Dr. Rod

Im looking to purchase a MIDI Keyboard, and Im not sure which one will give me the most bang for my buck....Im a struggling college student, so I dont have too much to throw around...what do u think are some good choices?

I think you have good dynamic contrast between sections, and the mix definitely has a lot of energy. I cant comment much on the arrangement aspect, since Im unfamiliar with the source....you would benefit from a crisper, cleaner piano sample though....also in some of the heavier areas the sounds get a bit piercing to me....

Right now, the textures are still very thin, despite the harmonies going on. This is probably due to a lack of defined low-end (bass). Also you need to do more to reinterpret the source, it seems like you start to give more interpretation as the song goes on, but the beginning is verbatim. You need to really mix it up all around...you seem to understand chords and harmony pretty well, so this shouldnt be hard for u. Just keep it up : ) Oh yeah, word of advice: One reason u might not have been getting any hits is because ur using file factory....usually people like to be able to click the link and get right to the file without the tedium of text boxes and other little inconveniences.....I would suggest creating a googlepage. Its quick to make and easy to use.

You have a very good understanding of harmonies, overall this has a light orchestral feel to it. I will say theres not really any dynamic variation here, so it has more of a feel of "background" music than a standalone orchestral piece. In fact, the section at the end of the two loops felt like a good place to put more "oomph". The piece overall is very pleasant to listen to though : )

Are they any good? I know the one auto-step generator my friend tried to work with gave very bizzaare bpm interepretation with equally bizzare steps....so be careful with that

This has a funky feel to it, I think that it takes a loooooong time to get started up though. If you want to keep the intro that gradual, you should throw in a few sounds here and there to keep the listenters attention. Also thicken the percussion, it would fill in a lot of the soundscape.

Its sounds pretty good so far; one thing I noticed is that a lot of the synths you use preserve the quirky, cheesy feel of the original. This is a completely stylistic suggestion, but I think you could benefit from using more industrial sounding-leads and other synths. It would definitely compliment your drums in a lot of areas. Also work on filling the soundscape more.

Ive been using Reason for about 2 months now, and i was wondering, is there a way to use soundfonts through Reason?

You can actually stretch/compress a whole set of notes/sequences by highlighting them and changing tempo in the event editor. This will de-quantize the notes though, so only do it when theres not much more you want to edit in that section.

Ultimately yeah, though even though its from the same source, this is completely seperate from Rocket's Carnival. I didnt wanna restart on that until 1. I really refined my production abilities more, and 2. I could really get some more of your input with that (particularly on the musical/arrangement level). Recently Ive been branching out with different styles, which has been hit-or-miss, lol. Im likin where this one is goin, but Im still gettin ready for our collab.....Just lemme know when : ) So what did u (or any1 else listening) think of the arrangement?

This definitely shows promise, Id love to hear it when its more completed : )

Wow thanks so much : D I know recently I havent posted anything, and its mainly cause I have my finals this week : ( Plus Im working on a particularly long simfile which I know will take quite a bit of time.

Thanks, I think I have the arrangement where I want it at this point, Im just going the clean up the samples a bit more. I guess my question at this point is: what would I need to do from here to make this OCR quality?

Still really underdeveloped at this point, though the beat you brought in definitely made me want to hear more......I think u should continue it man : )

I'll definitely do it....Im just not sure when it'll be finished (given the length of the song, my school and work responsibilties, and the other songs in my mental queue, lol). Plus Im working on one of my own OC Remixes (http://www.ocremix.org/forums/showthread.php?t=9228) Even though I know that has little to do with DDR, I also know that anyone who plays the game has a musical ear, and I really need comments on how to improve the mix. Ive kinda hit a mental block : ( But yeah, I'll get to workin on that song : )

Thanks, the trick to the ultra-fast section is that its really the same pattern over and over, just the arrows are sped up. I think its Left-Down-Left-Break-Right-Up-Right-Break over and over for expert.

After putting this on the back burner for a while, I've finally finished the stepfile for Intense Color that was privately requested a while back: http://www.bemanistyle.com/sims/simfile.php?id=15293 This is the FULL song, and only heavy (11) and challenge (12) steps are provided. The stepfile has some of the nastiest tempo changes I've ever concocted, mixing tempo elements from Max 300, Fascination ~Eternal Love~, Robotix, and Vertex^2. Good luck : )

http://www.bemanistyle.com/sims/simfile.php?id=15268 Above is the simfile to "It's Hard to Stand When Your'e on Acid". For those playing on plad, i warn you the expert is a dangerous 13, loaded with mies, rapid jumps, and ridiculously fast steps.....play at your own risk..... And it doesnt matter how long a song is, I usually cut it to around 2:00 to keep it within ITG length (my arcade is real strict about that). The next song I'll be doing will be long though, though I'll only have heavy and challenge for it.

Updated the song: http://lightningrt.googlepages.com/BasementFunk.mp3 I added an electric piano to fill in the soundscape of the second section, and add a little variation. Comments?

Ok, I'll try and show one way to identify your sound's freqs, and whats interfering with what. I remember reading in an earlier post something about Reason, so I'll assume you're using that. Reason's equalizer is the MClass equalizer. It can be used very much like a filter. Like Zircon said earlier, you'll want one on EVERY instrument. This is a rough diagram what its screen looks like: There are knobs on the right for one of 4 frequency modifiers: 1 lo-shelf, 2 custom parameters (param), and 1 hi-shelf. The way I'll show you to identify your sound's main frequencies are using the lo and hi shelf. First, once youve turned on the lo-shelf (its icon will light up red), turn the Gain as low as you can (all the way to the left) and the Q to the highest slope (all the way to the right). What this does is rapidly cut all sound below the target frequency. You can change the target frequency with the FREQ knob. Change it back and forth until youve found the furthest area you can push it where you still have a good sound. Once youve found it, the peak will tell you the low range of your sound. For example, this is what it looked like when I did it for my vibraphone: Now you do the same thing for the high shelf. Basically you set up the Gain and Q the same way, so you get a sharp slope. This will rapidly cut all sound above a certain frequency. Play with the frequency knob until you can push it as far as you can while keeping the sound you want. The right peak will tell you the high range. Again, for my vibraphone, I got this: So the frequency range is 312 to about 2.5K for my vibraphone. Remember, where you choose to push the equalizer is based on how YOU like the sound. The reason my range is so wide is because I want to maintain the natural reverb and depth of the vibraphone (something I forgot to mention, as you cut lower frequencies, the sound will slowly lose depth). If I wanted a more staccato sound, Id push the lo-shelf a little further, or use a different instrument altogether. Now I'll show you the graph for my vibraphone compared with the graph for my electric piano. The vibraphone is on top, the electric piano is on the bottom. The electric pianos range is about 1.2 to 2.5K, so I can see that it overlaps with the vibraphone in those frequencies. Now since I wanted the electric piano to be a background instrument, I simply lowered its volume, so it didnt clash as much with the vibraphone. To prevent the vibraphone from completely covering the electric piano, I panned them in slight opposite directions. But thats one way to determine your sound's frequency range. You'll notice for a lot of instruments you can barely hear the lowest frequencies; feel free to cut those out. In fact, thats the main reason why a song will sound "muddy", the musician forgetting to filter out those invisible low freqs. Even though theyre hard to hear, they will compound and create a very undefined low-end to your song if you let them be. And again, I'd like to reiterate that everything I learned about the technical aspects of mixing came from Zircon's tutorial, so I STRONGLY suggest you take a look there. Well, I hope I was of some help : )

Im going to try and explain what Zircon was talking about with frequencies using some images to help visually show how frequencies work. I'll be using a really basic example, so its going to be much less complicated than actual EQing of several sounds, but it should show you the basic principle behind it. The above is just a bar to show various frequencies, ranging from 60 to 16K (16,000). Each block represents a frequency. Right now theres no sound here, so lets put in a bass. The red blocks represent the bass. The blue blocks are the piano. The patterned block is the peak frequency of each instrument, or the frequency that has the most sound. Notice how the peak of the piano is at 3K, but there are frequencies all the way down to 310 in this case. This is the lots of low-end Zircon was talking about. So what will happen if you put the two instruments together as-is? The purple areas represent an overlap between the piano and bass. You dont want your instrument frequencies overlapping much at all, but this is a very bad case because the peak frequency of the bass (310) is overlapped. You'll definitely need to fix this. There are several ways to go about it, but I'll go into the most basic in my opinion: a filter. The gray areas in the first bar represent the filtered section of the piano. This particular filter cuts every frequency below 1K. There are other filters that cut everything above a frequency, or that cut everything outside a certain frequency. As shown in the second bar, you can put this alongside the bass with no clashing. As a general rule of thumb, overall with pianos and other "melodic" instruments, you can filter out the low frequencies with little effect on the overall sound. Thats why filtering out the low-end of the piano is acceptable. If you start filtering out high freqs though, you'll end up with a very unrealistic sound (which you may or may not want, its just something you should be aware of). Again, this is a VERY simplistic model compared to actual EQing, which involves several sounds at once, and this doesnt get into other ways to fill your soundscape without interference (such as panning), but this is the basic principle of EQing. And I would definitely suggest you read Zircon's tutorial, I got pretty much everything I know about EQing from there. Ive only been even learning music for about 2 months now, so Im just as much a beginner as you, if not more. Just take every piece of knowledge bit by bit, after a while it'll become second nature, I promise you : )

Did Legend of the Starfighter. Stepfile style is similar to that of Sakura no Kenshi, mainly due to having the same speed. Expert's a 12. Enjoy: http://www.bemanistyle.com/sims/simfile.php?id=15230

It was interesting.....the beginning takes you to a soothing, serene place and halfway through you hit a harsher, more semi-industrial atmosphere. You bring the two styles together towards the middle end but I think the first transition could be smoother. Also it takes a while to get to the main source melody. Good use of ambience elements all around, though I think the soundscape is a little thin at points. Im having the same issue with a WIP Ive got up here. I would put more sounds in the middle part to make it more industrial-sounding, but thats more preference. Good job though, that year paid off : )

do you have a link to the source tune?

A guitar solo would definitely help, a change in atmosphere is always good to maintain interest. If heavy metal is your style, throw that in. In fact, do some improv stuff and refine it later, that'll put your personal signature on the piece. And when I said its too close to the original, I meant exactly that. I think that even if you leave the first melody the same and change the rest, the judges will probably tell you that it starts out like a cover. I agree with SnappleMan about the progression though, it will help to give the piece better direction. I would but the guitar solo between the 2nd and third chorus, but thats your call. Just vary it up all around. It doesnt take much variation to keep it interesting , change up a note here, a chord there. Your stuff sounds good already, you just need to personalize it more. And like Leah said, Bloody Tears has been mixed quite a bit already....you'll want your mix to stand out from the rest.