Rozovian

There's no reason not to use headphones. A lot of listeners will be using crappy earplugphonethingies and listening from their ipods in the bus or on the street - not ideal listening environment, so the intricacies of your mixing will be lost on them. Stereo crossbleed is moot as far as they're concerned. As far as coloring goes, multiple setups is the key to overcoming that, cuz any flat enough setup will cost you. A lot. When you have the opportunity, listen to your work as well as your reference mixes with other listening setups - car, computer speakers, friend's speakers, ipod earpluggythingies, TV... anything and everything. Listen to what your listeners will be using. You don't have to own it to listen through it. Like I said, get some good mixes to compare to, analyse those - their volume (peak and rms), the frequency balance, the dryness of the sound, the instrument levels... There's so substitute for good ears, so practice yours. By using good reference materials and spectrum analyzers you'll see what you can't hear and know to compensate for it. I know I have to look at my spectrum view and eq as well as listen to make sure I don't overdo the bass (again).

Double post, but... kind'a important. It's a bit into the 8th already for me, wips due today. Will check tomorrow... thatis, Sunday, what I've got, and send angry PMs to ppl.

No other place than this. No better place than this. It helps to clarify whether you're posting something that you want to submit to ocr or not. Call it a cover if it's a cover, say you want to sub it if you want to sub it, etc.. People here generally go by ocr's standards, including the creative arrangement thing. In any case, my crits still apply. For maximum enjoyability, some creative liberties are often necessary. Remember that the original was made to be accompanied by picture and interactivity, the music has to stand on its own.

Yeah. But that's not what ocr is about.

Hi, Ouguiya, hi zneoson. Welcome to ocr. We've had our fair share of dumb, ill considered, already answered newbie-questions. You'd have to try hard to outdumb them. Music making questions goes in Workshop, site questions here, and just about any other question belongs here. We remixers love hearing about how our works move ppl, most of us probably like it more than we like to hear how technically competent we are.

This thread made me check my inbox. Nothing from ocr since mid-April.

Piano parts are kind'a empty, and don't transition well into the busier electronic sections. I mean, the transition is smooth, but the sound changes quite drastically. Once we get into the electronic section, the mix seems to stagnate. The drums kind'a hold it back. The overall sound is pretty weak and light, you should read up on how to mix and eq, also practice making your works sound harder and stronger. It's good arrangement practice and there are good ideas in here that could make it into an ocremix, but you need to improve your production and learn to make things build up and develop before you can get a remix posted on this site. Sorry. Keep mixing, keep learning, keep improving. It took me over a year to get posted, and that's with a few years of experience making music before ocr. Keep it up.

Welcome to ocr, this is how we do things here. 3:47 might be a bit long for basically the same thing over and over. Drums get especially repetitive and aren't that good to begin with.

Main problem here is production. The arrangment sounds ok for the first two thirds, then gets into clashes and medley-itis. Source is definitely there and is imo interpretive enough. Find some good reference mixes and mix accordingly. Feels like this one doesn't have much bass which doesn't really work for this style and genre. Do you have a mixinf setup that lets you hear the lows well? If you don't, you're gonna have problems cleaning it up. The lows that are there are pretty muddy, the bass drum doesn't have bass enough... Pick some similar songs, be they remixes or whatever, well mixed, listen and compare, then fix what sounds wrong in yours. Good luck. btw this reminds me I should pick up my MM remix and sub it.

I'm with OA, the band needs more camera coverage. Pretty awesome tho. I wish I had known this before the whole melodifestivalen thing began this year.

Brinstar Red from Super Metroid. Kraid from the original.

Well don't except to get on ocr with this arrangement, but you can work it into an enjoyable remix to put on your youtube channel or something. Good practice, and it's good to learn to finish songs just to finish them too. Besides what you can find on Google, there's some guides on ocr, also here, and this one should be required reading for anyone aspiring to improve their mix. But let me stress that the best literature in the world wouldn't help you if you don't also learn to listen critically, especially to your own work. So critically that you think it sucks. Then figure out why it sucks. Then fix that.

There are some pretty convincing piano stuff done nowadays. You could mean anything when you say "the sound" of midi keyboards", but if you're talking about the notes themselves, you're thinking of whatever samples the keyboard has itself, not what you could connect it to. When just recording the midi data, the keyboard doesn't really have a sound (some stiff like velocity curve differ from keyboard to keyboard, and weighted keys will give you a more piano-like feel when you play), it's all in the sounds you give it. The plugins, whether these be your soundcard's gm samples, some soundfont from the net somewhere, or Alicia's Keys or whatever. TL;DR? You're wrong. Midi keyboards come with usb cables nowadays, you just plug into into the computer. Mine cost me about 120€ / $140. A oldskool midi->usb cable for use with older keyboards doesn't cost much either. Remember that you'll probably want a keyboard with _weighted keys_ if you're a piano person more than you're a keyboards person (pianos have weighted keys, organs do not, midi keyboards... some do, some don't). A pedal might also be a good idea.

Well if you want a cool piano recording, you kind'a need two mics, a noise-free audio interface/soundcard, a good piano and a good room to play in. You can do it with one mic and a good reverb (and possibly some stereo delay), but the rest still applies. As already suggested, you'd probably do better to get a midi keyboard (one with weighted keys, as well a pedal (probably sold separately)) and record it as midi and output it with a good piano plugin instead. I think that's cheaper and easier to get good results with. I'm sure someone on this site could render your midi if you can't afford a good piano plugin. While you're at it, see if you can find some patience too. Arrangement is imo interpretive enough for the site. Not as sure about performance, but let's just blame that on its wipness, and its sound quality and eq (lack thereof), shall we? There's more in the source that you could use tho, it currently felt like I was waiting for the really cool parts of the source, but they never came. Not sure your chord-based parts count as source, you're probably under Liontamer's 50% guideline if they don't count. Also, everyone OUGHT TO know Cave Story's music, jabond. Especially after DrumUltimA's take on this same source.

No they're not. They've been tested by the Judges and found to be discerning and consistent enough to make them staff. All the other critics here are just wannabes*. *) Wannabes can have good crits tho. -- Welcome to ocr. When it comes to submitting stuff to ocr, this is pretty much required reading. Some it is just obvious, some redundant, some just there just in case... Should tell you how ocr works and what it's about tho. Okay, the track. As it's been said, it's a cover and not a new arrangement. Wouldn't make it to the panel. Sound is pretty good (hihat is a little trashy and there are some sloppy guitar parts here and there), you seem to have the chops to get a remix posted, you just gotta write a more interpretive arrangement for it to be accepted. That's if you're aiming for ocr. In any case, this is a cool cover.

I blame Wolt. Then vgmix. Then ocr.

I promise nothing. Got a wip today, making some progress with my own tracks as well, I guess they should count as "a wip" too. They should. So I got multiple wips today.

You might want to look at our wip hosting thread for some alternatives to rapidshare, the 25 second wait before you can download is a bit annoying. To lazy to look up the original. Sounds a bit too repetitive tho. It feels thin, except the lead guitar which feels muddy. Volume levels between tracks are ok, but not the frequency balance. Cymbals are pretty weak considering how the drums are written. Some cool background sounds in there. Not bad. Make it better.

Clipping and lots of it. It clearly has bass, so Vagrance's inability to hear is because of his speakers. Track develops slowly. I don't mind the progression, it works imo. Not the most intresting, but passable. The writing is a bit cluttered sometimes tho, needs a little cleaning up, either in the notes or the mix. It has some weird harmonies... I'd call them dissonant and complain about key but I can't get a clear idea of which tracks are clashing. Sometimes it's the bass, sometimes the lead, sometimes the organ, sometimes something else. Needs fixing regardless. The mixing needs work. Aside from the clipping, the mixing is pretty messy. EQ and volume should be enough to clean it up, but you might want to read up on how to best do so. Google is your friend. Source is there, not for for how much or how interpreted it was, but it felt like it was on the conservative side of things - but still ok imo. However - I gave just one listen to source, one to wip, so don't take my word for it.

Most of this still applies, except the Go LInk! section is removed and there's a few decent guitar parts in here now (not all of them). Most of the track seems to be some drum loops and an outofcontrol-loud saw, plus some quantized guitar and synth parts - not the impression you want to give your listeners. Yeah, sucks to hear nothing's changed after all the changes you've made, I know. Too bad it's not any less true, the problems are about the same as with the previous version. Best advice I can give you is to practice listening. Read up on how to use EQ (and for what). Read up on mixing, read up on synth sound design, read up on stuff. Put this in a playlist with some similar but well-mixed tracks and compare. Listen to the differences, learn to find the problems in this yourself. If you haven't downloaded the 1000+ ocr torrent, do it. They have some good examples of well mixed tracks. Also, try to keep everything in the same thread. Looks better, easier to find old comments, etc..

I mean it can be awesom-ER. +1 WAV today. Progress on a wip, recordings from a collab partner... so far so good. Keep 'em coming, pppl.

And whenever you end up with a cool sound, save it. Might not fit the project you're working on then, but it might fit some other project. Save your patches/presets/whatever they're called.

Get a pair of decent headphones and some reference material to listen to and compare with. Listen to well mixed stuff a lot. Learn from it. Listen to crap mixed stuff. Learn from it too. Listen to your own stuff. Improve it.

I've got some FFX and Monkey Island ones in the works. What, weird combination you say?

Is your mom a bad enough dude to... uh... So my mom was driving me home from work yesterday, I had a cd with assorted DKC remixes playing in the car. Apparently, she likes djp's Welcome to the Funky House as well as just about anything made from Aquatic Ambiance (such as Riptide which was on the disc). I know there's been more than one mom mentioned in regards to ocr. A cool mom that likes ocr for the good music, a cool mom who introduced someone to ocr, a cool mom who has contributed to two remixes, etc... How about your mom? And the rest of your family?