Rozovian

The emails should probably also include a list of all artists on recent ocremix albums. I found Dragonfood and Civilization on there, so the entire Boss themes and Wild Arms projects are presumably on the site, probably more albums as well.

Fixed. ^ It'll take a while, but you'll learn. That's what feedback is for.

The things you learn on the internet...

Re-read my post, look for a link. Go look in the guides&tutorials subforum. Google synth basics or something. Alt-click the knobs and controls. Most of them will default to an init value, tho some buttons and others might not. Also remove any modulation matrix data so it doesn't interfere (it's the long confusing thing across the middle of the EXS24 and ES2). Once you've gone over the whole thing doing that, save the preset as "init" or something.

That's assuming they'll respond to pressure like that. There's also the possibility that they'll just auto-delete any email containing the word ocremix, or any other keywords they find that we're all using. Idunno, I don't really believe an email campaign is gonna get them to change their minds unless it's annoying enough to impact their work. And I do think we'd do a great deal of good in getting these guys to remove not just ocremix music but any free releases and any music by any ocr artists, and this is something that would be great if it'd spread to other music sites and get their artists on board as well. The staff with database access can generate a list of all remixers and all their aliases for these guys to remove... ...or to use for search engine spamming to further market their site. Glass half empty, I know.

So, tell everyone that sells music to email them. If that doesn't change anything, let's email them on every email address on their site. If that still doesn't work, there's social media. We can also go and find the email address of whoever registered the domain or owns the server or something. We can email them as well. So there's lots of approaches to take.

I'm just putting this here, hoping for feedback. I don't usually post here, so this might attract some attention. Details later, if there's any interest. Here's the track. As for the prefix, this is an Other.

Anyone gotten any royalties paid from this place? A quick look around teh googels suggests no. So breach of terms of use as well as lack of royalties paid to the artists. "Legal"-sounds. SOPA/PIPA were about this kind of site. Too bad they were otherwise terrible bills.

Is oregano a good spice? It completely depends on what you wanna do with your arrangement. How well does that sound fit with the mood you're going for?

mod rev: Drums are buried (can only hear the toms well). They feel quite basic in their writing. You may have to add some subtle variation to them, be this ghost notes, some notes more or less pronounced, whatever. Layering other drums on top of them for a more interesting sound may also be necessary. Hard to say what's what when I can barely hear the drums. While the arrangement has a lot going for it, it's still a fairly conservative take on the source on top of more original stuff, with the biggest deviations from the source being in breaks and stops. It's also a little too reliant on the same transitions and fills. I don't think it's a big deal, but I'd be remiss to not mention it. PRODUCTION - Too quiet - occasional instruments are fine, so mix it properly before concerning yourself with how loud the track is overall. - Drums have no energy - I could just quote Darangen here. Toms are loud enough, tho. - Mixing is muddy (eg. too many sounds in the same range) - not terribly so, but you'll likely have to clean things up once you get the levels right. PERFORMANCE (live recorded audio/MIDI parts) - Poorly recorded - Not so much poor, as incompletely recorded. The stereo image and the lack of a second panned guitar, which Darangen already brought up, is a bit detracting. Light-hearted and fun arrangement, needs more production love tho.

Vanilla synths, clashing rhythm stuff (but a nice and complex sound). Drums are also vanilla, consider layering something more interesting on top of them. lol, the last section's choice of sounds is hilarious. Unfortunately, the slow attack of the ribbit-y synth brass makes it sound out of synch with the rest of the tracks. Offset the notes slightly so they play a little earlier, and you should solve that problem. You seem to have some trouble picking a single style for this: there's some dubstep influence to the intro, followed by rock, both of them with synths on top, followed by early-mid-80s synth stuff. This disparity makes the whole thing seem a bit random. It's also pretty weak. There's lots you can do about that, but I'd start with getting the sound design to feel louder. Cut lows from tracks that don't need them. Separate with EQ. Layer drums. Sidechain. I can hear the source in there, but for the most part, it's pretty sparse. It's not helped by how you've chosen to treat the melody, chopped up and separated (tho I've done that myself and gotten it posted). A second, underlying take on something from source would tie it more closely to the source. Don't feel you have to stick to the original intervals for that, you can take the basic rhythm or the directions of the notes and use that. Cool start, keep it up.

The EFM1 is _so_ not the simplest synth in Logic. It's an FM synth (more advanced synthesis technique than subractive/additive, which its other synths use) - and the interface is terrible. The sound in #2 could be FM (frequency modulation) or PWM (pulse-width modulation). The ES1 can do PWM for pulse waves, you might be able to set it up to do this sound, but I would suggest the ES2 as you'll then have control over the filter and the pwm separately. If you have no idea how to do synths, start with the ESE and ESM, then move on to ES1 (and freebies like FreeAlpha and TAL-Elek7ro II for a change of interface) and ES2. If you've used the EXS24, you'll be more familiar with the filter when you get to the ES1 and 2. If the sound is FM, you might be able to recreate it in EFM1. I suggest not starting with that, tho. FM is tricky, even with a good interface. I have a few sections on synths in my remixing guide. They might be helpful. (pro tip: create an initialized patch/preset for all synths, one with everything turned to its default position, all modulation options removed, basically the most basic settings you can get. that way, you won't have to turn everything off whenever you want to build something from scratch... like here, with pwm. iirc, you can also start making it in es1 and then switch it to es2. it'll create an es2 version of the es1 patch you had.) ADSL filter, huh? That's a new one.

Staff folks, do we need an FAQ for this and the other oft-appearing forum-related questions?

It's not about the tools, it's how you use them. There are subtle (and sometimes not so subtle) changes to note velocity and timing when humans play. If you don't write/record these, you won't have them. Taking sequenced notes and making them sound performed is called humanization. You'll hear that term a lot around here. FL can do orchestral music about as well as any other DAW. It's all about using it right. For example, sustained notes are irl never sustained at the same level, they'll swell and diminish to follow the dynamics of the arrangement. This is typically done by using a midi control change messages to tell how loud a sustain should change over time. It's typically done with cc11, aka expression, which should be right there with pitch bend, modulation, and other ccs. There's also the matter of sounds - and these can get expensive. You can get some dated orchestral sound libraries fairly cheap tho, so unless you want hyper-realism, you can get some nice sounding stuff by just looking for sales on older tools, or even free stuff. This is why most newbs do electronic music - synth tracks don't require nearly the same attention to performance to sound decent. As a "complete music illiterate", you will have trouble doing orchestral no matter how you approach it. You should be aware of that. Don't let it stop you, just expect to have to spend the first couple of years learning and usually doing things wrong before doing them right. TL;DR: FL will do just fine.

Use your ears. Doing comparisons between your track and _well mixed_ tracks by other ppl in the same style can reveal things in your track you can't hear when you listen to it by itself. Taking a copy of the project and doing a few different versions of the mixing and comparing those to other ppl's tracks could tell you which techniques or methods or mixing philosophies or whatever were the most effective at getting your mixing similar. It also works for synth sound design, performance, or whatever. Experience comes from doing stuff. Do stuff. I learned lots in my challenges, I used only synths for Beyond Velocity and my (rejected) FreeSpace 2 mix. BV was lso an attempt to keep the number of instruments low. Eye of the Storm came out of filtering a loop and chopping up the source melody. Dragonfood came form screwing with time signatures. Pick something to challenge yourself with, do that. Do a track using _only_ presets. Do a track where you only mix with volume and the tools inside the instruments. Do a track that should sound good both normally and in reverse. Do a track where the lead melody is played on the bass. Do a solo piano track - sequence it to sound like a real performance. Do a track with loads of rhythm without using drums or any percussion sounds. Do a track using only drums and percussion. Do a track with only custom synth sounds. Do a track without listening to it until it's finished. The idea iw to give yourself something difficult that'll challenge your understanding of both music and audio tech. Aren't your curious to hear what you'd manage to put together if you didn't listen to what you were doing... at all?

Auto-humanizing doesn't work. Unless it let's you pick a groove yourself, it's probably just a randomizer. Humans don't play random. Imperfections may be random, but that's not the part of human performance you wanna emphasize. With velocity and subtle timing changes, you should create a mood through emphasis. As for Darke's mix, it's a good choice for an influence. Yours doesn't quite sound the same. Figure out what exactly makes it different. Study the nuances, the details, the nitpicks. How strong are the note attacks? Does an instrument sound muffled? Can you hear the reverbs? The writing is obviously different, but try to focus on the sound. I'll listen later.

Humanizing a piano is way easier than humanizing strings or other sustained instruments, tho it's also more noticeable when it's done badly. What you do is basically just try to think it through as if you're performing - out of every few notes, which do you emphasize most, which least? Raise velocity on the ones you emphasize. Which melodies and parts do you wanna emphasize? Raise the velocity a bit on those. If you can play, play it. If you can get playing into your workflow, you'll work a lot faster. Even if you're not great, you can always go in and manually correct stuff while still keeping the human touch. Then there's timing, which isn't _as_ important to do, but it helps. If the chords roll into or out of the beat they're on - even if it's only by tiny fractions of a second - it helps. You can also use the sustain pedal cc to add realism, but that's more important in solo piano parts. Not using the sustain pedal means you have more control over note length, which is sometimes necessary. You took the mixing a little too far, tho. The track now has a bit too bright and overprocessed sound. And yep, the first part (0:22 and on, I'll count the stuff before as just intro) is a bit of a mess. Pick some songs in the style you're doing, and listen to how the instruments are mixed - where and how they fit together. Imitate. If you're not happy with the mixing, turn off EQ and other effects, and mix with just volume, and _then_ bring in EQ to separate tracks that overlap - by in one track removing frequencies that the other overlapping track needs to sound clear. And after that you can add a touch of brightness and clarity with EQ. If you're starting to hear stuff you're not happy with, it means you're growing production ears. That is one of the most important tools you can have. Keep it up.

The strings+piano part towards the end works well, you've picked a good set of sounds for it, although I'd suggest giving the piano a little more reverb and humanization. The rest of if it pretty hit-and-miss. You start of with some ok strings and pad stuff, but the harp melody just doesn't work. The rising piano things fit in well, ties it to the source well, tho you might be overusing them somewhat. The idea behind the 1:25 part and transitioning into it like that is great, but it currently doesn't quite work. At 1:21, everything fades as if they just ran out of notes. It doesn't close that part well enough. Tweaking note lengths at that point and perhaps screwing with the expression cc for any instruments that respond to it should remedy the problem. The 1:25 part itself is to soft imo, the rising piano drowns the melody. It's an easy fix, just make the melody a little louder. 1:47 seems to use that same, out-of-tune flute you've used before, but besides that, it sounds ok. It transitions well into and out of the part. I don't think the 2:15 part is the best to transition into, but it works well enough. The harp at the end is too loud, too stiff, and has too much reverb, but that's a fairly easy fix (two of those are just levels/effects edits). Likewise are the strings chords underneath; they don't quite fit the underlying chords of the harp. You're making good progress, Jordan, this is much better than your previous work. Don't stop now.

Thanks for linking the judges' decision, it makes it a little easier to eval. As for the PM: obviously yes, and thanks. Cool track, but not tight enough imo. This applies to the lead guitar and the rhythm one. There's parts where everything lines up and sounds great, then there are times where the rhythm doesn't sound even, or the lead came in a little late then tried to compensate. I wouldn't be comfortable passing this track just yet. Verse vocals are actually harder to hear than their delays, you gotta separate your vocals from the low guitar more. The vocals are cool, tho you occasionally seem a little flat. Could just be my ears distracted by the guitar tuning or something, the judges didn't seem to have a problem with that. The weird stereo image you've got with the drums is... well weird, but it works. It does make the snare a bit weak at tunes. The piano bass notes don't sound like they belong to the same piano, so it sounds more like a cool rhythm effect than low piano notes... and as such, I have no problem with them. As for piano reverb, it may still be dry, but I think it works. The main problems is still in the guitar timing. Dunno how much work it really needs, if offsetting the chugs is enough to remedy half the problems or if you need to re-record a lot of the of parts.

mod rev: PRODUCTION - Too quiet - way too quiet - Unrealistic sequencing - can't hear any humanization in the lead PERFORMANCE (live recorded audio/MIDI parts) - Timing not tight enough - the ending especially, the style allows for a loose timing... but not that loose. STRUCTURE - Lacks coherence overall (no "flow") - it doesn't go anywhere - Not enough changes in sounds (eg. static texture, not dynamic enough) - but not a big deal here, there's dynamics to the writing that changes it enough imo. - Pace too plodding - probably a symptom of the lack of flow - Too repetitive - the result of not going anywhere and not changing in sound much There's some nice writing in some of the strings parts, and aside from perhaps needing a touch of reverb or some velocity tweaks the metallic background percussion works well. You're _still_ having those same problems I brought up before, tho. Even when the writing is okay, the instruments sound mechanical. Humanize.

Technically not samples, but unless I need to use a sampled piano for subtractive synthesis or something, I use Pianoteq. btw, questions like these belong in the Composition/Production forum.

Seems like my insistence on attributing Blue Haze and Spume to Pokémon Blue is doing its job of raising this issue. My solution for this would be to make games list everything made for the sources in those games, not just those attributed to that game, e.g.: Pachelbel's Canon would be listed under OoT normally, but also under ALttP, below the mixes attributed to OoT by the remixer. On the page of the source song, the remixes would be listed with the game they were attributed to, and there'd be a list of games in which the song is used, in this case including OoT, ALttP, and others. Blue Haze would then end up on both Red's and Blue's remix lists of remixes (Blue mixes further down on Red's page and vice versa), but when looking up the song itself, it'd be attributed to Blue, while PromoToed's mix would be attributed to Red. Both Red and Blue (and Yellow as well? idunno) would be listed as games that use that song. Dunno if this is overcomplicating, but it's what I'd like to see so ppl can stop thinking Zelda's Theme was invented in OoT when it was used in ALttP first.

Just wanted to say welcome to ocr and that facebook is totally the right place for music crits. Might as well give you a few production pointers while I'm at it. Fun post, more feedback. The whole thing is too loud. Listen to the mp3, you'll find that some instruments disappear and the sound sounds unstable and uneven. This is because you're limiting the output (to prevent harsh "clipping", which is when the sound gets too loud to save accurately, ie over 0dB), so when a louder instrument comes in, everything else has to softer to make everything fit. Listen to the hihat, it can't stay the same level. Make everything softer, and you've solved this problem. Some instruments sound really dry and stale. If it's a keyboard instruments, you can use the sustain pedal cc to add a touch of realism to it. Most instruments get a touch of realism with a touch of reverb, but it's so easy to add to too much so only use a little less than enough to hear that it's there. Your fake guitar isn't fooling anyone. You can try for a more realistic sound by using an amp simulator and other effects, or you could make it a good synth lead instead of trying to make it sound real. A good fake-sounding guitar lead is usually better than a bad "real"-sounding one. If the whole thing sound a bit messy, you can use EQ to separate tracks from each other. Find a lead instrument you wanna have in the foreground, give it a _slight_ boost somewhere that makes it sound good. Cut that same frequency from the other instruments a little. Do that with a few important instruments, and you'll have made the whole thing a lot cleaner. Just don't overdo it, 2dB is enough. I'd suggest you first focus on individual track levels, but aside from being too loud overall, you seem to have the basic idea of putting background instruments further back and foreground instruments more upfront right. It's a bit hard to tell with the heavy limiting, but it at least seems like you know what you're doing in that regard. There's some production things for you to consider, not gonna comment on the writing right now. I think there's a little more substance in that and what C7 said than you got on fb.

I used midi for years, and still do for parts I can't transcribe myself (altho I try to avoid remixing sources that are too difficult). Go for it. Not only will it help you get those parts you need, but you get to see how the source looks like from the inside. Or as good as the midi transcriber got it. Just don't make the mistake of copypasting everything from midi into your arrangement, it'll make it difficult to make your own arrangement of it. You'll be tempted to use the chords from source, the rhythms from source, everything from source - because they work so well together. If you're not aiming for a conservative arrangement, you should probably set some rules for yourself for what you can and can't do with the midi. But yeah, either change to an easier source, consider your attempt to transcribe it a way of personalizing it, or rip from midi. Whatever you do, you'll get something to work with. Good luck.

THIS IS WHY I DON'T HAVE PICS OF MYSELF. NOBODY EVEN TAKES PIXURS OF ME. That and I prefer what little anonymity (or facelessness) I can have. Just use my cartoon face, or my name or something if you're gonna do ad g spam can pics stuff. Or draw it yourself. How hard can it be to put a long beard on a can of spam?