Rozovian

When sequencing, use a sound with a clean enough attack (and make sure you're not cutting out the initial attack by having a slow attack). Write your notes (let's go with six of them, spread out like on a guitar), and have them all start within the span of a 16th note. Want the strum to be faster or slower? Put them closer together or farther apart. Can't say about doing it from a keyboard. Not only will you probably not reach the entire span of a guitar with just one hand, you'll also have trouble hitting them right. Any tool would likely have to work with a delayed response to make sure the strum begins at the lowest note instead of in the middle and just arping up and down. I'm pretty sure there are tools for this (neblix recently got a pretty good sounding guitar vst which may have some strum features), but I doubt you'll get a convincing guitar performance and not have to deal with delay and limitations in expression if you wanna do it live. Yeah, I'm assuming you're talking about guitar. Otherwise you ought to have specified otherwise.

Because there's vocals. If it has vocals, it's actual music, not pretentious classical stuff or nerdy subculture stuff. It's _totally_ not repetitive if there's different verses. Never mind that the neither the vocals or their backing need to be very musical to sell. How it sells enough to cover the money for the vids is beyond me.

A different approach to the question would be to find the 100 best orchestral recordings of video game tracks, be it from the era of Space Invaders or from five minutes ago. VGL and Distant Worlds and their like would count. Ideally for something like this, the 100 best tracks would be chosen (hopefully not the 100 most popular), arranged for orchestra, and recorded. That's not likely to happen any time soon, at least not on that scale. Cool idea, I wish I was able to help, but I'm not up to date on the AAA soundtracks of today.

So, I was asked to basically pretend to be a mod reviewing this. K. Thanks Gario. Sweet intro, piano is a little dry, bass drum really heavy, wind lead quite far back in the mix. That's my impressions from the very start of the mix. Both leads (wind thing and reso synth) could be brought out some more, not necessarily louder, but a subtle eq boost to whatever frequency they're the brightest in and some subtle eq carving in the other tracks to make room for it would bring it out nicely. Subtle, tho. The voice clips - which I usually, subjectively hate (objective hate, what?) - work ok here; they're not overly prominent, and they fit well into the style. The whole track is actually quite reminiscent of this track (http://ocremix.org/remix/OCR00868/), which was one of my early favorites from ocr. The bass is too strong. On my regular low-level listening, it's more than strong enough. There's some times where the compression becomes painfully obvious and the track breaks free to breathe. 1:29 and 1:35 are two such instances, but the irregular (I take it it's a shot at humanizing) bass levels make the output compression work a bit too hard. The bass, kick, and snare interact in a way where the bass drum is a lot weaker over snare hits. That's be fine if it was consistent, but the bass and bass drum keep disappearing on some hits. Softening the lows a tiny bit could yield you more pleasant dynamics without really losing any of the weight in the kick and bass. There are times, like at 1:56 where I can hear the intention behind the changing bass drum velocity, but at a lot of other times it just seems random. Check to see if you have any effects on the bass that could explain its wavering in and out of prominence so irregularly (the note pitch and eq also affects it, so a multiband compressor might be better than a regular eq on a bassline spanning a range as wide as this one). But again, dropping their levels a little (or compressing the individual tracks further without boosting their levels thereafter) should solve a lot of your problems. The first lead melody from the main source is easily detected, the second doesn't modulate as it does in the source (nor does the chords anyway), but it's there. Most of the track is built on the chord ostinato from the source. I'm gonna refrain from learning 5 mostly new sources to check for smaller source references and bits; a list of included parts and where they're used would help. The judges sometimes request this, and I reckon including such a list would make reviewing/judging a lot faster and easier, especially when dealing with 6 sources. Arrangement is, imo, good enough. It's conservative, but varied and with obvious differences in style and chord structure. And then there's those alleged additional sources. It also flows well. - This is getting long, I gotta learn to write shorter. Going by the old checklist, I end up with four issues that kind'a apply. PRODUCTION - Too loud - the low stuff - Unrealistic sequencing - randomization instead of humanization - Overcompressed (pumping/no dynamics) - not terrible but enough to be noticed when the compression eases up - Mixing is muddy (eg. too many sounds in the same range) - leads could be more clear A few minor edits to eq, drums, and bass, and I'd say it's finished. addendum: Reading Flex' mod review, I'd say you've fixed the melody issues. Nothing stands out as awkward, random, or otherwise ill-fitting.

Guys, gals, we're looking at a beautiful 5- or 6-track, 4-image preview. Tracks are in mp3 format and tagged, images downsized (they were huuuge), we're just waiting on a final detail and we'll zip/rar it, upload it, and send out the link. Of course, I need your email address to include you. If you're on the project and wanna see and hear this internal preview, make sure I have your email address. Once that's done, I'll get to the public teaser trailer. There'll be a proper trailer later, too. (and guess what, I just signed the consent form. )

You need a greater change in sound to make the second half make sense. Now it just sounds like you threw in a soft synth lead, a bass and a clap. I can imagine this concept working quite well, but you'd need to either make the later instrumentation fit in better, or make the second half more in line with where those instruments would fit in. Or you could just replace them. Most of the sounds fit well together, good choices. Repetition is an issue, but I'd say it's tolerable. Not for a ReMix (ocr-style arrangement), but as a regular remix. It's not nearly as big an issue as the clap and the second half of the mix. It's been said already, but the hand drums are nice. The intro works well, tho the strings are imo not the greatest fit. The bells sound way more human (second bells might be a touch too loud), the strings sound like a keyboard instrument. Humanize them, at least where they're exposed like that. You could possibly mask it with effects or pick a different string sample, but the sample works ok imo. For a first, this is good stuff. I won't get into further details about levels and EQ, you should focus on the arrangement for now imo. Nice avatars KM* and mirumu.

Fine. Done. Uploading when I feel like it. Uploaded to the same 275m dir, ocraavs.zip. One avatar for each album except SDB, which has two. LT: Used most of them, but not anything with blurriness or recognizability issues. Nice work!

Been screwing with the guide some more, v8 is now uploaded. Updating links once I'm done writing this post. I need to read up on recording, the only unfinished chapter iirc. That's a chapter I think is important but I don't have that much experience recording stuff. Half the time when I've recorded, it's been with plugged straight into the computer, the other half has been the few instances where I've set up mics and my recording interface and most of that time spent troubleshooting anyway. Maybe I should just have a guest writer... Anyone with plenty and diverse recording experience interested in helping me out with that? Guest writer or just consultant. Get in touch. (still appreciate if you any grammar weird spotted do, spelling errrs, i dont get it, fractal/technical errors, and whatever else that doesn't count as my kind'a unique idiosyncrazies.)

Your skin is thick enough, dude (how else are you still here?), I'm more concerned with newbs and how they'll take their first rejection. It's best if they have a realistic idea of what to expect from subbing, which random yeses on here isn't. KM*, it's great that you're giving feedback around here. Keep it up. Just don't get into a habit of using yes as a verb here. Even if they know you're not a judge, they might interpret your personal yes as an assessment of how the track would fare on the panel. The workshop mods aren't judges either, which the mod FAQ also points out. Let's just avoid that misunderstanding.

Wouldn't it be easier to not patternize it in this case? If you have the entire thing in the same pattern, you should have an easier time working on transitions as both parts are in the same pattern... you see them both, and can more easily write overlapping fills and frills and stuff.

Nice source, one of my favs as well. Same problem as with your Phendrana track, the instruments don't seem to have agreed on a scale to stick to. Same thing with the rhythm, the drums seem to be doing their own thing. Like a lot of newbs, you have some trouble writing stuff that fits. Remember that you don't need everything instrument to play all the time, it's okay for the lead to stop, for a note, for a beat, for a bar, for a longer segment. Let your arrangement breathe. Flute is way louder than the rest of the instrumentation in the C-part at the end. It's an easy fix. Avoid problems like that by listening through the mix once you've rendered/exported/bounced it. Better yet, avoid them while mixing. You'll get there. Keep it up.

Low level listening, not gonna comment on how loud it is or isn't. Weird harmonies. I think you need to get off the unicycle and learn to ride a bicycle first. Pick a scale, stick to it. When you know how to stick to a scale, then you can deviate where it works. The bells are pretty, the bass is dull (and clashing), the drums are way too soft (except the hihat), lead melody doesn't cut through. The instrumentation is pretty sparse, tho adding something before solving your scale problems will probably just compound the problem. Sparse can work, but it needs to be a more dynamic and emotive arrangement for it to work. Arrangement doesn't go anywhere. It starts, loops, breaks, and goes back to the same energy levels as in the previous loop. There's not much development. This is why most tracks have A- B- and C-parts, or verses and choruses, or other distinctions between parts. It could be more interpretive, too. This is a great track to practice personalizing with, there's like three melodies in the source - rewrite them to fit different chords. Just the four-note repetition early in the source could easily be used on other chords. Just take the rhythm and play four other notes (lowest to highest). Pick the chords you like. Now adapt one of the other melodies to this/these new chords. instant interpretation. Good source. Do more with it.

I'm listening on low levels atm, night here. not gonna comment on how loud it is, or anything about panning or loud shrill frequencies or anything related to loudness. Just fyi. I like the background sounds better than the foreground ones. The organ is especially bad. Sorry man, it is. Drums could be a little more varied/groovy/human, it feels like the bad kind of hip hop right now. Transitions could make more sense, the one at 1:00 is especially bad in that it's not a transition, it just sounds like you stitched a different part of your writing on there. No crash, the fill, no lead-in/lead-out, nothing. Moving from part to part in general seems to be one of your weak points, man, the 2:08 transition works well (and the 2:08 part is really cool, will be better with the drums and odd harmonies cleaned up ). I'll just list the transitions and their problems/merits: 0:21 works well, but the part that follows it a bit weak, and the organ doesn't fit in. 0:41 might be a transition. Flowed well enough for me to just skip past it. 1:00 just happens, nothing leading up to it, nothing leading out of the previous part. Dude. 1:38 works ok, but the snare fill preceding was exposed and machine-gunny. Solve that. 1:57 What? This just went into a different part for no apparent reason. Needs something to warn the listener that it's about to change, that's what fills and their like are for. Reverse cymbals also work, and nobody says a fill can't be halftempo. 2:08 works well. 2:36 works well. Hm, wasn't as bad as I thought. Another problem is your lead writing. You start quite high up and can only go higher, leading to some pretty shrill stuff sometimes. The melodies sometimes move in weird directions, as if a performer didn't know what note to use next and just picked something in the right scale. So, I'm totally hating on your track, dude. Some transitions need work, I hate the organ, the drums are exposed, the lead writing is weird at times, the backing stuff is really cool... You're just inconsistent. You're doing half of everything right. Careful, those kinds of statements just lead to disappointments a la "but someone on the feedback board said it'd get a yes". Now you know.

Didn't check now, but I think most of those who haven't signed it don't frequent the forums and/or assumed that handing in a wav counts as consent. It doesn't. but we'll hunt them down and take... uh, their consent... by force?

Two weeks after another deadline? Hm... On the other hand, the MM compos. Hm... I have 46 finished tracks in my finished tracks folder. That means we are, counting only finished tracks, 75% done. That's pretty good. We're pretty blue. (remind me to use a happier color next time I do a project. also remind me to make a smaller project) Repeat: 75% done Nice work guys. Now, if only we had consent for all those tracks...

A gazillion orchestral tracks, and a handful of guitar tracks... so hard to pick representative tracks for the previews. It would help if I had consent for more of the tracks. *wink wink* Track comments, remixer bios, and your emails addresses still wanted. You know we'll make stuff up if you don't get us anything. Updated the first post. We now have a deadline Feb 29th - and then the free-for-all begins. This project is not supposed to go on forever. Also, +2 blue tracks. Yay!

Meta. 10chars

Highpass everything that doesn't need lows. Personally (I'm not a pro, at least not yet), I lowpass just about everything, but leave more lows for low pads, bass, and bass drum (for obvious reasons). Everything else will just have stray lows that'll get in the way. Unless I need a less synthetic, less produced, more organic and natural sound, this is what I recommend, too. Take the break at 1:30. The spectrum meters in QTP (yeah they're totally pro-level) show the lowest being max loud in a part that I assume is not supposed to have much bass. Your bass in the compo version is loud enough on my setup, but quite far back in the mix. I guess that's why my comment in the other thread caused some confusion, but you seem to have figured out the problem on your own, too. just bring it forward some more could solve all the bass crits. Or not. So, the new link... has pretty much the same situation, even to the point where the output compression is being pushed occasionally. I'd just put an overdrive on the bass before whatever tremolo/sidechaining/rhythm thing you've got, that'll add some presence in the form of overtones (it gradually squares the waveform - which leads to more highs). And then I'd reduce its level a bit. See if any of that makes sense for your track.

Yes. Or to put it differently: no. Actually I was writing it while voting, and as I couldn't vote for you, you got overlooked. But as a reply, it's not nearly as interesting.

Emphasis mine. That's a small list? Common genres? Also, Jump by VanHalen is hardly a genre. Better than a controlled genre thread, just post cool tracks of similar styles/genre with a different style/theme for each post. Just a thought.

Don't you guys get it? If you win, then you successfully the whole tournament. Whines of the week: subarctic nightfall: I'm not a big fan of overly bright hihats, but the rest of the beginning of this mix seems very much in line with stuff I enjoy. Half the transitions were nonexistent/terrible, and there's some weird/clashing writing in the second half. Some more thought having been put into the placement and polish of the sound would have been good - case in point, 0:48 really muffled delay, with a bright attack also being echoed... good idea, poor execution. Seems like a medley of ideas that I like... which btw is pretty much how a lot of my own mixes sound early in their development. drag me up (to heaven): The wide backing arp is a bit too loud, the bass could also stand to be softer. The sound design is pretty, lots of cool, simple, retro timbres, extensive use of the stereo width, and overlapping melodies. Might be a bit too busy at times, but it works for me. ivory tower: Not sure I like how the piano sounds on lower velocities, there's some artificial muffling going on there that's a bit detracting. Either I'm being adhd about the arrangement and lack of colorful shiny synth stuff jumping into the spotlight bores me, or like mr. l's track it's something of a medley of ideas. Or possibly a bit of both. Pretty, but it didn't grab me. synthesize this!: Well now we've got synths, and I like the combination of sounds here (panning might be excessive tho). The tracker chord arp in the background adds some amount of high frequency noise to it, which bothers me - but I like the practice and think more tracks should use it. And yes, I know you like throwing other tracks into the mix. It's hard to miss here. top this: Interesting drums. I like the sound design and the production techniques, but I'm having trouble actually getting a grip of the track. I mean, I wanted top man's source, I like it, I know it (at least the cool parts), so I heard it, but it's buried in here. the return of gangsta man: That marimba/xylophone sounds EQd a lot, it's a bit too bright. Bold move to use it so prominently, which I like. Drums get stale (and by extension, the entire arrangement suffers from repetitiveness due to the samey rhythms throughout... and just thinking about it makes me think of how it could work in 7/8... which I can't complain about), levels get weird after about half the track, bass should really be softer, or at least sidechained under stuff so it doesn't press everything else down. current events: Punny. Really cool sound design. Really cool. Everything except the intro drums, but they're only intro drums so I don't mind. Compression is a bit of an issue, there's a thick low end carpet over the housey parts, whereas the beat-y parts has the compression level bouncing uncontrollably. it's not terrible, but it gets a little annoying. Lemme end on the sound design, that vox-y talkbox-y synth is great. cruise control: 30s in, this seems promising. Not quite fond of the thin little synth lead, until it starts dancing, but the rest I could listen to. Might be pressed a little too loud, could stand to lose a little of its lows, but this is a mix where I can just blame it on my speaker setup and enjoy the track. Nice breakdown. Sustains feel robotic tho. Skipping the first beat, are we? That works. towering shade: I got a bit worried when I heard the intro, but it took off in a better direction than I expected. It just doesn't go far. tomahawk's final chapter: Overacting much? Bizarre panning, simple sound design, and relying on the voice acting to tell a story. I can tolerate the intro stuff, but the further it goes into musical land, the less I like it. The rest of the concept is pretty cool, which makes the simple and/or bizarre sound design choices tolerable. Oh man this thing is long. Chippy lead has some shrill overtones. more voice in the ending. Great.

Do you think there's someone on ocr staff that sits around keeping track on how many times a wip has been marked mod review? As long as it doesn't become a custom to switch your thread to mod review whenever you feel you haven't received any good feedback (or any at all), I don't see a problem with it. Go for it. Just remember that the mods are neither judges nor a replacement for regular listeners or your own ears.

Hi folks, I'm holding off on marking Abadoss' track blue until I get around to listening to the wav, but I HAS A WAV. And a happy. On a related happy note, I got over whatever mixer's block has been keeping me from making progress with my almost completed collab with Mozzaratti. It is now a few nitpicks away from complete. That's pretty close. When that's done, nobody on this project can use the excuse "but Rozo hasn't done a track yet". And then I'll also sign the consent form - which all remixers on the project better sign, asap. As for the insider preview, I have everything I need for it, the art, the music, I just... can't decide what tracks i wanna share with you remixers whose emails I have. But now that you know I have it all, it can't be long... right? Public teaser coming, too. After the internal preview.

You seem to lack a decent grasp of what music software does, so lemme give you a little summary so you know what you're dealing with. DAW - digital audio workstation, it's a program that contains everything (at varying quality levels), in essence it loads virtual instruments, sends notes to them and gets sound back from them, which it then plays or saves as an audio file. (Virtual) instrument/synth/sampler - the DAW loads one of these, and it makes sound when it gets notes. Think of it as a real-world piano - press key, make sound. Most DAWs have some already, of varying quality. Effects - ways of altering the sound, like making it sound like it's played in a big hall, or through a small radio. Most DAWs have the basic ones. Loops - usually means it's an audio file that can be repeated (like a drum beat), it can also mean it's just the notes. If you really don't know what you're buying, it's best to stick with a package of things that'll work together, so a version of FL (it's a DAW, it has instruments and effects) should do fine. I tend to recommend getting the biggest available package, but in this case it'd be best to get the basics and see if your brother can handle that. I don't know how his computer skills are (you only describe him as very slow with computers, we have no idea about his age, personality, computer habits, other tech knowhow), so I would suggest you start by downloading a demo of FL YOURSELF and evaluating how well you think he could handle it. Once you've recreated Twinkle Twinkle Little Star or something with it you should have some idea of how difficult it is (or isn't). FL users can comment on the things you need to use FL specifically.

Processing is everything you do to a sound. If there's reverb, eq, guitar amps, side-chaining, stretching, detuning, pitch correction... anything, there's processing. If there's "a lot of" processing, there's either a lot of effects, or the effects are drastic. Or both.