Rozovian

Yeah, if it sounds good, it's good. ppl will groan at so many different things, changing key is far from the worst you can do to a track, just look at how many comments any vocal track on ocr gets, and how many of those are ppl complaining that there's vocals in a video game remix. Anyway, while the key change may be used a lot in certain types of songs, it's not without a reason: .

You get a free pass on this whole thing because you got handed the task to fix up 102. And what a track that's become. I'm writing feedback on stuff now. edit: half done, time for a break.

Nah, that's not how I write double remixes. Fixing it now. While I'm here, I might us well remind ppl that having your name taken off the tracklist doesn't mean we hate you and want you to go away, it just means we're not sure about your progress. There's a simple and obvious solution to that. Proper tracklist update (and replies to ppl) coming once I've sorted the tracks out. Which will be later.

Okay, so... I just went over the tracks we've got and wrote a tracklist based on all that. Todo: 1. listen to all the tracks that came in 2. reply to ppl 3. update tracklist on whether or not tracks are finished 4. clean stuff up, open tracks ppl have been sitting on for too long 5. update public tracklist, add new colors for whether we need consent for tracks 6... oh right, that public teaser trailer I've been promising... well, my job term is coming to an end, so I should have time...

We want wavs, and preferebly dynamic ones without a lot of processing on the actual output, so that any adjustments we have to make won't cause a lot of artifacts. Imagine if we were talking about images instead. A wav would be a high-resolution, full-color image, and an mp3 would be a normal-sized jpeg-compressed file. If we then have to resize and adjust colors on the jpegs, they'll end up with ugly blocks, blurry stretching, odd color blotches, stuff like that. Do a google image search for low quality image jpeg compression, see how those pics look. We don't want the audio to be like that. So the wavs you get us would ideally be mixed well enough so we don't have to do any adjustments, but if we do, we'd prefer to have more control and not have to do a lot of damage control to try to undo overcompression and other problems. I'm not gonna ask everyone to get us new, unprocessed wavs, just to leave us some headroom and stuff to work with on your unfinished tracks. Also, Meteo does not get to name anything. Ever.

There's still around 10 hours until I wake up tomorrow (the announced deadline), so there's still lots and lots of time. Besides, I have work tomorrow, so it might not be until some time in the evening until I get to this stuff. Then it takes a while to go through it all. There's time. Just dunno when I'll actually be able to respond to all of these tracks that have rained in. But they make me happy.

Let's see if I can refrain from saying anything about the production. The intro works ok until 0:11 or so, where it starts to sound like you have no idea what rhythm is. I count an unusual number of beats in each iteration of the melody. While there are styles that can do stuff like that well, it really easily throws ppl off, which I think is to the detriment of the track here. At the same time, the track is otherwise a pretty typical adaptation of the source to 4/4, the odd beats is one of few things that makes it interesting. The first break is another thing that makes it interesting, and unlike the former, it actually works. At 1:12 it's a break barely referencing the source, at 1:28 it turns cool. Not sure the sliced up crash is the right way to end it, but it's a cool break and a step away from what every other song of storms remix on youtube is. The bass doesn't really seem written for this style at all, it seems to fit classical music more than EDM. Track finally gets going at 0:42, but it feels like it's losing energy and drive. This could probably be tweaked in the sound design and mixing, but the writing is an important factor in it as well. It should jump in intensity there. A more engaging bass groove could provide some more drive to the track. There are other times where the energy levels don't change in a natural way, like the drop at 3:06 when the hihat just disappears, also 2:15 and 3:20. Stuff like leaving out the kick from the first beat in a new part (which you do) can break a track's flow. In the finale at 2:37, the track gets quite messy. There's a lot of melodies playing at once. The slow melodic bass, the arpeggios, the synth strings melody, and the piano... It's messy. Source-wise, it's unmistakably the Song of Storm / Windmill Hut. It follows the progression of the source very closely most of the time. The deviations it does feel more like original material spliced in than a take on the source. It's like the bad recipe for remixing: take the original melody, change a few notes, add a few notes, repeat the procedure in the next measure. While nothing says you can't use the same chords and rhythms as the source (as long as there's interpretation), not consciously deviating in those means you'll have to deviate more in the more obvious parts - especially lead melody - leading to the problem you've got here. A lot of the track seems written like a first impression of EDM. Lead synth, some side-chaining on bass and/or other elements, four-on-the-floor drums, snare rolls... but with little regard to pacing. At the same time, you seem to wanna deviate from the EDM tropes, with your sliced beat section, the odd numbered beats, and the plodding bass writing. Should you fix up the mixing and stuff and sub it? You have some ideas here that could work well, but I don't think the writing is up to par. At least not yet. I listened to some of your other tracks on soundcloud, they're in quite different styles. If you wanna make an EDM track, listen to more EDM, get a better idea of the conventions of how it does things and what you can do with it while still keeping the flow. Listen to stuff, it helps a lot. edit: long post. and no production crits in there, either. whoa.

2250 free tracks and a great community to learn music doesn't make ocr a truly great website?

I'm getting a DKC1 vibe from this source. That's never a bad thing. mod rev: What weird rhythm is th... yay, 6/8! The low range could be cleaner, bass and kick kind'a fight over the same space there. Side-chain the bass away from the kick, or separate with EQ. This isn't a loud dance kind of thing, so you don't have to worry about making everything ultra-loud, which should make the process a little easier. The track could be a bit louder, but it'll do better as a soft track than as an overcompressed one, so don't try too hard to fix that. You could raise the levels on everything but the drums and bass, tho. You could also shorten the kick drum slightly, it feels a little long and heavy for a light track, and the rest of the instrumentation doesn't make this a heavy track. The drums end rather abruptly. The arrangement is a bit boxy, as is clearly visible in the soundcloud display. Some variations and fills to the drums could break that a bit, as would lead-ins on the other instruments, and occasional appearances like the 1:18 bell lead forewarning. Seems like the drums stay in intro mode until 1:50 when they go into verse mode. Not to tell you how to write your tracks, but that seems a little weird, structurally. There's a lot of nice background stuff going on here, filling up the track nicely. The sounds are a bit vanilla (the ones that don't quite fit the extra simple chiptune aesthetic, thatis), but that's not a problem most of the time. That one rhythm synth that filters into existence around 0:53... idunno, I don't quite like it. Can't put why in words, tho. Lots of suggestions and nitpicks. ARRANGEMENT / INTERPRETATION ? Too conservative - I'm having trouble committing this source to memory, so I'll leave this open for another mod to sort out. The style is different, of course. PRODUCTION - nitpicks, mostly - Too quiet - but not by much - Mixing is muddy (eg. too many sounds in the same range) - just the low range, tho STRUCTURE - Pace too plodding - the drum writing gives this a really long intro - Too repetitive - the boxy arrangement makes it feel worse than it is I'd place this in NO, resub territory. That means you're doing something right.

Tear your song apart? i can do that. mod rev: Lead is really shrill. Drums are on autopilot, both the dance drums and the breakbeat ones. There's some embellishments when you switch from one to the other, but it's not enough imo. I think the track's biggest problem is that it relies on too few ideas. From 0:14 to 2:03 you're basically just looping the same section, adding new layers every once in a while. At 1:43, you drop most of those elements and bring the track back to how it was before they came in... nothing's changed. That's basically a single looped section for a minute and a half. If the melody was more interesting, or the track had some changes to chords or something, it might stay more interesting, but as-is, it gets repetitive really quick. What's worse is that despite the change to rhythm in the breakbeat section, a lot of the same elements persist there as well, meaning that the whole track ends up feeling like a single loop with layers muted and unmuted. That's not a good arrangement. The source is terrible, too. There's more that could be done with it, but that'll take some creative mangling of the melodies in it. Consider changing chords, scales, rhythms, lengths, stuff like that. Beginning the lead melody a quarter note later and forcing it to a different chord can change its feel a lot. just as an idea for what you can do with a melody. Production is decent. Aside from the shrill lead and a lack of mid-range content, I don't expect production to be a problem should you submit this. ARRANGEMENT / INTERPRETATION - Too conservative - sticks too close to the source - the aforementioned loop is conservative, and when there's little else, everything is conservative STRUCTURE - Not enough changes in sounds (eg. static texture, not dynamic enough) - Too repetitive I don't think this is a good source to work with. While sources short on material lend themselves well to being screwed with in all kinds of ways and still being easy to recognize, it actually requires some screwing with in order to keep them from being repetitive. That the source isn't pleasant to listen to doesn't really help your remix. This wouldn't get posted. btw, mod review is for when you're done with the mix and wonder if it's postable on ocr, not for when you just want more feedback. You can ask us for feedback anyway, we're not _that_ rich and famous.

Those bells are a bit shrill now, the intro seems a bit sudden. Aside from that, I'm fine with it. It's minimalistic, but I think it works, it's a cool, menacing mood. imo, the track getting posted hinges on whether or not the Js think your source references count as source usage. Sub it when you're happy with it.

For what little orchestral stuff I do, I have a lot of cheap and/or not primarily orchestral-oriented options to choose from, including the orchestral Jam Pack for GarageBand, Miroslav Philharmonic, Kontakt's VSL factory library, and stuff in Omnisphere. For a few instruments, I'm looking to synths rather than samples, primarily FM8 and Reaktor. What I use depends on what I need. Some simple backing strings can come from Omnisphere or Kontakt, a brass lead from FM8, and some woodwinds from GB/Logic's stuff. While I have it but haven't really used it, the Sonatina Symphonic Orchestra is free. And as has already been said, once you have the sounds, you need to learn to use them. Don't expect realism from the first note.

Don't worry about it, nobody has patented having Majora's Mask in the form of an opera.

Fun stuff. Do you have something where you're not overacting? I'm looking for a more... uh, normal voice, for less animated music. (and there's nothing that says you can't put links in a post, eg to your least overacted vid or something)

Update: Track is arranged and aside from the vocal stuff mixed, Mark Lock and I (mostly Mark) have put together a pretty sweet set of lyrics for the track, now we just need a vocalist. Preferably female. PM me or respond here if you are you a preferably female vocalist wanting to sing on this track. -- I was just screwing around with Logic and ended up with a house-ish remix of Still Alive from Mirror's Edge. Blame her. I've got most of the track written, in a style somewhat influenced by BT, and the way it turned out seems to lend itself more to vocals than to being instrumental only. I need a strong vocalist and a lyrics writer, preferably the same person, and preferably someone with some experience in harmonies and performance. As it goes fairly high the way it is now, I'm probably looking for a female vocalist, but things can be transposed and changed. Besides, what do I know about vocals? As for the lyrics, I have a handful of ideas. Thematically it should fit the game, but that shouldn't be hard. Having played Mirror's Edge is a plus, but not a must. I haven't. A few melodies are sketched out, but they're far from set in stone. Anyone interested can talk here, or try catch me on aim or irc today. I'm not sharing the wip itself here, only privately.

It's right there in the first post, has been for quite a while. We added that we'll delete self-advertising threads that appear. I've locked the most recent ones and deleted a few single-post threads. Any new ones will be deleted. The main change is that there's now more mods around.

We recently began enforcing the guidelines of the Recruit & Collab board a little more. To make sure you guys don't feel like we're hating on you for offering your skills to ppl, here's a few thoughts on what you can do to advertise yourself and your skills: Imagine someone browsing ocr's forums, passively looking for a skill you offer. How would they notice you, and why would they choose to work with you? -sig- Have a link in you sig to your work. Make it look good. Decide on a style for your sig, just something as simple as centering can make the sig look a lot more professional, as can using the right colors, choice of words, style, punctuation, etc.. For example, just putting the word deviantArt, YouTube or SoundCloud doesn't necessarily mean much to someone looking for a specific skill. Be concise, but don't be afraid to be personal. Consider the following, see what appeals to you. "My arrangements on YouTube" vs. "Check out my arrangements on my YouTube playlist, link here" "Looking for someone to sing in your remix or original? I'm available, samples here." vs. "I sing - samples here" "I make music, need any?" vs. "I'm a composer, available to work on your projects." "Awesome music here!!!!!" vs. "my music" Art in reference to what you do can help, whether it's an atmospheric picture for your atmospheric sound design or a badass logo for your badass guitar skills. If you do video, using film perforations in your sig may be a cliché but it gets the idea across - you do video. Likewise music - having waveforms, notes or instruments isn't be the most innovative, but it gets the point across. Overly big or obnoxious sigs may make ppl less likely to want to work with you, so choose/make/order your sig pics with that in mind. The site has a limit of 250px for a sig, but tall sigs can get in the way of reading the forums, so I would recommend something thin and wide instead... just don't go crazy wide, consider that some ppl view the forum on smartphones. -samples- Have samples of your work easily accessible. This is important, this is what ppl looking for someone to work with use to judge whether or not they think you can provide what they want. This is easy for graphics artists who can just link to their deviantArt page, or video artists to their YouTube channel. Music artists can use YouTube and SoundCloud, tho I would suggest - for everyone - to also have a page on your blog for easier access and more room for notes. Those of you who are posted remixers here have a slight advantage in that one of your works will be available on ocr. While it's hardly the breakthrough moment in your career as an artist (the one leading to all the fame, girls and record deals that steal your money), it does show that you've met ocr's standards... which looks good. -visual arts- Especially if your work is in graphics of any kind, have one of your pics in your sig, and make it link to your gallery. it may be a good idea to have a text link to the gallery as well, not everyone tries to click on sig pics. Web design is something ppl occasionally need. If you do web design, link to your website (and make sure it's well designed). Typically, a web designer has a portfolio of web sites they've designed easily accessible on their site - whether the designed sites are real or not doesn't matter as long as they're well designed. Video skills are easy, link to a YouTube playlist of your most applicable works. Can you do trailers for albums? Can you do music videos for tracks? Can you film or animate your own material? -audio skills- For music skills, linking to a demo reel on YouTube or SoundCloud may work, as can linking to a playlist or a page on your blog that serves as a gallery of your works. Artists those that specialize in a specific skill (eg vocals, trombone, arrangement) without having all the skill in the toolbox to make a great and complete demo track may have to get some help in producing more complete demos of their work. For example, if your skill is arrangement, talk to those that have good production skill and resources and collaborate on a demo together. One artist writes a great arrangement, the other produces it. There's also the profiles on the forum. While not as visible as your sig, ppl coming here to look for specific skills (eg banjo) can find everyone who's listed banjo as one of their skills. -network- Make friends on ocr. Album project leaders are pretty much always looking for ppl to join their project, and often want and/or need art and a website when the project is approaching completion. Contributing to an album project means your name will be on it, which can introduce others to you work. Music artists may need cover art and a trailer video for their album. While the album is being made, they may be open to collaborate. Because ppl can be rather secretive about their personal projects, you probably won't see them recruiting until they really need something, but they might mention it to their friends. For that matter, you may need a specific skill yourself for one of your projects, and one of your friends may be willing to do it quickly and for free. Also, don't be an ass. It hurts your networking. -contact- Contact information. While ppl can use PMs on ocr or other communities you're on, some prefer email or IM. If you use any form of IM service, link it. Social Networking pages and profiles may also be a good way to let ppl get in touch with you - and you can put that in your ocr profile to save sig space. -be yourself- Generally, ppl don't believe robots or accountants are particularly creative, so don't be afraid to show your personality. Just keep things appropriate where necessary. Odd things stand out. While a pic of a giraffe typically isn't related to any skill I imagine being advertised on ocr, it may get you more attention than a keyboard + artist name pic. Nothing says giraffes can't be used to advertise your skill here. Just keep them within the sig height limit.

Yay, new tracks to comment on / change color of. We've got Brandon S, Hylian Lemon, Theophany, as well as mak whom I now apologize to, for not responding sooner. I will today. I was fortunate to have taken a backup a week before my only serious borkage so far, but I feel for you, man. The deadline only means we're opening everything that wasn't finished so we can get fresh blood and some actual activity on some of the mixes that have just been sat on for months if not years with little or no progress. I don't think you'll get a new mix done by the time I wake up on the "morning" of March 1st, but the project isn't done until all tracks are covered, so there's still time. It might just be that you'll have more competition for the track. Alternatively, if you feel better about a different source, you can change. We'll be opening tracks on March 1st, and we're always accepting multiple remixes of the same source, so if a different open track speaks to you, feel free to remix that instead. In other words, we're not banning ppl from the album, we're just inviting more competition and changing your colors and stuff like that. Cuz, you know, we wanna finish this and show everyone all the cool tracks we've been talking about.

Sorry I didn't reply before, thanks Snow for reviving this. Yes, pitches. The highly resonant bass might be from a drum track actually, or the instrument could be tuned wrong. If you understand scales, make sure everything except drum notes (and atonal sound effects) are in the same scale. If you don't understand scales, stick to the white keys on the piano roll (except for drums and atonal sound effects), the white keys are a scale. When you do understand scales, you can experiment with stuff outside of them, but until you do, your music will sound better if you play it safe and just learning different scales. This stuff isn't easy, but it's fun when you notice you're improving.

If you don't need any rhythmic variations, you might be able to use a tremolo effect for it. Logic's built-in tremolo lets you set the the smoothness, width, and phase of the tremolo's shape, letting you turn it into an automatic mute button in sync with the song's tempo. Before I got used to side-chaining, this was how I got sounds out of the way of the bass drum, or just added some rhythm to pads. Dunno if your tremolo has the controls necessary for this, but it's easier than learning side-chaining (not that learning side-chaining is a bad idea).

Just so you know, ocr typically has two torrents with about a thousand mixes each. Tho they haven't been updated in a while, there's an upcoming one that replaces some of them with higher-quality encodings (where available), and uses better tags. That there's only two torrent files for those and over 30 albums means that they're a little harder to find. I'm glad you raised the issue, we could probably make the regular tracks' torrents more visible when the new ones are rolled out.

Just so you know, there's a guy going by the name berlioz who's been making the rounds on various Zelda forums about a stage adaptation of MM, it too is some kind of opera or musical. Dunno what will become of it, I just thought you should know you're not the only one working on something like this.

Last I checked, there were two male vocalists on the R&C forum (two who they didn't read the guidelines, grr; who knows how many there _really_ are). They're around. Good luck with this, dude.

Not a mod review, just quick listen. I'll give you a mod review later, unless you get one from pretty much everybody else (or change this back to wip or something). Sound-wise, no. That drum you're using through much of the track gets old fast. The idea works, but it sounds like the same sample played over and over, and a real drummer, even with just a single hand drum, would be bored fast. Just adding a ghost note and doing some velocity edits can go a long way to liven up a track like that. Still, it doesn't _sound_ good. Whether you need to add a touch of reverb, screw with EQ, or just glue it in with the with some subtle output compression, it doesn't sit right in the mix. This goes for a lot of the instruments. Arrangement-wise, not quite. There's parts I think work well, and there's parts that don't work. I know the source, I've tried remixing it myself (we seem to have played and attempted to remix a lot of the same games, actually), and I think there were parts that were well adapted, parts that I know are difficult to work with because of the strange harmony, parts that felt liberal, and parts that felt conservative. I'll get you a more proper mod review later, if you still want one for this version. Just remember that the mod review thing is for tracks you could submit, not in-progress stuff. Feel free to solicit feedback from any member on the site (no promises they'll provide any), there's ppl like evktalo and Darangen who've been making rounds on this board for a while, there's us mods who can provide feedback even if a track isn't in mod review yet, there's posted remixers, staff members, regular track reviewers on the review boards... Doesn't hurt to ask. Seems like my suggestions to experiment and try stuff are paying off, tho, you've improved a lot since last time I listened to one of your tracks. I kind'a held off on listening to your works for this reason, your growths is much easier to notice this way. And you've grown. Keep it up.

What, did I not reply to you? Lost? What are you talking about? If you need to talk to Meteo directly, use PMs here on ocr. I'm sure Meteo can provide you with his email if you don't have it.