Rozovian

Track update received. So little left...

Meteo's new versions are in, and they're great. Anyone else have any updates/revisions/redos/updates/bribes/wavs?

I'm gonna be an ass and suggest you fiddle with the synths yourself. It's actually not that hard. A lot of these examples are just old synths. Old synths tend to be simple synths, not a lot of morphing or a dozen oscillators and affects. You could probably make most of the sounds in just FM8 and only customize them on the Easy/Morph tab. Just dig in the Classic Poly Lead subtype of that and your other Native Instruments synths. Their preset sorting isn't the best, but you can find those appropriately retro synth sounding stuff under that category and a few others. Also, fiddling with Fm8 can produce some spectacular sounds.

Aren't you still about 11? I started some time in my mid teens, but didn't get any proper software for it until a few years later. I think I can say I've been doing more than just screwing with it for the past 10 years, though I should have accomplished more imo. It takes about 2 years going from total newb to making some pretty decent stuff. You're not done just because you're past that little threshold though, you have to learn something, make something every day. Anyone with that level of dedication will get some great stuff done. I'm not there yet.

Yes we should, we just shouldn't slow down the project for their sake. Which we won't.

I'm back. Drama complaints. Yes we're slow. We're sitting on some great stuff though. Check out the preview for a tiny fraction of what we've got. I've got more previews in the plans, it's just no point in starting to screw with those until we're a little further along. As in, four or five or the remaining four or five tracks completed, maybe? Orion, people are still free to grab whatever tracks they want. We've got a few unfinished tracks that we know of, and if any last-minute additions drops by in a good enough shape to be included, we'll include them. Read the first post, PM with any questions, whatever. Word of advice for any new mixes: We already have two remixes of a few sources, I would suggest you don't primarily use those sources for your remix. We're still open to new tracks, we just don't want this to become "SD3: The Mostly Angel's Fear Album". Responding to ppl's PMs now.

Downloading, sounds cool. Preview sounds a little squashed, tho. Hoping it's just my setup or ears or something.

I suggest you approach it from the opposite end of the problem. Some people have the opposite problem - their tracks end up being an eclectic mess of melodies and ideas that don't fit well together. You can solve that problem by throwing stuff out and only keeping the stuff that works well together, whether it's part of the writing, the instrumentation, or something else. You end up with a varied track that has plenty of variety. In your case, consider taking a break from making cohesive, sensible stuff and make a track that's just any crazy idea you have, thrown together. It'll get your creative juices flowing, and you should end up with a gallery of ideas that you can piece together into a more cohesive track once you get rid of the random junk (save it somewhere tho, it might be useful for another track). Basically, go nuts with random ideas and make something that doesn't have to be the least bit cohesive. Then see what parts might actually make a cohesive whole in a different context. Use those.

Here I thought "it's summer, I've now got loads and loads of time for music stuff". Should have known better. I have a feedback PM I should do, and then look over the mixing on my tracks and finish Frenzy. It's not much. Just need to stop doing other stuff for a day. Archangel, Phonetic Hero, Jormungand and I have tracks that aren't finished yet. Once they're done, we're handing over this behemoth to project eval. Until they're done, there's still time to fiddle with your tracks, in case there was something you weren't quite satisfied with, or otherwise wanted to change. We're also still open to more tracks. Rbrn showed me a superfun baroque remix of a track. if anyone else wants to do more tracks and get them on the album, that's perfectly fine. It'll help me organize the track order on the discs if I have a few bonus tracks I can put in there. We're also still accepting art, if anyone wants to help out with the previews and the trailer. We've got some cool people already, and some amazing art, but there's still room for more. PM me for details. In other words, I suck at this project management thing. Things are stupidly slow, but we're not stopping.

Think it through. What do you need from the original? Load midi, take those parts. Make your arrangement. Done.

It's an old Civ joke. tvtropes.org: Subsequent Civs had referenced this as an in-joke.

No degree, who cares? Bad portfolio, no jobs.

If you go the legal route - which you always should if there's any money involved, as we were recently reminded of - you don't afaik need permission, you need a license. Not sure about Germany's copyright laws and license stuff, so look up the royalty collecting organizations' information about it. I would expect that there's a form you need to fill out so they know where to send the license money. To be on the safe side, call one of those organizations and just ask all the questions you have.

I remember going from Logic 7 to 8, it messed with the folder structure and screwed up some samples for exs24. Can someone check that the old install of 9 or 8 or whatever you've got still works fine, 32-bit plugins and all?

You're basically using long stroke samples when you should have short strokes. This makes it feel really soft compared to everything else. It sounds very out of place to have such a soft sound too, as the drums are far more aggressive, so an overall stronger sound is needed. Whether the strings you're using have good high-velocity staccato samples I don't know. I'd say that most cheap sample libraries don't come with decent solo strings, so you'll need a fair amount of fiddling (pun intended) with the notes and sampler to make it sound good. Right now, it sounds like someone is playing it on a keyboard, not someone playing the actual instrument. Think of how it should sound if actually performed. How long and how strong each stroke would be. If you're using Kontakt, you can screw a lot with the sound, while other samplers might not offer the same opportunity. In any case, first see what you can do with just the midi and the most obvious buttons in the sampler. Then there's the standard mixing things you can do to mix it in better - the right type and amount of reverb, the right eq, any modifications to the dynamics via compression - which all depends on how you want to solve whatever problem remains. The idea is to make all the instruments fit well together, but you have to start with using sounds that sound good together.

Your drums are great. Your lead strings are horrible. The rest is in between. It's nice that it's not a latino guitar mix like most remixes of it.

Cool source. Never really heard anything from NieR except what's been posted on ocr, and that's amongst hundreds of other remixes I haven't really gotten to yet. Super-fun groove you've got going. Repetition is a bit of a problem. There's also something about the rhythm guitar that bothers me, could be that it doesn't sound like anything fun for a jazz guitarist to play. But it really hangs on the vocals to carry the track, and that's where the biggest problem lies. If these vocals are from an arrange album, ocr isn't gonna pass the track. You need new vocals for it if you're aiming at ocr, tho nothing's stopping you from using this version wherever else you want. Another thing is that I don't think the groove and the chords alone are enough to justify the whole length of the track, so you can't just chuck the vocals and sub it as an instrumental... especially with the repetitive groove you've got. It's cool, but it gets old, even with the vocals. You can work on some variations, some build-up and breakdowns, the dynamic structure of the track, dropping out instruments and taking it to a half-tempo part, stuff like that, where appropriate. So new vocals, more variation and dynamic changes, stuff like that. Cool stuff overall.

Sorry man, you gotta redo at least some of vocals. Your intonation is all over the place, and I'm not sure you'll be very happy with the emotional performance you're doing. There's a few places where the vocals just seem awkward to sing, emphasizing the wrong syllable or the wrong word. It gets better when you start screaming. What does that say about your indoor voice? A protip I've heard is to sing to a piano accompaniment, simply because the piano timbre makes it easier to hit the right notes. The music is a little weird. The sax is a really weird choice for a lead here. I'm not saying it can't be done, but it's weird. Here, at least. It might be a detriment, but if you get the rest of the track, mainly the vocals working, I don't think it'll be much of a problem. The overall production is okay. The 3:30 break could use some touching up. There's some timing problems and I'm not sure about the mix there. The louder parts seem better balanced. Wouldn't pass this. Could be great, but still needs work.

I think it cuts off a little too soon at the end. Beautiful. Your lead instruments might be a tad too loud, and I think you could clean up your low end a bit. I don't think you need that much reverb, but I can't tell if it's gonna be a problem either. It's definitely a track that benefits from lots of reverb, it's just a question of how much. Other than that, there's not much else to do. Not familiar with the source, but there's at least a few parts that are easy to recognize. I think you're in the green, source-wise, but it's hard to say without spending more time learning the source. Moves well, sounds great, could use some small level edits and low end eq, but overall it sounds just about done. Nice work.

You're walking a fine line, dude. Super-muffled piano, clear and loud bass... in many ways, you're doing the opposite of the mix most people would. I think I get the aesthetic you're going for, I'm just not sure how to judge it. Different sets of drums. Hm... I was already feeling like the drums were repetitive, but when you bring in a new kit just for variation it just feels lazy. I get the change you're going for, but it feels like a "my first track" kind of thing, where you're just throwing in new things for the heck of it. Your choice of aesthetic probably has a big effect on this. I don't think it's a bad idea, but there's something about how you did it that doesn't sit right with me. Source is there, pretty much throughout, at least in the piano ostinato. It's like a vertical build where you're taking the source and adding stuff on top of it. Those added parts seem to be from source as well. With a minimal source like this, that's kind'a what you have to do if you don't chop it up into little pieces and turn it into one of my liberal, meandering messes. It all seems connected to the source, so no problem there. Aside from the issues I have with the drums, the track has a nice, slow groove and transition fine between parts. I think it works. So I'd just complain about the drums. It's not like you should have super-intricate busy drums here, but it feels like the electronic drum kit is missing some life, and the raw ones are a bit too raw. The bass is a tad too loud, too, so you could fiddle with track levels too. Nice groove, cool aesthetic, some sound design issues and some minor levels things. I like it. -- btw, yes, just pm us if we're not doing stuff. I took a bit of a vacation from the board, and it seems the other mods did too. I check in for PMs and stuff regardless, so that tends to work to remind us we've got stuff to do here.

I've tried my hand at remixing this, way back when. Source is quite familiar. There's definitely one recurring bit from source pretty almost throughout, and the lead melody is fairly easy to make out even when you're just playing on its rhythm rather than the melody itself. There's a few parts that I feel don't have much connection to source, but I'm pretty sure I'd recognize the source if someone played this for me and didn't tell me where it was from. I think you're in the clear, source-wise. Nice work with the time sigs. Bookends. it flows quite well throughout. it flows well, and kicks up towards the end. For whatever reason, I'm getting a bit of a Mega Man X vibe from it at times. Can't be a bad thing, right? On the production side, it feels a bit too bright. Hats are pretty loud, and I think some of the synths could be a slight nuance more muffled too. Could just be your loudening that's doing this, so ease up on that stuff on the high frequencies and you should have the whole thing in a pretty good place. Nice work guys.

Don't you mean Brandroid Strader?

The internal controllers. From what I've seen, pretty much anything can be connected to anything. I use Logic, which doesn't do automation particularly well. I have no idea how to control a random knob in Logic the way I could make it work in FL - and I can't remember when I last used FL.

There's undoubtedly two layers in there. The bottom layer is pretty much any warm pad. I don't think you need any help with that. The top layer sounds like a higher harmonic FM synth. A quick, blind guess puts it at the 5th or 7th harmonic, or something like that. It could be multiple modulators too, making the sound more complex. That's aside from all the other effects that turn it into a pad sound rather than something more of a bell. So you probably need a synth capable of fm synthesis, if not a dedicated fm synth (like Native Instruments' FM8). Some synths have an fm effect that modulates the filter cutoff frequency, but that's not what you want here. I have a section on fm synthesis in my remixing guide (see my sig), but I don't remember how in-depth it is. Still, it might be helpful in wrapping your head around fm synthesis if you're not already familiar with it.

I think the question isn't phrased right. It's either "what is a good starter DAW?" or "what is the best midi sequencer?" Those are two very different questions. For starter DAWs, I tend to point to GarageBand on Mac (Logic can import those files when it's time to upgrade), and Mixcraft on Windows. They're not particularly advanced, and because of their lack of advanced features they can focus on the basics. Once you know how sequencers work and how to mix stuff, you can move on to a proper DAW. More advanced features, more specialized. FL is well suited to electronic music because of its flexibility in routing stuff all over the place. Live is well suited for - not surprisingly - live performance. Pro Tools is well suited for working with recordings. Most other DAWs fall somewhere in between. They can all do midi, recording, mixing, a bit of everything. Of course, it always takes time and practice to get used to a new tool, so it's not always best to start with an entry-level DAW. Maybe you'd sooner master the proper DAWs if you started with one of those instead. On the other hand, they can easily overwhelm you with all their options and ca be needlessly complicated sometimes. As for working with raw midi, I can't actually answer that. I've heard good things about various notation software, but I have a feeling they're focused on notation rather than cc messages and other, increasingly advanced midi stuff.