Rozovian

Well the first half minute is really just source verbatim. Not bad, just no points for original arrangement. It goes into a much more interesting arrangement. I keep spotting references to various Zelda tracks, but it's not really until the buildup around 2 minutes in that I can clearly identify the source used. I think the source usage/interpretation is fine. Nice and dynamic, and I think it avoids being a medley by having the body of the track be the Opening, and using the other sources to lead into and out of it. The judges might see things differently. Hard to say. I don't have any issue with the arrangement, but my orchestral chops aren't quite up to par so someone better versed in orchestration might spot obvious and annoying flaws that fly right over my head. Just a heads-up. I find the instrumentation a bit too fakey. It might be that the woodwinds are too loud, the strings don't move realistically which is made all the more obvious when they're exposed in the more sparse parts of the track, or other things like that. Unfortunately I can't offer much more than a general "it doesn't sound real enough" on this point. I wouldn't be comfortable passing this, but I'm not a judge. You should probably grab some recent orchestral tracks (or better yet, actual orchestra recordings) and use those for reference. If you find something resembling this track in style and dynamics, you'll have an easier time figuring out what parts stand out as the most fake, and have an easier time dealing with them. Any more orchestrally versed workshop mods around to provide some more useful crits on this?

A few whiny bright ear-stabbing sounds, sometimes the whole instrument, sometimes just its sustain or interactions with other sounds (eg intro, 0:55, 1:11). The fm lead is especially annoying, it has some really piercing overtones you might want to dull. Sounds a bit empty, spectrum-wise. Seems to lack something in the mid range. Some of the time there's a nice keyboard/synth there filling out. Whatever backing stuff I keep hearing occasionally, bring those out a little more. You can afford to drop the lead levels a little too, they're already bright enough to cut through, they don't need to be this loud. Feels a little too fast, like it's a couple of bpm too high. Could just be that I haven't fully woken up just yet, so all music sounds too fast. Not sure. Bass' got the groove. Already covered source usage in a previous post. No problem there. I find myself too bothered by the balance between leads, mid-range backing, and the rest of the track. It's like the levels are exaggerated, the soft stuff is too soft and the loud stuff too loud.

They're practically the same song. The alttp source has an intro that's no present in the oot version, and the instrumentation is different, but what most people think of as Zelda's lullaby from oot actually didn't originate in oot but in alttp. Same song, different games. Someone with a better grasp of how the database is handled could probably explain the rationale behind when and how sources count as being the same, like here, and provide some other examples of it.

FIFY. Next project I do (because no matter how frustrating this last stretch is, I will probably lead more projects) will be shorter. Much shorter. In every way. Even the abbreviation of the game will be shorter.

Check my sig for a link to my remixing guide. It has a few bits about sound design and synthesis (and maybe some other useful stuff). I think it's one of those things that comes with time, listening, and practice. I've been trying to figure out what makes sounds go well together, and how to change sounds to make them fit better, but I'm not sure I've figured anything out. If I have, it's probably in that guide of mine.

I was just grabbing Metroid remixes from wherever I could find, didn't actually notice ocr was a thing until I decided to make one of my own (for those wondering, it would have been an older, crappier version of Dragonfood). I wanted to submit it, and vgmix went down just then, so after I got tired of hoping it'd come back up, I came here instead, and didn't submit my crappy track. So any Metroid track that was on both ocr and vgmix is my answer. Possibly some Zelda tracks as well. not sure.

I'm disappointed. I consider the composer to be the the source of the melodies used. Sure, there are times when you can appropriate other melodies, expand on them, borrow, reference, and otherwise take from source where they fit. But you're not the composer of that bit. You may be an arranger, a remixer, but you're not its composer. Most of us here aren't composers, we're remixers. We don't claim to have made up every melody in our remixes, we just build our music on someone else's melody. And that's what I'm starting to consider Darren Korb in light of this: less of a composer, more of a remixer. When the central melody of your work isn't your own, I'm not sure you should be called a composer. Producer, remixer, arranger, sure; but not composer. If I thought the Zelda theme was so good and inspiring, and sampled that as the central melody (and audio) of music that I claim to be the composer of, people would freak. They know I didn't make that part of it. If I said it was as remix, where I wasn't the composer but certainly the producer and arranger, people would probably be fine with it (legal issues aside). I really don't see how royalty-free stuff is any different when it comes to composing. Supporting elements are fine, hence why people rarely react this way to drum loops and similar elements. Being arranger or producer of something based on melodic loops is fine. Altering those loops you use, even as a central melody, is probably fine. When the lead instrument is practically just dropped into the track with no alternation, it just seems lazy, and it breaks our idea of the composer who creatures his melodies from scratch. Whatever the reality of composing for games, I don't think composer means, or should mean, the same as remixer or arranger. Maybe we should assign any remixes using those same loops to Bastion? It's not just a similar melody or a vague reference, it's the same source audio. And maybe Apple should count as a fellow composer of Bastion?

Sometimes, a particular drum sample is just wrong for your track. Sometimes it's just mixed or written wrong. You can have too many drums and rhythm elements. The bass and the drums are best buddies. Or at least, should be. Layering makes the drums thicker. Just make sure all your layers complement each other. Change pitch and stuff if you have to. Less isn't more, but it can be more effective. This is especially effective during mixing - you can turn down your secondary rhythm elements and just focus on the kick, snare, and hat rhythms. Don't just use a single drum kit track; separate the drums into groups that need different processing, and process... differently. The kick and the hihat does not need the same effects Side-chaining isn't always necessary, but usually useful. Subtle is underrated. Groove > Beat.

Yes you should. I completely forgot about it. If you don't, we'll just use my version of it, so it's not something you _MUST_ do. It's just that what you've done with it has made it so much better, and I've really like to have your version on the album instead of just my own. For anyone wondering what we're talking about, I handed mak one of my remixes for this, and he's been improving it.

Got it, replied. I'm getting really excited about this thing finally coming together. This will be awesome.

Hey, we got a recommendation in the soundcloud comments. Cool. Not feeling the hihat. Drums otherwise are appropriately chill. Bass grooves well with the drums. Transition at 0:57 could be smoother. I hear the e-piano padding fade into silence and then some high strings slowly appear. Should be smoother. Transition at 1:35 could be smoother. Intro stumbles over itself. Could be smoother. Should be smoother. Seems to be 7/4, which is really cool. Basically... it should be smoother. It's pretty smooth already, got a good groove and all, this is a good basis for the track, but it should be smoother.

Yeah, keep digging up stuff that hasn't gotten attention. The Workshop can move fast sometimes, and I think everyone posting a remix here should get at least one reply. Good guy Anorax. Feels a couple of bpm too fast sometimes. Super big issue, lol. The lead in the chorus could use some additional envelope motion, or a second layer providing some motion during the longer notes. Mixing could be more deliberate, but I've heard worse; I've done worse; just should consider whether there's room for more drums and whether the leads really need to be this loud. Noticeably loud lead elements, but not a big deal. Actually pretty cool. The thing that bothers me the most is the sound effect form the game. That's a subjective thing, though.

Your intro synth is great. I hope you know how to recognize both good and bad elements of a mix. Your intro synth is a good element. Your guitar isn't. Faking electric guitar isn't easy, but it's much easier than bowed strings, or brass. You can do a lot with just a decent amp sim, a well filtered saw wave with some vibrato and pitch bends where appropriate. A recommendation. Knowing that the distortion will distort combined waveforms (whether multiple actual strings or just multiple voices or oscillators from a synth or sampler) means you can construct your rhythm guitar elements more convincingly that way. With a half-decent grasp of real electric guitar, you can emulate a lot of tricks, like writing octaves and fifths into the distortion/amp plugin for a stronger rhythm guitar sound. It's also easy to turn up distortion too much, where a better input sound would produce a much better guitar sound. As for source sounds to feed into the amp/distortion, I've had success running piano samples into it. The spectrum and dynamics of the source sound matters a lot more than whether it says guitar in your sampler/synth.

Jordan, dude, these are some badass sounds. Wasn't it just last month or so that you were working with really thin and dull sounds? Then you show up with this. Some small changes to the writing and some more work on the mixing and you could have a badass remix here. Just so you know, you're making progress.

Dude, don't bait&switch like that. Take down the remix if you feel like it, or start a new thread for the other track, but don't switch them out like this. And do not leave the track on mod review when you don't even have your track here.

No source link, no source comment. Unless I remember the source. Which I do. Starting off, it doesn't sound great. Loud obnoxious synth, overly reverb-y piano. Gets better once the other elements kick in, but the obnoxious synth is still too loud. The production overall seems to try to be super-serious and hard and dramatic, but it comes off a bit comical with the lack of smooth parts, smooth sounds for contrast. I'm not feeling the arrangement. The source is handled quite verbatim, with the melody repeated over and over with different background elements on or off. The arrangement isn't going anywhere. Those background elements are cool, dramatic, and could definitely fit a remix of this source, but the source would have to be better built into the arrangement, and the arrangement would have to be structured differently. The chord structure, which I don't remember from the source, is pretty cool. Nice mood. I would focus on building that mood instead of alternating between drama and sparse little breakdowns. Overall, I find it aimless and not particularly well arranged. That could change. You've got some good sounds here, they just need to be handled better. As are your arrangement elements, they just need to be handled better. Find some direction and build towards it. This would make a badass KH remix.

No source link, no source comment. Well actually, I simply won't dig up the source to check it out, I'll go by memory. Good for you that I've been listening quite a bit to the Deux Ex soundtrack lately. Simplistic arrangement. Nice style, but feels like too much of a medley to get on ocr. Transitions are abrupt and theres few elements carried over from one part to another. Not a fan of the fake guitar, cheap sounding drums and note clashes 3 minutes in. Has a nice mood. Needs work on the production side of things to meet the badass potential I hear in it. Needs work on the arrangement side of things as well if you're aiming to get it on ocr, since it's too much of a medley, and the parts themselves are (unless I'm misremembering, which is quite likely) quite conservative. I think you should just up the production stuff and make this a badass, non-ocr remix/medley. You've got a great atmosphere already, and fixing up the production will only improve it.

I'm more annoyed by how some of the highest sounds carve into my eardrums. Tone down any offending frequencies on your synth leads, just be careful not to just muffle them. Find a good balance. I'm wondering to what extend you actually have to mess around in the high registers, if the track would sound better if you dropped half the instruments an octave. That's just me speculating, it might sound terrible. Marble Garden isn't hard to hear. I'm finding the Azure Lake melody in what I guess is your chorus-y bit (0:55) obvious after a few listens to the source and the remix. I'm okay with the source usage. Super fun arrangement, flows well, and really hard to to groove along. I'd be content with the game-y sound you've got and call it done, but if you're going for realism you've got more work to do.

This source reminds me of something else... just what? Sounds a little too loud. The snare-ish thing sounds a bit trashy, probably adds to that sense of it being too loud and noisy. I think the percussion could all stand to be toned down a dB or two. Yep, totally hating on your drums. Source seems fine to me. The Submission Standards say the source "must be identifiable and dominant", which it is in this track imo. Stopwatching isn't the only measure of how dominant a source is. It moves well. Just a tad too loud and noisy imo, otherwise it's fine imo.

You should spend some time studying mixing: read articles on it, read my remixing guide, read zircon's guides and check out his videos, dig up good an bad examples of mixing. Your drums are terribly mixed, that's why I'm saying this. The snare is really loud and makes the kick disappear, and it sounds like the kick is a little late too. You can also improve your sound design. Your lead synth is really simplistic and whiny. If you like the simple sound, you can look at what Willrock has done with his leads, or you can look at other remixers' sound design for their leads. Many of the other instruments sound pretty good, actually, it's mostly just the lead that stands out as newby. The piano (albeit nicely written) sounds very robotic and mechanical, making it a good instrument to practice humanization on. Humanization is making sequenced midi notes sound like someone performed them, slightly adjusting timing and velocity to make it seem like someone played them instead of just wrote them. The structure of the remix is another thing you can improve. Transitions from one part to another could be better and build the dynamics of the track. Think about the track, how it moves. When is it soft, when is it getting loud, when is it loud. Where does it go? Think about it in terms of how powerful, strong, or loud it is at any point. When is it supposed to be big, when is it supposed to be small? When is it supposed to be building towards a big part, when is it supposed to calm down? That's its dynamics. (Dynamics is a word that means "difference in level", so it both applies to the whole track, and to individual instruments and notes.) Four things you can work on: mixing, sound design, humanization, structure and dynamics. You're off to a good start already.

Nope, doesn't belong in game remixes. So I moved it. Remixes is for "post work-in-progress & completed game remixes here for feedback", whereas "originals" is for "post work-in-progress & completed originals or other non-vgm related music here for feedback". It's not the best name for it if you have to read more than the subforum name to get what it's for, I agree.

Precisely. Knock yourself out, and we'll take it if it fits, and if it's done in time. And I doubt we're changing the name. It's a good name, references the day-night cycle of the game as well as the thematic good vs. evil thing it and most jrpgs have. I'm open to suggestions, I'd be a fool to ignore a better idea. Assuming anyone has an actually better idea.

Shouldn't come as any surprise that the workshop matters to me. Overall, I see a lot of good ideas, but I have a few concerns too. I like the idea of an updated workshop, with a more streamlined posting setup for both wips and releases. I like the idea of expanding ocr's database. I don't like the social network implications of it all. While forum profiles and artist profiles should be linked, a whole setup of likes and stuff doesn't seem like a good idea. Likes (and most certainly dislikes), upvotes and whatnot are all a measure of popularity rather than quality. As flattering it is for remixers who get a lot of them, it can be disheartening for remixers who don't. And people will like genres, game franchises, and things unrelated to the quality of the remix. I simply don't like likes. I'm also a bit concerned about the wip->ocr process. As a workshop moderator, I've seen so many remixes mismarked by people who don't know what mod review is for, and people struggle to update the thread prefix because they can't find the advanced edit button. I've seen mod review requests in the Post Originals. Though if that problem could be solved, maybe by an always available option to the thread starter to change the prefix without going advanced or even editing the first post; I'd like to see one or two more prefix options. Some posts aren't made for ocr; they're covers, they're experiments, they're something else. I'd like to have a prefix option for tracks intended for ocr, and tracks not intended for ocr. Not sure about the best names for them, but I think it'd help a lot. Some text popup thingy could detail the idea behind the prefixes when you mouse over one. That's all I've got. If the prefix thing can work, technically and socially (or whatever), there could be some automated page that grabs all the tracks marked for release, for mod review or whatever, making it easier for listeners, workshop mods and others to find what they're looking for. It could be integrated into the whole database, perhaps spawning subcommunities around e.g. Zelda remixes, where the group can promote releases, help wips, or whatever. Stuff like the PCReMix thing Archangel's been doing could cover a platform rather than a game franchise, so there's a potential for a lot of coverage for smaller games as well. Potential. I'll drop some more thoughts once I've skimmed through the thread a few times more.

Added mine. It's totally accurate. Whoa, mak is scary close to Ukraine.

I find this adorable. In 44kHz audio, you'd have to draw 44 000 samples for one second of audio. To do this in a VST is just ridiculous. I've seen software that lets you draw spectrum, import images and convert them to sound, and stuff like that. Unfortunately I don't remember what it was called. It's also not particularly 8-bit. Audio editors are DAW functions or separate programs that can let you do this, though. I'd advise against the approach, and instead suggest you make your sounds in synths, export them, import them into an audio editor and mess with them more there. If you start off with a blank file and just draw, you'll likely just draw a bunch of weird, low-frequency junk. You're better off making noise samples and looping them, which is also more authentic since most 8bit audio wasn't particularly long (e.g. the NES had one PCM channel, most of its audio wasn't samples). A quicker way than to mess with samples would be Chip32, which is a free plugin that lets you draw a wavetable 32 samples long and control its amplitude via a regular ADSR envelope. It's not quite so useful for drums, since you can't mess with the pitch. If you're looking to make your own drums, you should know what makes drums sound the way they do, and simplify that to what you'd expect an 8bit machine to be able to handle. Typically, this means you have an oscillator with a smooth waveform and an envelope that quickly drops the pitch to get the sound of the drum. For cymbals, you'd probably work with a spectrum of noise and mostly just work with its amplitude envelope. For snares, you'd likely have to fiddle with both. This isn't exclusive to old consoles and computers, but is also used in old drum synths.