Rozovian

I'm not invalidating your feedback, just wondering... why post on a wip that hasn't had an update in several months?

No source link, no source comment. Bass sounds ok-ish, but the strings legato are a bit too synthy in their dynamics. Brass is terrible, as is panning. You need reverb on your orchestral elements, I'm not sure there's much of that, if any. Drums sound weak.backing strings melody mwhen the drums start playing is pretty cool. Trance sound, once again, doesn't quite fit in. Not sure what you were thinking here, orchestral->rock influence->trance->etc? Doesn't make a cohesive track. I suggest leaving out the rock part and working on blending the remaining genres better. Anyway, the orchestral elements need more dynamics, and your electronic parts need a more clear mixing. EQ and compression are the tools to use there, compression to keep stuff from peaking and pushing the master compression, EQ to make sure the all frequency ranges are covered and loud enough. Read up on them in zircon's guide. The arrangement isn't bad, but the sound is, both samples and mixing. It'll take some detail tweaks to get stuff to sound good, so I suggest focusing on a track that's just a single genre - at least until you've gotten better at mixing. Try listening to some random background element in this, and you'll hear how messy it is. Mix it better! Like I said in the ducktales thread, I think you're improving. Good luck with whichever of your tracks you choose to focus on.

Nice pad intro. Backing guitar is a little noisy, and both guitars are kind'a high, leaving a lot of space in between them and the bass. The track sounds a bit empty. I agree with HoboKa about the lack of change in overall sound. A fuller richer sound might help with that. Your synths are pushed into the bg, and I know you can do good stuff with synths, so let one of them take the lead part somewhere. Even if you don't, see if you can fatten the tracks, they're all kind'a thin atm. Synths are a bit too simple, add reverb or something to broaden them. The snare sounds a bit 80's. I don't mind, I think it's great, but see if you can make the soundscape a bit more 80's-consistent or consider using another snare. The drum writing is repetitive, but in an 80's-style track, that wouldn't be much of a problem. Source is there, and it's a cool source. Good luck with this man, gonna be interesting to hear how this develops.

The triplets or pseudotriplets early when the guitar's just come in (as well as later) don't sound very fitting imo, you could work out another rhythm for them. There's also a pretty annoying repeated piano rhythm towards the end. I suggest cutting it out for part of it, writing a less repetitive part for the rest of it. Other than that, there's not much I can offer without know more about what you're still planning to do. The overall composition is pretty good imo, so now it's nitpick fixing and sound tweaking/rerecording. The drums need some levels fixing, the hats are a bit too loud and I can barely hear the kick. Also, dunno if it's intentional, but it's missing a bass. Staple of the genre, stylistic choice, or an oops moment? Whatever, it's a little empty in the lower range, you could EQ the rhythm guitar to cover the lower range a little more. Not familiar with source (or couldn't recognize it). I do like this. -- btw, why didn't you just head into the name change thread and have an admin change your name for you?

Logic? It's Logic? Great! If you're using the ES2 or the EXS24, you can do that easily, using the routing matrix. You know, he thing in the middle with all the numbers and sliders and names and stuff. Make one with these, in this order: Pitch Envelope (or mod wheel aka ctrl #1 in the exs24) An LFO set to about 7 Hz Move the upper slider thing to about 50 cent. Then have a look at the envelope you used. This part always confuses me, but it seems to work with the invert button on and short attack, long decay, no sustain, no release. You can also make one with cutoff, envelope/modwheel, and lfo, tho you'll want to have a slower lfo (around 3 Hz) and only 10% or so set on the slider. Instead of fiddling with the envelope, you can use it with the modulation automation (in the piano roll, not the Arrange window track automation). This is what I usually do. In that case, set the modwheel/ctrl1 in the middle field, go to a midi region of the lead, click ont he little button in the lower left dorner on the region view, and then select modulation from the pop-up menu on the left side of the region view. Then just draw curves rising from 0 where you want it to start modulating. -- I hope that makes sense to you. I hope I got it right. I don't think it's the first time I've explained this to someone, but it's not the easiest thing to explain. I should just take screenshots... but I'm lazy.

All Your Elitist Js Are Belong To Us. And the standards are fine, and most of the judges are great (the rest would get a conditional yes or no(resub) from me). The standards are an inconvenience, but also an incentive to improve.

What post about chipamp? And I know about Audio Overload. Doesn't play the chip files downloaded from ocr, tho. Last time I checked, anyway. As for sorting threads, it's possible, but it'll sort all normal threads in the normal display age, regardless of how recent they are. There's almost 2 months old stuff on the page when sorted like that. Good idea, but post age needs to be limited. Personally, I don't see the problem with just scrolling down, looking at the number in the replies box. As for marking threads without feedback with red, it's not that far off from my idea for flagging threads as having been updated. Takes a bit of coding no matter what, but I'll add it to my list of suggestions. Later. lol, Alex, deleting accounts. I know I'd be safe, tho, so maybe I should support that idea? Maybe not. But thanks. I hope the ocrstaff knows what they're doing. Up to some kind of official mischief, I reckon.

FireSlash - awesome sig. Anyway, I was expecting something not too different from the previous versions, expecting to tell you that you sometimes have to "kill your darlings". If you're not familiar with the expression, it's when you have to abandon an awesome idea for something because it's not working, but you have become too fond of it to hear that. For most part, I was right. I do like how you've used the second synth, but you need to vary the overall soundscape more. By the way, there's a synth kick in there. Is it just a random rhythmic element, or is it the actual kick in this remix? If it's the latter, you should probably replace it with an acoustic sample. In either case, it's a bit annoying, imo. I'm hearing a lot more variation, but aside from tweaking your lead sound to be a little more interesting, the overall sound is still very repetitive. Drum patterns are the same, maintaining a high-energy level and never really rising or dropping. Make it drop, make it rise in energy by varying the drum patterns and the general intensity. I hear you've improved this, but you need to change its sound more, probably by changing drum writing and general intensity. I suggest you find or make a softer lead that you can use for less intense sections. A step in the right direction. Good work.

Yup, sounds better. Enjoying logic? It's a little shrill. Not painfully so, but it feels a little empty. You might need to give your mid-range instruments a little more volume or width. You've got drums, bass, and high bells, but the mid range is often too soft to really hold it together. Not much more I can say, since this isn't a style I don't know well enough to critique properly. It's gotten pretty good. Nice work. Make sure to balance it well. Good luck.

The irregular hihat rhythm is a little annoying, but I suppose that's more a matter of style. Those pan-modulated crashes and hats are quite annoying too, but as with the irregular hat rhythm, it's style. I'm willing to overlook that, but I'm not sure everyone would. Some of your short swishy drop-like synth sounds are a little annoying, you could drop their volume a bit. Other than that, the intro is pretty cool. The lead, when the track gets started, could use some cutoff modulation or something to make it a little more interesting during those long sustained notes. Drums are louder than your lead. I think they could afford to be dropped a dB or two. That would also bring out the delayed keyboards more. You've succeeded, imo, in separating the tracks. It's far more enjoyable like this. You know, unless there's just too much source verbatim, I think this has a chance to get on ocr. You should probably check with a Judge over irc before actually submitting, but it sounds promising. God work, but it's not over quite yet.

No source link, no source comment. I like the sound this has, but the distorted.. guitar could use some timing fixes. Re-record, and cut together something out of the successful parts. Bass is relatively simple to write, all you need is a rhythm and a basic melody that you transpose to whichever chord you're in. As for volume, compression is how to do it. Compress the drums, let the guitar maintain good dynamics -that's where the guitar's punching strength comes from. EQ everything a bit, process everything a bit, but know that you'll have to do the fine tuning of the effects when the arrangement is done and everything's recorded. Drum writing is relatively easy once you figure it out. Listen to some random music and how the drums are played. Sure, actual drum kits sound better than sampled ones, but when it comes to the drum playing/writing, you can try copying some cool rhythms from your favorite songs and see what works. Keep in mind that if you're gonna submit this to ocr, you should have at least 50% of the finished piece derived from source, and interpreted (as in not a cover). I'm not familiar with the source so I can't say how well it's interpreted atm, just saying it needs to be. Sounds like it's worth working on. Good luck with it.

Good source, the bass is awesome here, tho you might want to lose it for some parts, just to change things up and give ppl's ears a break once in a while. The first third of it is pretty cool. The center part is where I start losing interest, so I think you could make some cuts there. Some drum fills feel a bit awkward, so you might want to have a look at all of them, see which ones work and which ones just screw with the listener's sense of rhythm. Last third is mostly like the second, it gets dull. There's nothing to follow, to it's more atmospheric/rhythmic than melodic, which isn't something ocr favors. You need a more clear progression, possibly a lead of some kind, but at leasta more clear and less repetitive progression. That being said, this has some qualities that I'm not sure I've heard in your work before. Interesting, in a positive way. Make this more intelligible, and it might be able to get on ocr. Even as a "non-affiliated" remix, the repetition and lack of clear progression hurts it enough to need some work in that area.

Myspace's player works for me now. But I can hear the quality loss, and it ain't pretty. Strings, especially the high pizzicato ones don't sound very realistic. Panning is a little weird too, with the strings panned left, it leaves the right channel kinda empty. Drums are kind'a weak, you should compress them, give kick and snare a bit of a boost somewhere in the 50-150Hz area, perhaps for the toms as well. Some of your synths don't really match the overall sound of the remix, it's kind'a normal most of the time, but then that trance-y synth comes in, and it's just... disruptive. As for the arrangement, it's better than the samples, that's for sure. I think this arrangement has some chance of getting posted (and I'm loving the ending), but it'll take some serious overhauling of the sound. I vaguely remember something you did way back, and I think this is an improvement. Can't recall it, tho. This is pretty promising, tho.

Not sure this is what should be the remix, but I can definitely hear some pretty cool remix potential in the source. Some of the later melodies would well as a lead melody on top of the first half of the track. Whatever, a cover is fine, and this cover is cool.

I would vary the crashes more, and try to find something sounding a bit more orchestral, perhaps using more than one at once. Guitar notes seems to clash when it's first fading in, but other than that, it's by far a better transition. I'm not a fan of the elevator and voice clip section, but as far as music goes, it's not bad, it bridges the styles and sections nicely. Yup, transitions are better. The Wario clip is a bit annoying if you're familiar with the characters and their voices, but other than that, there's just technical crits that I'd be able to list, and they could be summed up in "track feels weak", which might be because of the lower volume that you already were aware of.

I don't think they sound unrealistic. Or actually I do, but some reverb and other processing should fix that, reverb on the piano at least. The percussion might need some EQ and compression to enhance its sound, but I don't think this sounds terribly unrealistic. If you can, tweak the piano filter so softer velocities aren't as open and clear, that should further improve the piano sound.

Not familiar with source, and too lazy to dig it up. Soundwise, this is pretty good for a newb. Some compression and boosting of the drums would be nice, shortening the attack of your lead strings would also improve it somewhat, methinks. Some other minor tweaks might also be necessary. The flute in the intro and outro is pretty noisy, there's a noise loop in there that doesn't sound good. I hope it's not part of the instrument, but it seems to follow key. The writing is pretty good, so I suspect much of it is straight from source. If you've just upgraded the sound in a midi file you don't get any writing credit. I could be wrong, tho, in which case it's pretty good. For a first song, this is pretty good. I dunno how much you've rewritten the source, and suspect it's not much, so I would suggest writing a few original pieces to get the hang of writing/arranging. Good luck.

GB is really easy to get into, it surprises me that you didn't get it. I suppose you come from having read and written linear singular tracks instead of having worked with regions (areas with midi notes or audio data that you can move around independent of each other). Impressive that you wrote the program yourself tho, but in order to work with audio, you'll most likely have to apply some effects to control the sound (EQ, compression, reverb and such, depending on what you need), and GB does that easily. Other than that, there's the free Audacity, but it only deals with audio and is more a recording a basic processing app than an audio editor/DAW. Anyway, good luck with it.

He probably meant it as in "land ho!", but I can't be sure.

It's evident from the responses I've been getting to my lil survey that people prefer commenting on remixes of familiar games' sountracks. There are a few of us that choose to critique a remix of an obscure game/soundtreack, and then it's mostly because nobody else has. I don't hink that's gonna change without some obtrusive overhauling of the wip board. I've been thinking a bit about what Darke said about the open forum hurting the feedback a bit. I can see the benefits of a feedback wizard - like setup/install programs - where the feedback checklist is something of a form that you fill in. Integrating that with hosting, standardized thread names, and a form entry for source link(s) and it'd be great, but this is something that requires a lot of coding to work. Unfortunately, it doesn't give listeners the ability to hear the problems with it. I've got a few less taxing suggestions in my list in post#2. Would be nice to know what the ocr staff are planning. While on the topic of the checklist, giving it a button could get more people to use it. A button like the ones between the title box and the message box on the reply page. When you click it, it pastes in a checklist that you can fill in. Could improve the feedback a bit, and it'd be convenient if it didn't have to be copypasted manually. This should probably be suggested to djp.

Remember Bluebomber the Lucario? Here's a short discussion about how OCREMIX STOLE FROM HIM. That was quite a while ago, so no point in flaming him for it, but it's pretty funny how he tried to protect "his" works. The guy stealing from Audix tho... I don't have a newgrounds account and am not really interested in getting one, but... GET HIM!

Strangely, Nekofrog seems to have missed most of my posts, and those of other listeners. There is currently quite a lot of activity (by comparison), but it's not of the quality it should be. I do agree with Nekofrog tho, I think the solution involves the Js, one way or another. One post per judge per month or two, even a short post should clarify the standards for those of us that are here as well as provide some quality feedback, without taking away much judging time. (It should be noted that last time I brought up the fuzzy bar, I got some crap for it, implying I don't read the JDs and the standards and listening to recently posted remixes. Where are the people to whom the bar is obvious? I don't see them on the wip board.) Dafydd suggests another solution, but it comes down to the lack of incentive to critique. There's no incentive for ocremixers to critique stuff here, so most of them don't. Not after they're psoted. Come to think of it, why do _I_ critique stuff here? I don't use the forum for my own wips because I don't think there's much the forum can offer me. Some time ago, in a need to vent, I wrote a letter to the staff of ocr. Didn't send it, but I'd like to share the core of it: That being said, I'm not planning to stop any time soon, but it does feel like the efforts of those critiquing wips here aren't appreciated by the Js.

Darke, why don't you follow the example of the nice judges who've taken the time to answer my lil survey? It's nice to see that you care about this thread so much that you want it to stay on topic, but it puzzles me to see you merely moderating and not actually participating.

Case in point. My first submission to ocr, reworked, but not submitted because there's so much in it that I like, but it's too much and not all of it works together as it should. Haven't gotten around to make those drastic cuts I think it needs. There's probably four parts that would work as endings, several pieces that would work as intros, a few different climaxes, breaks of different sorts... Too much for one song.

Oh most of you guys have no idea how much the sd3 project pwns. But as Sinewav mentioned, it's a conditional pwns.