered. Everything starts to sound pretty crowded in the mid/mid-high range. Even when the piano-focused bridge comes in later, it's still really heavy in these same frequency ranges. Maybe it's just me, but the low end sounded a bit empty in comparison. Would like to hear an overall EQ readjustment to balance things out better. Some pretty cool arrangement ideas on display here. Liking the use of synthy strings. Not gonna lie, Dance/Trance isn't my genre of choice, but it sounded competently put together. I wasn't wow-ed by some of these synth choices. 1:57 felt pretty weak as a lead, both here and when it comes in later. It gets overpowered by the louder backing elements whenever it plays. The background repeating arp-synth is pretty basic sounding, which wouldn't matter as much if it was more relegated to the background. Here it's pretty prominent in the soundfield. Liked the piano bridge idea I mentioned earlier. Cool arrangement ideas on display here, but some production love needed. Look at a better EQ balance, panning/spacing, and lead/backing part balancing. NO resubmit, please

It is my humble opinion that you cannot have enough FFIV mixes. I love this OST. So, on to the mix... Not gonna lie, when I saw the number of sources (before listening) I was pretty taken aback on how you could make this work. Listening through, I don't feel like I'm as on board as Kristina on how well integrated all of these various sources are. I personally have nothing against medleys, but according to OCR standards, if you're going to use various sources in a mix, then you need to make sure they both integrate well together and that they are sufficiently developed. There are some great ideas in how you interpret the various themes, but in several instances it feels like each theme is just pasted one after the other, rather than being cohesive. Examples of this are :49 (borderline ok, actually), 1:36 (pretty abrupt), 2:33 (abrupt), 3:39 (very abrupt), 4:13 (very abrupt again), etc. Some themes, like Mysidia & Mt. Koltz, feel underdeveloped as it's basically a one-run through cover without much development. The atmospheric treatment of The Lunarians was a big highlight for me, but again very short and not developed very far. Really like the performances here. Intro prologue was very very cool to hear, especially with the guitar countermelodies in the background. Drum writing in particular was very nicely handled. I think I'm gonna need to take notes on them . Production-wise, things felt a bit crowded in the low end on many of the louder sections. The kick, bass, and rhythm guitars are competing a lot for that 200-500 hz range and because of this it feels very saturated in that range, which even perhaps a bit of pumping when the kick hits at times. In general, balance was good, however, sometimes the leads felt relegated too much to the background in places (Baron is a good example of where this happens, and elsewhere to a lesser extent). They're side-panned pretty heavily, which likely is contributing a bit. The hats sounded like they're sizzling a bit in the high eq range as well. If the arrangement was more cohesive and the themes more developed, I'd be good on passing this one as I view the production issues are relatively minor. However, as much as I personally love this track, I don't feel like it fits in the OCR arrangement guidelines. NO resubmit, please

Yeah, it's probably unrealistic to try and edit the first post every time, but at least the thread is stickied now for good visibility. I'll update the first post with your info. I don't know much about your setup, but I originally had some issues using Asio4All and not being able to output the sound to OBS. As a workaround, I enabled my integrated soundcard and simply plugged the output from my PCI audio card to the mic input of my integrated card and used that input. Not very elegant a solution, but it got the job done.

No worries, I got it

First, I want to say a big thanks to Darren for putting on this competition and for the generous prizes. It definitely got me motivated to work on some music after quite some time. I agree with the suggestions from Brandon that you mentioned; especially the Sunday deadline. It's helpful to have the full weekend block at the end to finish up your track, rather than split it at the beginning and end of a round.

It's been way too long since I subbed anything. This song was created for the 2015 Artist Appreciation Competition, which focused exclusively on remixing games that were funded via Kickstarter. I was originally planning to make this into a sort of hybrid DNB/rock/other track, but my ideas weren't quite working out during the writing process. Eventually, it morphed into a more traditional symphonic rock track with some synths thrown in for good measure. While I've utilized Shreddage multiple times on other songs, this is my first attempt at sequencing a lead guitar. It was a bit of a risk because of having a very limited time frame for the competition. Though I feel there's quite a bit of room for improvement, I'm pretty happy with how it turned out and learned quite a bit in the process. Source breakdown: :00 - :26 Simplified take on OST intro (:00 - :14 in original) :27 - :36 Original (chords from OST only) :37 - 1:01 A section of OST (:13 section) 1:02 - 1:25 B section of OST (:45) 1:26 - 1:48 Original (chords from OST only) 1:49 - 2:13 Original soloing over OST A section 2:14 - 2:25 B section of OST, more modified melody writing 2:26 - 2:34 Original soloing over OST B section 2:35 - 3:12 Bridge of OST, slowed down (2:03) http://galaxytrail.bandcamp.com/track/schmup-stage

Very cool chillout arrangement here. I agree the acoustic change-up was a bit non-sequitur, but it does work to drive the arrangement forward. I'm very much on the fence on the production issues here. On one hand, these are pretty routine fixes with some EQ tweaks and mastering compression. One the other hand, however, the arrangement is fantastic and there wasn't any point where I really felt like the levels and heavy bass contributed a serious detriment to the track. Overall, the balance of this one shifts over the bar for me. YES

Very nice, expansive arrangement. Really liked the various organic instruments with the lush backing strings. I can hear both of Larry's main crits, there could certainly be more variation in the percussion and the mixing is a bit indistinct. Still, like DA, these didn't feel like these were dealbreakers. As a package, this one is over the bar for me. YES

First post updated. Don't forget, if you're about to go live, it can't hurt to reply here to bump the topic & get the word out to more potential viewers.

1. Brandon Strader 2. MushroomSword

#4 is from colony wars EDIT: It's Also, #3 reminds me of Alexander Brandon's work on something like Unreal Tournament (though that specifically is PC).

Updated with all, thanks guys! I will try to be on top of updating the first post & bumping the thread if I happen to catch someone live, but I'm not sure how consistent I will be able to be with that. Best bet is to reply to the thread yourself and my email subscription (assuming it works this time) should let me know to edit the title.

Added, thanks!

NP. Let me know when you're ready and I'll add it up to the first post. Also, I'm planning on keeping close tabs on this thread going forward to bump it & update the title whenever someone is currently live. Hopefully it will drive some traffic to OCR member channels.

Do you have a link to your channel?

Hey, everyone. As I'm sure you all know, video game streaming via places like Twitch has been exploding in popularity as of late. On the fringe of this, there are a few people on here (myself included) who like to stream music production sessions. Recently, Twitch announced & implemented a new channel specifically for music stations and music performances/production, granting legitimacy to this type of non-vg playing streams. I thought it would be helpful to create a central list of all OCR members who are actively streaming (both Music & VG playing) so we can pull together as a community and support each other. Feel free to reply with info on streams (and their primary focus) or any related discussion and I will try to keep this initial post updated with links to everyone's streaming channels. Also, this could be a good place to reply to in order to notify more people that you are going live. OCR Streamers Abadoss (Games/Music) Audity (Game Music) alfredofreak (Games/Music) Ben Briggs (Games/Music) Brandon Strader (Games) Brushfire (Games) bustatunez (Music) Coaltergeist (Games) DjCUTMAN (Music) DrumUltimA (Games/Music) duskvstweak (Games) flexstyle (Music) Gamemaster1379 (Games) HalcyonSpirit (Games/Writing) kitty (Games) Mirby (Games) mowseler (Games/Music/Cosplay) Mr. Bottle Rocket (Games) Nutritious (Games/Music) Phonetic Hero (Games) q-pa (Games) Sagnewshreds (Coding) Shnabubula (Games/Music) - Streaming live piano every Sunday 4PM EST Sir_Nuts (Music) Smellyghost (Games/Music) Wiesty (Games) Xarnax42 (Games) Xenonetix (Games/Music) Zircon (Games/Music) zykO (musik/rant/gamez)

I've been listening through some of the OSTs (UMvC3 & SF4), but nothing's really stuck out to me so far. For anyone that's familiar with these (or other open OSTs), are there some pretty strong and/or remixable tracks I should keep an eye out for?

1. Cyril 2. Gercr 3. Shaggy

So, I've complied all the tracks together in a mini album for my own listening pleasure and it's actually a pretty cool compilation we've got going here. Shadow numbered all the tracks for a track order, so this may have been his intention all along (and if it is and I'm spoiling the surprise, I apologize!). Thank you so much for the kind words. I really appreciate it! I'm not sure if you're wanting me to reply here with a mastering overview or demonstrate it elsewhere, but I can put a few details here for now. I think a lot of what you're hearing and wanting to know about actually is more attributable to the mixing process rather than mastering. Before I add any mastering compression or EQ, I'm doing a lot of adjustments to the volume levels and EQ levels of the individual parts within the song. Sometimes I do this as I write (like in this case, where I'm rushing a bit with a deadline) and other times I actually do a full mixdown where I lower all the faders and bring them up one by one to try and get a good balance. A lot of it is just getting a good feel for when two parts aren't meshing well or are clashing in the same frequency range and adjusting them as needed. I feel that the song itself should sound pretty clear and well balanced before moving on to mastering. For the mastering part, I use T-Racks mastering suite (IIRC I got it for free or really cheap as an add-on for something else I purchase some years back) and I can't recommend it enough. It makes it very easy to setup and adjust the various pieces of the mastering chain and adjust them as needed. I don't do very much EQ work at this point - mainly it's leveling out the peaks and overall volume boosting. I try to keep the RMS (intensity or loudness as it's sometimes called) at a reasonable level as well and leave a tiny bit of headroom to make sure nothing somehow peaks above the 0dB mark. Hope this helps. I'm by no means a pro at this stuff, but this is what works for me. Feel free to hit me up on PM's or IRC or something with questions.

Gonna second this. That's exactly what I did for the church bell sound in my mix for Haunted House on the Mario 64 album. Take a wav sample of a orchestral chime (or just export one from a soundfont in your project). Slow down the playback speed and add reverb as needed.