Rozovian

Everything? What Would SHTY JDGFGT™ Do?

It ain't easy trying to ignore Vinyl. It's still pretty repetitive, but it's repetitive in a tolerable way. I don't know what the Judges™ are gonna say, I don't even know what I'd say if I was an OCR Judge™, but... It's pretty neat regardless.

Sounds very midi-esque in terms of arrangement, midi-esque here meaning "not arranged for the samples currently applied". I'm with Fishy on this. A few tips tho: when posting more than one file, don't use the same name for them both, I can only tell them apart by looking at their size. It's often best to just stick to one file anyway. I prefer the slightly larger file, it's got better mixing. Also, it's good to let us know what game and track this is from, I can't tell if "the Landing" is a game, the track, or the title of your remix. The files state the remix(es) being named "The Landing of the Orchestra", but that still reveals nothing. The samples aren't bad, tho. You could pull off some amazing remixes with those, but like Fishy said: "Try starting from scratch with a new idea instead of with a MIDI". Then look at the MIDI if you didn't get notes and stuff right. Start with an idea, or start building this from a blank file from memory, that way, it'll be you arrangement, not a modified midi with your samples. And that could rock! -- -> Fishy: Yes, this is essentially a "like Fishy said"-post.

Noticed a crash at 0:34 that sounds a bit lo-fi and a bit too hard panned. 1:45 What happen? Something's clashing. The piano doesn't match the organ, doesn't sound good. The medley-itic section seems to be better. Either because I found other things to point out, or because you've fixed something. 4:04. This... IS...! CLUTTERED!! (I actually haven't seen 300 - yet - but it just felt like an appropriate tone.) Don't take the tone too seriously, but reduce clutter a bit. Too much going on, so leave out one of the instruments, one that doesn't mesh with the others' rhythms. 4:17 feels compressed and the crash could last longer. 4:32, soften the lead. Seriously. Let it return to its normal state at 4:41. Panning of the lead is really hurting my ears. I think I know the effect you're going for but the execution is painful. I coined the word earmurderness in another wip reply, I think it applies to the panning. If you've got two leads each panned hard to either side, don't pan them so hard. If it's some kind of stereo split plug-in, drop the effect level a bit. Also, during its long note that ends at 5:36, the soundscape changes too drastically when it ends, and again when it continues. Drop the level and/or make it less earmurderness-y. That's what I got now. This belongs on ocr, but needs to be less painful to listen to.

The really resonant bass thingy keeps bothering me, it works if it's jsut briefly in the intro, it lasts too long here. See if you can funk this up with more groovy bass. See if you can spice up the drums by doing a cutoff sweep. See if you can get some more elaborate synth performance. A keyboard player/jazz pianist would be awesome here, see if you can write something in that direction. Overall, the only gripe I have with this is that resonant bass thingy. It's a bit short, it lacks an ending, and there's still stuff to improve in terms of arrangement, but for a first wip, this is "totally awesome".

Sorry Nutri, I would have replied earlier, but for some reason didn't. First seconds are very promising, and after half a minute, I still feel it's great. The pitch bend feels too artificial tho. Theme is clearly recognizeable, and executed quite well. It's feels stale, tho, but idunno what you should do about that. 1:20 hm... Tempo change might be too quick. Might. 1:30 Nice! Brass towards 1:45 feels fakey, you probably need lower brass too. It's also very dry. Add a slight cutoff? 2:30, great! The rest is just exciting and great. Man, I like this. It's beyond my skill level to critique this accurately, so I'll back off with these lil comments.

The first half minute needs some cuts or variation. The beep synth is okay, but the pads in the background feel a bit too simple and sharp. 1:10 nice, variation! Pads should be softer here too. It needs some more rhythmic variation, especially when it returns to the 0:32-like section. I recommend using a pad with more cutoff and faster decay, and using that more rhythmically. After 2:30, it feels like it's still the intro. That's half way through the remix. Break at about 2:50 is good, but it comes too late, and the stabs are too sharp. More cutoff, softer sound. I'd also replace the beeping syn th for something fatter. The panning synth that follows that section is annoying. I can hear the idea, but the execution doesn't mesh with the rest. Also, you went back to the repetitive intro section after that. Same rhythm throughout, same instruments, it gets boring. The flimsy panning synth doesn't help much. Towards the end, it sounds better again, tho the stabs still bother me. The soft beepy synth is great for intro and ending, but not always in between. What you should do is cut out repetition, aim for 3:30 instead of 5:XX. If you get it down to baout 4 minutes, it's good enough. Add more variation, like replacing the beepy synth with something fatter some way into the track, using softer synths, varying the rhythm more. Boz is right about about the need for percussion, although rhythmic variation could easily be ised instead. That's my gripes about this. Length and repetition. This could turn out great, but it needs to be cut down to something less ambitious. I know cutting your WIP can be difficult, but back it up and then make some radical cuts, leave out the often repeated section, cut out half of it in other places, and then start varying rhythms. Tweak synths when you feel like it. Good luck!

Cube. Aside from questonable math, it's a scary scenario. The sequel is asinine, but #1 is great!

You could probably cut out the fiurst 30 seconds. You can probably leave the bass drum alone if raise the master EQ's low range - which will fix both the drum and the bass which currently feels kind'a weak. I don't think this is YES material just yet, but I can hear it being accepted sometime soon. Compare your production with that of Blind's works. Arrangementwise, this is good, but very repetitive, not just in the beginning. I'd scavenge the source for more bits and pieces to add, whether it's lead melody or just backing melodies. Nothing's stopping you from making a variation to the lead melody, a variation that can be traced back to the source. Overall, it's good. It needs more polishing and some cuts, but it sounds promising to me. Great job man!

Dunno if soundscape means what it's come to mean here, and I make no promises I'm using the word right anyway. Mood is a good word for it, but mood can be changed by just changing chord progression, when you change the soundscape, it's more overall. The soundscape is more about the sounds (synths, samples) themselves, and when each of them play. An example would be People Made of Stone that startes off with a very ethnic soundscape, then turns into another genre. The feel changes completely. That's a drastic example, but you get the idea. Another example would be Obsessión Nocturnal, with a few more changes throughout. Then again, just swapping a piano for a marimba is enough to change the soundscape. Or a flute for a fiddle. Or backing strings to glass bells. Or on a piano only, going from deep dark low bass chords to light and soft single key bass and octave or two up. Or rhythm, going from obsessing about the snare to triplets on the ride is also a soundscape change. That's soundscape, you just gotta find what's appropriate for your remix. Make half way through, you can start switching out instruments for softer ones, and then return all the sharper and tougher ones at the grande finale. I don't know what you _should_ do, but mix up the soundscape a bit. Nothing too drastic, subtle is usually best. Your new WIP is a step in the right direction, methinks.

Welcome to OCR! Small hint to make you less annoying: post Works in Progress in the "Works in Progress" forum. REQUESTS in the "REQUESTS" forum. Doesn't make much sense, but that's how OCR works. And by the way, don't post too many requests at a time, it makes you look like a n00b.

http://www.ocremix.org/forums/member.php?u=23206 Spambot?

This is a lot better than your remix wip. The drums have enough weight behind them, and the mixing is good. It's pretty solid, but there's still stuff that needs to be improved before I'm saying it's _good_. The bass drum(s) are noisy, the mix is repetitive (even for trance), simplistic and monotonous. It doesn't have personality or dynamics. While the instruments sound professional, the drums and overall arrangement...don't. But this is a huge step up from the remix, and judging from how you received my feedback on the other thread, you'll keep improving, and make something really cool sometime soon. ...Aand I see you're now using tindeck. Nice!

Sound quality is terrible. There's no denying you're amazing, but you need better recording equipment for your vids. There's noise, and low quality sound. Still, the word 'wow' sums this up better than any whining about sound quality.

All right, let's start by talking hosting. Megaupload is annoying. You have to wait for it to start downloading before you can wait for it to finish downloading. Better hosts are Mediafire.com, Sendspace.com, and Tindeck.com. sgover.mid Nice source. Your remix is essentially a midi with added drums. Cute, but not much of a remix. But let's start with the technical aspects. Bass drum needs more punch. See if you have other drum samples, or add a really aggressive compressor on it. The shaker rhythm could have more life. Since you don't use a snare, you could make the shaker louder on every even beat. Wait, is it a shaker or a hihat? It later sounds like both, each panned to either side. Good idea, but execution needs some more refining. Rhythm. Drumroll into 0:32 sounds... weird. I was about to say bad, but it's not bad, it's weird. Usually, a drumroll is snare and/or toms, and the shaker is essentially just a repeated drumroll anyway. But this... this is more weird than that. Is there a reverse bass drum in it? The lead synth has some weird pan modulation. It's pretty annoying when you notice it, but fortunately, it's not bad. Just weird. Bass is good. Pads are too loud. So's the shaker/hihat. It sounds like there's a backing synth that also needs to be softer. It might be an illusion of the pan effect of the lead, tho. The pizzicato-like backing instrument is good. The descending soft lead should either be softer, or the lead should pause and let the softer lead play. There's some fixes and thoughts for you. If you want this on ocr, you gotta personalize it a lot more, develop it. Compare ocr techno remixes with their source and see how much has changed in the process. Listen to Blind's stuff, he's probably the best techno remixer on ocr. imho, anyway. Gonna be interesting to see how this turns oute. Be persistant, good luck!

Best way to deal with feedback is to read it as you lsiten to your own track, and then fixing what you agree with. Then make a backup, and try out everything else. If it sounds better, keep it. If not, don't. Anyway, the snare is much better here. Lacks punch at the palces where it shoudl be louder, but most of the time it's a good level. There's a fair amount of personalization, which is good. It feels a bit off-center with the guitar pretty strong in the right channel. Drop volume a bit on that, except when you really want to use it in conjunction with another loud, rude, and distorted instrument. The soundscape isn't bad, but it's pretty repetitive. Vary it according to some invisible dramatic curve where at times the remix is more mellow, at times rocking ppl's socks off. Vary the sounds more, but make sure to do it smoothly. Some WIPs suffer instrumental medley-itis (mine having been one of them), changing instruments way too often and not in very good ways. See what you can do about the soundscape. Overall, this is pretty close to source, but enough of your own touch. At this point, it's not refined enough, arrangement and productionwise, to be accepted by the judges, but you're on the right track. Looking forward to your next update, whenever that is.

The piano feels rushed at time. Use a finer note grid and vary velocities, that should humanize the piano enough. I mean, the melody, the backing piano works as it is, and after a minute or so, there's enough other things going on keeping the rhythm fluid, so you should only fix velocities there. 2:09, don't repeat the low range piano, do something else for variation. You should make the 2:47 section much softer. Maybe put a really heavy cutoff filter on the bass drum, definitely drop the piano velocities a lot. Then crescendo into 3:14. That'd be cooler. 3:14 and forwards is essentially the climax and ending, and it does feel much like an ending. Make the crescendo the climax but making it bigger, if you know what I mean with that. I feel you can raise the bass volume a bit. EQ it to have more bass too. Don't overdo it, tho. This is a pretty cool piece, but it needs to be more elaborate. See where you can make the piano programming more human. Emphasize some notes, dampen others. Great job, cool source, and keep at it!

Background noise, noticed it around 0:30, keeps going. Would like the bass to have more bass. 1:30 solo has some weird modulation effect on it, ridiculoously fast and a bit annoying. You should probably drop the effect level a bit. 1:56-2:45 feels a bit medley-itic and simplistic. Drums, bass, and different solo insturments for each part. Letting the insturments bleed over and back each other harmonically could fix that. 3:12 weirdly panned. Not badly, but weirdly, and when it pans back and forth it feels a bit wannabe-ish. From 3:34 the organ feels like it's clashing. At 3:50 there's a lot going on, and it feels really cluttered. 4:17, wow! Perfect. You could use a less rude lead while in the break tho. In fact, it's not perfect anymore when the lead comes in. The one you've got now works great when the drums and everything comes in tho. It gets a little cluttered then, but doesn't feel as bad as before. Ending feels a little long, tho. That's what I think. Overall, this is great! I have a feeling it'll get a NO or a RESUB tho, because the J's are the J's. Do fix as much as you can before submitting, I want to see this on ocr.

I'm currently too lazy to look up the source, so I'll comment on how interpretive this is some other time. The mixing needs loads more work. Decide what needs to be heard, and drop the volume on everything else. You've got a volume drop at 1:47 or something, sounds great for the little while it was, as your wip is cluttered with stuff. Hard to what's good and bad when it's all just a mess. Once you've set rough levels, deal with the frequencies. You've got a pretty nice range, but the bass drum, not a separate bass, is responsible for most of the low range stuff. You need a bass too, so add one of lower one of your existing tracks an octave or two. The snare really bothers me. Note velocities! Please, it's currently a snare song. Once again, decide what hits are important and lower volume (velocity) on the rest. The track isn't _too_ repetitive, but your could vary the melody a lot to make it less repetitive. There's a general lack of dynamics, everything is loud and in-your-face (or -ears). Step away and look at it, what should be the most intense parts of the remix? Make the other parts a little lighter. This is interesting tho. I'll comment more later, but this should get you started on things to change and improve.

Yougottabekiddingme, use mp3 (or ogg), _not_ wav. Seriously, it's gonna take me half an hour to download it. I don't have that kind of time, and neither do most ppl here. Saw your hello in the introductory thread, was expecting you to show up here on the WIP board, but not this soon. Welcome to ocr!

You know how I said I felt the melody overstayed its welcome in the second version? Well now you've got the opposite problem, it went by too fast. I'd lose the noise ambience in the intro. I like how the melody is audible in it, but it sounds accidental, and the low volume makes you wonder what went wrong. Then you raise the volume, and the track kicks out of the intro. Ouch. But I do like how those few notes that play right before the main section feel like a warning. Something I'd do, and recall having done on some old original works, play the intro on simple silent synths, maybe even put a bitcrusher on them, volume lower than normal. Then crash into the real track with normal volume. If it makes sense to you, try it out. The synths are a bit too simple most of the time, you should add some life to them using envelopes and modulation. Nothing too drastic, but enough to make them feel less like electric current and more like synthesized sound. You've also got some transition problems, you drastically change the soundscape between different sections. It makes it very medley-itic. Make the transitions more transitional. 0:54 is a bad one (0:46 is better). 1:05 good. 1:46, that's the worst. Also, your jumping from section to section kills direction. I have no idea where the remix is going, if it's heading for a big finale, or if it's fading out. Dunno how well you know movie theory, but in every scene, things either go better or worse, and throughout, it's heading towards disaster that'll be averted at the last minute. A track doesn't need to follow the same dramatic curve, but it should still follow _a_ dramatic curve. Think it through, where do you want it to go? These new melodies and stuff, is it from source or your own stuff? Overall, I think you went a little too far in your overhaul of this piece, but if you like it more, and learned something from it, it's a win regardless of whether _I_ like the changes or not. Great job so far, but you're not done yet.

When looking for remixes to put on CDs for my parents as xmas gifts, I came across this one. Instant addition. Rhythm, melody, sound, everything works together wonderfully. Bass totally rocks, especially on high volumes. Haven't heard any special comments about it from my folks, but _I_ like this a lot! Relaxing, positive and cool, it's all it needs to be. OCR needs more stuff like this.

You're not making many friends here, buddy. I was amused when I read the replies to your project "request". I agree with much of it. Was thinking of posting there to tell you you're not getting results that way, but... apparently didn't. That being said, I don't have time or know electronica well enough to remix it for you. If you're interested in learning remixing, grab your sequencer of choice - come to the WIP forum. We'll teach you what you're doing wrong, and push you in the right direction. It's not easy, remixing. What better way for you to learn that, _and_ get your Shadowrun techno, than to have made it yourself?

It feels a bit inconsistant, orchestral and synthetic elements blended like this. It's one thing to use a smooth transition from one to the other, or make it a consistant soundscape mix, but like this... No. Either use a synth for soundscape earlier, or lose the silly sounding synth melody. Once guitar and drums come in, it feels more consistant, but then I feel the melody should be on guitar, not on a synth. 1:38, the 80's settle in. I don't hear what the others said about EQ, it sounds to me like there's too much reverb on stuff. 2:26, after a deviation from melody, this sounds more fitting with source, but doesn't sound familiar enough. Just grabbing the repeating staccato strings doesn't really work as "interpreting source". You need to tie back to source more often. Synth at 3:00 and forth, that one's how a synth should sound. I suggest using the melody from source as a backing melody there. The first half of the remix sounds more like a sound audition rather than a remix, so work out a more consistant sound, use more of the source... I know, it's not much source to use, but use it in different ways. Oh and, drop the reverb a bit, the orchestral parts need it, but the guitar sections should really lose reverb. Too bad it took you almost half the song until it got good, and by then, it's kind'a far from source. See what you cna do about that. This could be one of the coolest tracks I've heard in a while, but it needs work to get there. Good luck!

Dude, this is gonna be looong. Beyond OCR-length, but you probably know that already. With decent headphones, this sounds better, but it's still kind'a quiet. You might still need to raise the volume a bit. Some timpani and cymbal rolls sound a bit silly, symbals get too loud too soon, and the timpani sometimes seems to start going more quiet when it should punch in it's final stroke. 3:32 pizzicato sounds like it was recording in a can. Find better samples for that. 4:00 section is wonderful. Brass coming it towards 4:20 is still metallic, but better. Really stupid sounding dry drum around there tho, see what you can do about it. You know, after that section, I finally start recognizing this from the game (4:30). Nostaligia sets in, and it's beautiful. This gonna be way too long for ocr, but after recognizing it, I feel this is a winner remix regardless. It's long, but it's pretty throughout, doesn't get too repetitive, and with the exception of occasional drums and too metallic brass, it's all good. Can I invite you to the sd3 project?