Rozovian

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pVlOggAZKZw http://soundcloud.com/ambient-tribe/stone-tower-temple-ambient This track sounds familiar... I wonder why. Gonna shoot him/her/them/it a message, you guys take it from there if nothing happens.

Once you have some track progress to show (ie finished or near-finished tracks, we tend to mark those with another color to show how far along the project is), you can stuff the side tracks further down in the post. From what I can tell, ppl who love a game and its music will know and/or find the songs they wanna do anyway, and ppl who aren't familiar with the music should probably focus on the must-have tracks rather than the ones not in the primary scope of the project. It's all about how you wanna run the project and what you wanna focus on. Here's how I would do it - example, not necessarily a suggestion: Do note that you can' run a project in the R&C forum, tho you can probably ask to have the thread moved to Post Remixes once you're made some progress and need to use the thread for more administration and less recruitment.

I'd go with AD. I've got Superior Drummer, which is ezd's big brother. I prefer AD, and I've only got the demo. Sure, SD is a bigger package with more mics, more effects, more options... except the fun creative ones, and it's quite a memory hog. I reckon SD is more suited towards high-realism work, which isn't really what I do. The sound design options in AD make it more in line with what I do anyway. Envelopes, pitch control, and a much more intuitive interface. Bigger buttons too, which is good when you're working on high resolution screens. Nice deal, thanks for pointing it out.

Use words.

Next album I'm running, if ever, is gonna be a single disc's worth of music with a similar mood or sound. Relics is still among the best albums ocr has ever put together because of its cohesive feel. On the flip side, Kong in Concert and EOBLOR are also among the best. It's silly to think anyone is saying there's only one best way to do an album project on ocr, and I hope nobody actually thinks that. It all depends on the concept, source material, and the people involved. Put ocr's chipfolks on an album and it'll sound cohesive. Put the big orchestral names on it, same thing. While details of sound (eg consistency in reverb, a complaint I heard about Chrono Symphonic) might vary, you'd still end up with a pretty consistent album. Behemoths drain so much energy and makes it hard for the director to keep it consistent. The variations ppl have brought to the sd3 project have expanded it from my unrealistic narrow-ish vision/guideline, and I think it's better for it, but I still feel that without the "no excessive unts/glitch/chip" guideline it'd be less of a mosaic of deviations from my guidelines and more of a cacophony of genres and styles. Then again, musical omnivores might not care.

Speaking as someone who's doing a 60-track album project where the goal always was to do every track on the OST - this is stupid. Unless you're paying ppl to do it, or if you're gonna do it yourself, you probably won't get enough tracks finished, and then the project will just sit stagnant, buried under countless other threads, not going anywhere. Keeping ppl's interest up after a few years of moving slow isn't easy, I'm speaking from experience. In other words, how many tracks are you gonna do, new guy? That said, Kirvee, I'd focus on the first game if I did this, but it's your project. Try to figure out how much interest there is for this, get ppl working on their mixes, and get the ball rolling. Once you have some progress, be it wips form big names or finished tracks, it's a lot easier to keep things going. (btw, I'd save the list of optional tracks for later, it currently looks like you're trying to remix 40 or so tracks for the project... which might be a little disconcerting to ppl looking to join.) Good luck.

There's always gonna be ppl who go "whoa, a remix project of my fav game" when/if they see that it's being worked on, and would jump on the opportunity to join. Then there are some ocr regulars who are project whores and try to be on every album (we don't mind, we like having ppl on our projects), there's franchise, console, composer, or genre fanboys, and ppl looking for a way into the community who can't _yet_ get posted on ocr, or who want something to work on in between subs. Maybe the direction of an album gets the attention of someone with an affinity and spacialty in that sound, style or genre. Maybe an all-metal, or all-electronica, or all-marimba album would appeal to some remixers. So there's always some ppl around who'll do a mix for project x. Whether there's enough for a 3+ disc behemoth or a modest 10-track thing is another matter. I thin the best way to run a project would be to focus on some central tracks, a dozen or so. If ppl come in and want to do other tracks, that's fine too. By having a more easily achieved goal, the project will likely move faster, even if it means it might end up a smaller project. We already have behemoths in the works, and they're moving sloooooooow. No new behemoths plz, unless they become behemoths naturally.

I've got something in the works. ...or possibly three somethings and two bad transitions. We'll see.

Terrible, terrible stuff, all of it. Bought it anyway.

On one hand you're right, and I apologize. On the other, not only is it a blatant problem that I'm not the first to point out, but you'll remember to watch out for it now. It's not just a volume problem, it's a spectral problem. There's a specific frequency (and possibly its overtones) that's cutting through everything else and hurting my ears. Gario and SuperiorX also brought up the issue. Lowering my listening volume isn't really a good solution anyway, as compared to the other tracks, it's not too loud - it's just too shrill. Besides, the problem would persist until I mute it. Besides, it's a competition, not the wip board. I might relisten later. I won't change my votes, tho. The problem is a big enough issue to put the track - as a whole - in the bottom half of the round (granted, you've got some tough competition), no matter the arrangement and instrumentation after that point.

I'll make my vote reasoning public again. Partly because it makes it more clear for me to type rather than just listen, remember, and go with my gut. I'll just space out and think about something else half the time if I don't write stuff down while listening. Random order, lessee what we get first... Riding the Avalanche My source. Not vote for you. Seriously, it's a cool, underrepresented source, and you've done some cool stuff with it. The orchestra is a bit lacking in expression and feels too close or something. Too dry, or too much of a disparity between dry and wet sounds? Hard to pinpoint what it is, but something about your brass hits seem plastic. Maybe they should have had more percussive punctuation. Solo trumpet sounds more real than most, tho. Some harmonic migraine in the first 40 seconds aside, it's a nice arrangement. Tripping Through The rhythm of the intro is difficult to get a clear grip of, tho once the bass drum comes in, it's a no-brainer. There's some weird harmony in here, seems like a fairly conservative take and an original unts base combined without much regard for key. Hard transition between sources, and still some harmonic weirdness from time to time. Sting Operation Really loud finger snaps... layered with softer claps or something? Whut? The lead is quite brassy, but something about it doesn't sound right to me. I'm biased against the hiphop-y style anyway, so I'm not gonna try to rationalize it. Successfully latin-esque, but a few too many Gerudo Valley remixes has dulled my appreciation for that style. Sounds a bit forcedly loud, too. Running with Scissors Kick and snare sound really artificial. Cymbals hissy and indistinct, not to mention being ducked under harder sounds doesn't sound pleasant. Guitars are doing well, tho. Rocking arrangement, nice outro. Electric Sleep Starts off soft and hints at being too loud once the instrumentation starts appearing. Ouch synth, what piercing highs you have. Nice backing rhythm. 5 minutes of trying to not hurt my ears? Well, no. Stopped it at 2:00. I like my ears. Pity, I like the arrangement so far, and aside from cutting into my ears the synths sounded pretty cool. unto dust Cymbals and hard loudness isn't a great combination. I keep being bothered by how the highs disappear under the guitars. Guitars have a lot of lows, too, the production could have been smoother with a little softer lows. Towards the end, my ears get a little worried, and that bass is quiite loud. Arrangement went by in the background while the production kept sticking out. Topsy Turvy My source. Grr. Probably the most successful loud production in the round. Seemed a bit short on Wily material, tho it was intertwined with the Top Man source at times, probably making it more difficult to spot. Solidity I really need to mix my intros and ostinatos better. My stereo hihat idea was stupid. Half my leads are terrible. The whole thing could stand to be a bit softer, and the sidechaining could stand to be... less. Should be softer during the kick-less parts. Some minor clashing aside, I like my arrangement. I like the retro trance-y sound too, mixed with more modern/way retro synth leads and the square bass. I like it. But it's mine. Can't vote. Power Outage Rhythm problems. That bothers me more than the vocals... which I don't really care for much. Vocoder and a really glitchy raw sounding synth. Doesn't quite work with the organic vocals and rhythm and stuff so far. I'm surprisingly indifferent about the vocals. I mean, they're not the best, they're not produced the best, and it's not the best combination of two types of vocals.Air Man in a G String Team Willrock's first track without any backing artists. Not my favorite kind of hats, but at least they don't bounce in and out of existence. Backing arps remind me of the music to some old snes tennis game I had as a kid. Seems focused on Air Man. It's got Willrock's usual modal changes to melodies, and a key change, and solos. So yeah. Team Willrock in a G String and FlexyFurby get votes. Who else... C7. Least offensive? FlexStyle gets 1st, Will 2nd, C7 3rd. Much easier than last week.

I think most ppl figure sending in a wav implies - not outright declares - consent. Still, ocr wants it in writing, which means I do too. - edit: I'm gonna avoid double-posting when i can, just wanna say: NEW WAV! pu_freak ROCKS! (...calmly)

Okay guys and gals, I was gonna go over the tracks I can use for the preview (only gonna use tracks I have a finished version of, and consent to have on the album). I have consent for 15 out of 44 tracks (incl. legacy tracks). That means almost half the preview would be Archangel's tracks. As the tracklist is publicly available, I might as well list everyone whose consent I don't have. Pardon the lowercase, it's straight from my notes, and I'm not gonna go add everyone's preferred case setup. rozovian lazy bum, finish the track already! and then give consent. as if you wouldn't. and then finish all unfinished or unconsented tracks. usa the dual dragons audio fidelity, abi coffer harmony level99 luiza k-wix brandon strader ilp0 darkesword jeffrey hayat john revoredo/prometheus karth hoboka jeremy robson ergosonic thedeath the joker sixto sounds robotaki? nutritious reuben cornell isao If something wrong, it's possible that I have missed someone, either on the tracklist or on the consent list, or that you just signed the form since I got the consent list. There's also an ocr-accepted track waiting to be posted. Since... idunno, this spring or something. I wanna get a preview out - yes, a public preview - at the same time. Again, I want consent to use the tracks. In other words, artists: SIGN THIS!

You're underestimating midi. It also doesn't describe sound any more than sheet music describes how a piano sounds. It describes music.

A general poll? lol Some variation of midi is still used inside most DAWs, and it's used to communicate between hardware devices (musical hardware like physical synths and music keyboards, thatis). When we write notes on the computer, or record with our keyboard controllers, we're recording midi data into the music program. The software synths and samplers (the ones in the computer) are controlled by midi; even if the DAW can automate some of the controls in a synth by other means, midi is used for note data and "cc" control change messages... like pitch bend. And they're not sound files, they're sheet music for machines. edit: Overflow, afaik, most computers will produce roughly the same midi sound, it's when you send it to a keyboard/synth thing that you'll start to hear a greater variety in sound. Correct me if I'm wrong, anyone. When ppl on the wip board say stuff like "it sounds like a midi", they mean it sounds like midi files sound on most computers, a mechanical, unprocessed, simple-sample sound. You're confusing the term midi with synth. Midi is basically note data, whether it's sent to a sampler (it plays sampled audio files) or a synth (it creates its own audio). On a hardware synth, you can generate sound without using midi at all, just an on/off signal to an oscillator set to a specific pitch, and get sound. midi is a standardized format for communicating between instruments, whether virtual or physical. Audio is sound.

Done and PMd. I'm sleep-deprived and ear-fatigued, but happy with how the track turned out. Good luck folks, I wish you all the second best.

Arrangement complete-ish. Now to rest my ears and then nitpick and fix whatever production problems I've missed.

Okay, I'm apparently being a harsh critic this round. Must be frustrated with my own track as I write this, I guess. You have been warned. Tho it _is_ still me, so it can't be that bad... right? -- the root of all things: The choice of lead seems a bit wrong; it's really soft compared to a nice and rocking rest of the instrumentation. The synth lead that comes in later works well, but the flute is weak, which doesn't go with the nice and driving drums. I want those drums. From around 2:00 and on, we have a more functional flute lead. Maybe it's just got enough volume this time around? Some timing problems make it sound a bit sloppy. The arrangement is rocking, and the melodies flow well from part to part. wily's inferno: The intro is just starting to get a little dull when it's over. Good timing. Lead feels a little weak, and often ventures close (if not actually into) piercing territory. No surprise that there's a big, intricate and animate solo in here. The tempo seems wrong for the Wily stuff, it's way too slow, especially as the drums just drive the pace up. attracted to power: Chipstuff mixed with some really cool sound design I should steal. This one has a more appropriate tempo, tho it feels a bit rushed. It emulates not just the waveforms but actually some of the techniques oldskool chiptunes used. Chip solo bit - really cool. Only thing that really bothers me here, besides the slightly high tempo, is the slightly high pitch. Either the instrumentation or the arrangement itself is bordering on annoyingly high. mr. x was wily the whole time: Mechanical intro, buried guitar chugs, unbalanced panning. The tracks so far have been difficult to crit, this one was a little easier. I like the altered scale used here. The different scales and altered melodies coupled with the instrumentation give this very much an exotic flavor. smooth heat: Feels very much like a cookie-cutter remix™. There's a cool sound design thing in the background, those bells behind the lead, but the arrangement itself is just... boring. Feels like you didn't have the time to make anything more elaborate. glacial age: The intro - it better just be an intro - seems like a hodgepodge of decent ideas that weren't given the time or room to develop, instead being derailed to make room for the next cool little thing. The whole track is like this; cool little underdeveloped ideas unarranged in an arbitrary order. Every other melody veers off in an interesting direction, and the choice of marimba (or something) was pretty cool, but this isn't a song. light your way: neblix is ripping off Pendulum, but that's nothing new. Like a lot of pendulum's stuff, this sounds overly bright and, as a result, a little flimsy. Funny how he didn't look to their Showdown (1:24), seems to me like that'd be full circle. Close-sounding acoustic guitar book ends the track, which works well. The sound could use some work, it doesn't quite mesh with the clean electric second intro and the DnB parts. Something about the attack of the guitars sounds artificial, but the disparity between the acoustic guitar and the rest of the mix is as detracting... which isn't necessarily much. far from home: Whoa, eighties nostalgia. While a refreshing reminder of a past decade, this wasn't among the cool styles from back then, but it works all right. While many vocal tracks suffer the problem of relying too heavily on the vocals, having poor vocal performance or recording, or a boring arrangement; this track avoids all three, the last one narrowly. shadows of wily: A bit too bright. Considering the name of the track, the thought that it was named ironically crossed my mind. A rocking Wily arrangement and a decent cover despite some mixing problems. It doesn't outstay its welcome. whatever: it's a little soft. i mean, there's dynamics, and then there's forgetting to check the levels. is it normalized, even? it's a pretty little piece (not so little, actually), but there's really no excuse for not slapping a limiter on it and giving it a few dBs of boost. no ticket!: Sounds loud by comparison. I like the intro, even if it's a bit gimmicky. It's source-appropriate. Some transitions could have used some more work. Melodies overlap smoothly where they overlap, there's dynamic, tho the dynamic structure seems a little arbitrary at times. Nice stutter effects. glitch in the system: Nice intro, tho I was expecting something glitchier and more interesting than stuttery raw waveforms. Vocal clips. Dunno what I dislike more, arbitrary vocal clips, or synthesized ones. Or possibly badly acted ones, tho that's a component in the synth ones. It veers off into harmonically challenged territory following the vocal clips. Maybe it was a sign. Maybe we could all learn something about how bad vocal clips are. (Totally not a biased opinion.) - So... Why not share my decision process? We haven't been whining about anything in a while. I'm down to Rexy, team "Will solos over other ppl's tracks", RetroBelmont, Gario, Amphibious and Pendulum. The most professional and deliberate is probably Far from Home, so that's in the top three. If that's a criterion I wanna go by. Hm... On a higher volume, Gario hurts my ears, Pendulum sounds trashy, Rexy still sounds soft, Amphibious is rocking, and something in AkumajoFlashback's production begins to bother me, and team Solos are still slow. Not that raising the volume does much to speed things up, except possibly the onset of hearing problems, or waking the rest of the building. So which would I play in the car the most? Gario, Amphibious, and AkumajoMcFly. Which would I wanna be able to do myself? JigawattBelmont, Amphibious, Pendulum, and team Spotlight. Which style do I like the most? Amphibious, Gario, Pendulum. In lieu of trying to find the ideal criterion, I'll just ad these up. That puts AkumajoBygone, Amphibious, and either Gario or Pendulum in my votes. Looking at my reviews above, I'd say neither, cuz now the crits are getting to me. Anyway, Amphibious or QuantumBelmont for #1? I'm actually not happy about either of them taking up first place, one being weak on low volume, the other sounding... well, wrong on high volume. So, this whole paragraph is a waste. So four tracks remaining... One track is too soft, one is too slow, one is too bright, and one hurts my ears near the end. I'll jsut blame that on my speakers and go with the last one, which is Gario. So, how to rank these three... Amphibious is third, for saving dynamics and not destroying his track with compressors and exciters and maximizers and... only third? Wit the volume dropped, Gario comes in second, and ReferenceSomething first. There. Done.

Actually, this round has the shortest names. I checked.

Yay, a better system. Normalization would be dividing the number of votes a mix gets with the total number of votes in the round. I think I'll do that when I'm not mixing, just to see the differences between scores. There's so much we could do with the data: neutralize ppl's rankings and just see whose mixes were in the top 3 the most, award arbitrary amounts of points to each rank, normalizing or no normalizing, Darke's original choice of scoring, the current system, variations and combinations... I might be a statistician. Scary thought.

Dunno if Darke's system is set in stone, but no-one says we have to care how Darke counts the votes. It's a community thing, the community can count total votes at the end of the competition and announce the actual score and ranking. But count me among the dissenters. Winning by one vote or winning by a landslide makes no difference, you still get two points more than at second place. Likewise, coming fourth, by one vote, nets you as many points as coming last with no votes. If the whole thing gets decided by single vote margins, ppl will undoubtedly complain. If SectorZ's spreadsheet is accurate, the top scores were 64, 57, 53, 50, and 48. That puts them all within 16 points, a negligible lead to the Block Rockmen Beats. In Darke's rankings, they're way ahead, especially as The Hard Men, Blue Bomber Brotherhood and The Concrete Men are 4 points behind the leader... no different than my own team, and we got less than half their amount of points. Wait, why am I complaining?

What's the song you're trying to turn into a midi? If it's from a game, especially an older game, you might have some luck finding a midi for it.

With hard work. Unless you're dealing with single instrument, thatis - I don't think there's algorithms that can separate a mix to its constituents. Even with simple enough material, you'll have the problem of setting the right sensitivity so you don't end up with a lot of notes in the place of a single one, or vice versa. Dunno how Melodyne would handle a mix, but I doubt it could separate instruments from one another. In other words, use your ears.

I still wanna see the time in 24h format GMT, this AM/PM thing is confusing..

Chipstep, huh? Okay. Work on your drums and general mixing, the drums sound really basic. They also aren't as upfront as they should be; they drown behind the other instruments. Wouldn't hurt to have some more variation in sound, there's a lot you can do with simple waveforms without making it less chippy.