Rozovian

Hyperbolic example of some insult vs. insult + indignation (finally a reason to look the word and and start using it): "You are a filthy, horrible turd of subhuman scum, and you should be put down and your house burned down. No offense. :)" On a slightly less confrontational note: We're at twice past the goal already? How'd this happen? It's like ppl actually like what we do.

The most important thing is to get the timing and performance down. Turn off all other programs, turn off tracks you don't need when recording, get the latency down to something tolerable. If nothing else helps, render your whole project to audio, import that into a blank project, and record the parts you need to record there. midi should not have that much latency, but recording audio on an older machine can be a problem.

Dunno how up to date this thing is, so things might not be exactly like this anymore, but this tutorial should help you get started with Reaper.

Necessary? No. Useful? Yep. 200 dollars for Komplete is a good deal too.

Star here. I know nothing about music or sound, I've got horrible ppl skills, don't understand English. Also, I have no internets, and I hate newbs. I'm totally not a Mac user, either. And not in Europe. /sarcasm I screw with time signatures, and make groovy stuff in different flavors. ps. MW, your rules for pairings make little sense. Might wanna rewrite that.

Still making that typo, I see. Grr. Good find.

So now we have two ways of deciding star/novice status: personal choice, and mixpost, neither is perfect, but they're the best we have so far. MW's call for which to use. Relevant. A mixpost is like a good score in a game, eg darts. Just because you got a good score once doesn't mean you're good at it. You're good at it when you consistently get a good score in it. Your idea of a good score will change as you improve. First, a good score is hitting the target at all. Then it's hitting the target with all darts. Then it's getting higher scores. Maybe 15 (on a 1-10 target) counts as good at some point, later 30. There's more to it than dumb luck, you have to throw the darts in the right direction too.

Updated to v10, see first post. I could be lying all the way through a whole new chapter. Feedback needed.

Yeah, it's probably the best we've got. Anyone can sell stuff on soundcloud or bandcamp, anyone can take a few audio and/or music courses, anyone can have had an instrument in their room for years, anyone can have x views on his youtube vids... and still know jack shit about making music. As you can have none of that, and still make good tracks, none of those things are good requirements for this star thing. If you get a mix posted, you're doing something right with your music. So it's something.

1:54 weird note, sounds clashing. That's three more words that before. How's that EP thing going, when can I get everything with a single click?

Like working at two studios, having a music degree, been playing guitar and piano for 15 years and done the drums even longer? Having a posted mix, even if it's a solo mix, doesn't mean ppl know what they're doing, it could just be dumb luck in a genre that lets you get away with more. If supposed stars aren't comfortable critting and supporting a novice, and would rather be novices themselves, that's fine. No need to overcomplicate things, ppl can choose for themselves. But if things need to be formal, I suggest the minimum requirement for the star category would be a solo mixpost (past or pending), or one where you were the primary arranger and mixer. I think most of the folks here prefer the novice category over the star category, so what are the rules regarding eg Palpable from being a novice?

My Last Audience, and possibly hakstock's track, could be purple. Haven't updated the list. It's summer.

Not sure I would have thought of it without the thought planted by the post, but yeah, it might lack feeling. Or rather, it lacks color. It's got mood, like a sepia-toned photo, but those are its only colors. Now you got me thinking about what actually gives something color, how some tracks are cartoonishly colorful while others are fps-brown. Can't just be sound design, can't just be melody, can't just be mixing... or can it?

How did I miss this!?

You can go the copout lyrics route and just . Using the empty verse parts as interludes before verses proper might also work, tho then you'd have to write new verses with more content... unless you just add/remove layers, which could also work.Blablablah. Cool stuff.

lol, intro sounds like two mixes played simultaneously. Also, work on the sound design, stuff like how you get rid of the wind sfx, and how you place the instruments matters a lot. I like your brass.

Quote the first post to get the color tags. If I like it, maybe I'll copy it to the first post. Good idea, BS.

Little to add to what skryp already said. Your leads need work. Sweet soundscaping. Drums get boring, some additional minimalist synth drums would be cool. Original intro, conservative parts, long remix, a part I recognize but don't know where (could be way later in the same source, could be another dkc source, or something else, idunno, can't remember, too lazy to check...), rewritten source (which is too quiet, btw), the same unknown part again, and end. Yeah, still agreeing with skryp, a pretty good shot at getting posted, tho not without its flaws.

1:54 whut? Other than that, this is beautiful... which is pretty much what I expect from your mixes these days. It's a haunting source, but it lends itself to a lot of different styles. This works really well, tho with the occasional weird choice of harmony. But yeah, if I'm not itching for long ambient tracks, this would probably get skipped a few minutes in. Could be 4-5 minutes of material here, but 7 is pushing it in most playlists.

If it's a compo primarily aimed at novices, every novice that wants in on it should have that opportunity. As a supposed star, I think we can handle having more than one novice per star. MW's call, obviously.

On a less exciting note, I just finished one of my mixes for this album. Or at least, I wrote the ending and bounced to file. I guess that means I'm finally half way done with it. As for the rest of you, lemme know if I've missed something you've sent me. With 2-18 being some mixing polish and spuming from being done, we're one step closer to completely done. Oh right, preview, mak's track, etc..

The ideal situation would be to have a day job that pays the bills, and one that's flexible enough about your workdays that you have time to make music when you're hired to do music. I mean, I haven't made enough dough from my music (maybe I should start selling my music, that might help) to get the money I've spent on music back. That's a couple of thousand bucks, Logic, Komplete, and Omnisphere making up most of it. Here's hoping my job will let me be flexible when the time comes to score a AAA superselling indie-favorite steam hit... thing.

lol, I totally thought it was one of your usual sounds. It's very much in line with what you usually do, how you usually sound. Consistency, for better or worse. But why's it supposed to be mechanical and "dumbed down"? Even with the glitch effects, wouldn't a more humanized source sound still sound better?

Looks like we missed this one. Still want a mod review or is it already subbed?

.Bizarre scale conflict at 0:26 and 0:39. Sound is ok so far. Crash destroyed by compression, probably due to runaway lows. High-pass everything that doesn't need subbass. Xylophone and reverb, the age-old struggle with making them sound real. This doesn't. 2:01 weird scale again. Weird arrangement: driving part, breakdown, short driving aprt, breakdown, long breakdown, pause, stuff with big drums in the background... The first two minutes work ok imo, but then it becomes breakdown upon breakdown. If I wasn't seeing the track structure in the soundcloud player, I'd assume the track was ending after those two minutes, but there's almost two minutes more. yes you can have long, soft parts. Yes, not everything has to end with a bang. No, your arrangement still doesn't work. You lost direction after two minutes and spent the rest of the time trying to end the track. I know that feeling, that's how a lot of my tracks are written... but you have to make them work. The new melodies in the ending don't have any connection to the previous stuff, so you could cut those. Ending it at 3:21 might work, those last melodies don't contribute anything that's worth the extra half minute. PRODUCTION - Unrealistic sequencing - there's humanization, but there could be more. think like an orchestra conductor - Overcompressed (pumping/no dynamics) - okay, only one instance of this STRUCTURE - Lacks coherence overall (no "flow") - really loses direction half way through - Pace too plodding - too long without knowing where to go and it feels like this In other words, a few technical issues, a few writing issues, main problem is the arrangement itself. You can keep the first two minutes pretty much as-is, structurally, but everything beyond that seem to be random ideas for breakdowns. Pick one, then end the track. Or write something else there. Find a direction and go for it. It's ok to make a short track, and if the direction you go takes a few minutes to finish, that's cool too. Just make it sound deliberate and directed. It's otherwise pretty good. You've gotten a lot better since last time I heard one of your tracks. Keep it up.