Rozovian

I've noticed some of my tracks distorted, and that's when I was still listening to stuff on youtube. Youtube is (unfortunately?) a video site, so it's focus is on video quality. Going hd with ocr's vids might not be worth it, since most of the stream bandwidth would go to the video rather than the audio. Bandwidth isn't really our problem once the stuff is on YT (only when uploading), but we're dealing with 2.5k tracks. That's of course, unless there's better audio encoding options available. As part of the torrent update, Larry collected wavs from artists that still had or could render them. If that goes another round, there should be a fair amount of higher-quality audio to use. If the track vids are updated I reckon hd is on the todo-list, but without higher quality material to start with I can't say if it's worth it. It's ultimately up to the vid and promo ppl. Besides, ppl who do most of their music listening on YT are hardly audio quality connoisseurs. TL;DR: Audio could be better, might become better, wait for official word.

I remixed Space Invaders. Source has four notes, it's the only source I used, and there's no part of the mix that doesn't use those four notes one way or another. You should never add another source just for length, imo. If you use multiple sources, they should complement each other in some way. A single source can be rewritten with new chords, new mode, new uses of snippets of melodies, and original content can be written with references to source. There's a lot that can be done with a single melody, and most music has more than just a single melody - they've got backing, rhythms, chords... If you want a challenge, grab some really short and simple melody, like the SMB underground or something, see how many different takes on it you can do. Give it 15-30 minutes just to screw with it, see what you come up with. You should end up with a handful of different directions to go with it, and some of those might work together. Once you know how to do that, do the same with whatever parts of your 30-45 sec source, and see what you can do with those.

Starrety star star. I make meandering fake shaker music.

I like it simple: Composition, Performance, Production.

Nope. I've written a supposedly useful guide about music stuff, check my sig. Beyond that, if you play in a band, start trading instruments. Bass isn't a bad instrument to come from, assuming you've been playing more than just root notes and octaves.

Got a wip from Blaine, who apparently was the only one to read that I wanted wips a few days ago. Guys, we're a handful of tracks from completion. I know I haven't been the most proactive project lead around here, so I understand if you've lost faith in this project, but consider how much is actually done, and how little is left. I'll be sending out a general call to arms to every remixer who's ever been with us once I've sorted out some preview-related things. We're finishing this. edit, cuz I like to be discrete and not announce cool stuff, instead keeping it secret for the ppl WHO ACTUALLY READ THE THREAD AS YOU ALL SHOULD! *ahem* So... I've got some cool ppl lined up for additional art, and we'll soon have art for the preview and can finally release that. In the mean time, it'd be nice to have this thing done by xmas, cuz I'm sort'a kind'a getting a life and a behemoth like this sitting unfinished is a little heavy on me. Anyway, messages to remixers coming soon. Probably PMs, cuz ppl have been horrible about giving me their emails. Not all of you, and I appreciate that. A lot.

FM8, at least on mac, is 150 megs - audio unit, standalone, everything. If you need to move something of that size to another drive, you should probably retire your last-millennium machine and get a new one. I have no idea what you're thinking. The size of a drive doesn't have much to do with its speed. Get a large drive, put all your junk there, keep the main drive for all your music production.

Fast drive + fast connection = fast loading of whatever's on it. And as Kanthos said, it's not the actual plugins you need much space for, it's their sample libraries. I've got my Omnisphere and Kontakt libraries on a separate drive. Should have gotten a faster drive, but besides that, it works fine.

If you wanna lock the thread, ask a mod to do it, don't bump it. Now it's on the first page of R&C, taking up space that a more productive thread could use. Now you know. I'm locking it now. If you wanna unlock it or something, hit me up, or talk to another mod.

Treat it like any vocals - good writing, good performance, good mixing. Words that don't fit well, in length, stress, whatever become problematic. Overacting is as bad as underacting. Place the voice at the appropriate distance from the listener.

Actually, whatever's in the tags is the temp title. Logic uses the project file name by default, not the name of the rendered file. iTunes, and probably most music players, consider the title tag before the file name. Not that the explanation matters, you have the name now.

Reminder: 25th, and then stuff happens. Dude, a means of communication doesn't fail just because I don't reply right away. Also, the news is pretty kickass. You'll all see.

Your description seems to fit the functionality of any loop/region-based sequencer, with the exception of the note input display - most wouldn't bother with graphical representations of instruments when the note data ends up similar to that of a piano anyway. Regarding programs, Wikipedia has some links for you. I would personally recommend GarageBand or its Windows twin Mixcraft, but any software where you can make music will do, at least until you get serious about the production stuff. If you don't have any prior music skills, you'll start out by making terrible music for at least a year. Just so you know. I think we all did that.

You won't hear every track in the trailers, so if you don't have data caps or are really low on hard drive space or something, get everything, keep what you like. I keep discovering cool new tracks by listening to random mixes from albums or ocr by year or by game or something. In any case, enjoy the music. As for computer problems, this help & newbies forum regularly does help with computer issues of different kinds. Check older threads for the kinds of problems ppl have asked about, and don't be afraid to ask. Just don't ask too obvious things, the kinds that a quick google search could have solved.

Yeah, s(M) only displays one channel at a time. To check both channels at the same time, you'd need two instances of the plugin. I'd be cool if it had some other display modes, maybe amplitude for both channels (like audio files are displayed in many DAWs), M/S, mono... Still a cool tool, and I'm glad you figured it out yourself. Others might have the same problem/question. I'll just lock the thread instead.

A torrent file is really just a list of the files and where to look for ppl who has them, none of which you really need to know - just open it in a torrent app, like the one Chern suggested, and the program will connect to a torrent tracker and look for users who have those files available (seeders), from whom it then downloads the files from. Those files are in the usual mp3 format that you should have no problem listening to. Now you know more.

Everyone has their own ears. The judges you had were apparently cool with arrangement, others might object, and as I'm not a judge I ultimately have no real say. Good for your arrangement, at least. Regarding levels, try dropping lead levels and slowly raising them until you hear them over the other tracks. It's a trick that works when balancing any kind of track, tho you might wanna even out the drums and other stuff before calling any adjustment final. 1:35 is actually a pretty cool transition. I'm not quite as fond of the one that follows, nor the part that follows. Personal preference, I guess. edit: By modern, I mean that unlike the source, which is tracker music without reverb, eq, compression, and other tools we take for granted in DAWs; a modern sound is more flexible. Tracks have room for each other in their frequency balance and dynamics, there's a greater variation in note sound (as opposed to single, unfiltered samples), more humanization (where appropriate), and more space/placement effects. In other words, a modern sound is one that makes use of the bigger toolbox. I don't mean to say that the source is unrefined or that the composer didn't put thought into the sound design - with trackers you kind'a had to - but that the resulting sound is, compared to modern standards, raw and direct. Visually, it's cartoons with static elements, hard shading and primary colors, as opposed to the smoother motion, greater palette and freedom to choose shading based on style. Physically, it's cast-iron tools versus those made out of laser-cut compound materials. It's not arbitrary.

I wouldn't exactly call the source dominant, as per the standards, but it's there, and arrangement seems kosher. On the production side, I'd just want the melodic elements in the track's first half louder and thus more prominent. (post so short I have to add that it's actually a mod review) Kickass track.

Well, the new Halo music is as memorable as the previous stuff, I recognize it in your mix after a single listen to the source. Beyond just recognizing it, it feels pretty conservative. It feels like a cover of the 2:08+ part of the source. A few listens and comparisons more, and I think it's in the clear. Feels cohesive and develops well. Might stay on the loud end of the dynamic range a little too much, but it works fine. Production sounds pretty good. Why you're not banging away at the keys to get them to punch through the louder orchestra parts is beyond me. Alternatively, to keep the more restrained velocity sound you've got, just raise the piano level a little. It's not quite drowning, but it's up to it's neck in bigass orchestra instruments. You could also lower the overall level. I'm hearing some compression, and the track is hugging pretty close to the top. This is an orchestra, not noise. Really weird whistling sound at 2:26, might wanna get rid of that. My biggest concern is actually the use of a stem of the original, dunno what ocr policy is on remix-friendly stems released, as 343 Industries clearly support ppl to remix it. I like what you've done here. btw, it'd be great if you wanna do a track in this style for the sd3 project, I don't think we have big epic orchestra combined with a piano with a prominent role like here. ARRANGEMENT / INTERPRETATION ~ Too conservative - sticks too close to the source - I think it's in the clear, but it's still quite close to source ~ Too much direct sampling from original game audio - the stem question PRODUCTION - Too loud - Overcompressed (pumping/no dynamics) STRUCTURE ~ Not enough changes in sounds (eg. static texture, not dynamic enough) - builds up to a level and just stays there for half the track, and those high strings aren't helping

This is ambient? Production sounds as good as the original - which is dated. While your sounds are higher quality, the mixing is a loud mess. While it's good to have leads louder than backing, they don't need to be this loud. Likewise bass and a lot of other stuff. Just listen to how everything else disappears under the clap. The dynamics are different, but the track follows the source a bit too closely to be a clean pass by my idea of an ocr arrangement. Definitely a track you can do stuff with, you just gotta get out of the idea of redoing the source over a more modern backing and instead find a new idea, a new thing to do with it. You've got a good base to build on here, with the melodies already in there, as well as a slew of cool sounds to work with. Just find the idea. ARRANGEMENT / INTERPRETATION - Too conservative - sticks too close to the source PRODUCTION - Too loud ~ Low-quality samples - you can keep the oldschool stuff, it's cool, but you gotta process those sounds to fit with the more modern ones - Overcompressed (pumping/no dynamics) ~ Mixing is muddy (eg. too many sounds in the same range) - could be cleaner rather than just have everything amped up STRUCTURE - Too repetitive - it feels like a repeat of the source, which already reused some melodies between parts. it doesn't really need to change up all the time, it just gotta change enough to let our ears breathe new air, if that analogy makes any sense.

No wonder they sounded similar.

You might be mistaken about the kind of remixes ocr is about. We write our own arrangements and produce them ourselves, and typically don't use any of the original audio, the same goes for a lot of vgm remixers in the scene. I could be mistaken, but a quick listen to the example you linked didn't reveal anything drastically different from the original, so there's no reason to remix the remix. Can't speak for the entire remixing scene, but that's how I see it. To turn your question around, why would anyone remix a remix when they can remix the original?

There's a lot more to a good club hit that those four bars. Aside from the whole production side of it, those four bars need to be memorable, and you gotta build up to them and structure the whole track around a dynamic experience. Anyway... I can think of three very different questions or types of questions you could be asking here. 1. The question neblix answered: "how do I make music?" 2. Specifics about these particular mixes, eg "how do I get Avicii's piano/stab sound", "which tracks are side-chained, and how much?", questions like that. 3. How do I turn originals into this kind of remixes? I'll focus on this one: Get stems, if possible. Otherwise, get high-quality versions of the track(s) you wanna mix. Find parts of them you can use. Craft your own arrangement based on those parts, be they looped <1second-slices or 32-bar choruses. Make use of dynamics and create build-ups and breakdowns. Apply effects to alter the sound the way you want it, just know the sound you want and change what you need to. Add your own instrumentation where needed, probably starting with drums. Mix everything well. Practice for a few years. Compare your old attempts to your new ones. Decide if it's still worth pursuing. Keep working. In other words, learn the toolbox, learn the material, learn the process, make stuff.

I was planning on sitting this one out, but figured I'll at least have time and energy to listen and crit a track and give some pointers on stuff. I'm in.

You can also modulate other things with LFOs, like pulse width or the pitch of a synced oscillator, but just as well filter, pan, or anything else you can route the lfo to. There are other effects that also use pitch modulation, like chorus and flanger. If you actually can't find a vibrato effect for audio, you might be able to use a flanger as a substitute, depending on its parameters. A pitch-modulated-only signal without feedback is really just a vibrato. Mix it in with the original (signal feedback optional) and you've got a flanger. Stupidly fast vibrato is used in synths. You might have heard of frequency modulation synths by the abbreviated term FM synth.