Rozovian

Count me in as a go-to for one of the last tracks, when most tracks are done or done-ish. Tho once sd3 is out of the way, I might join this earlier anyway. This and the other mana project in progress, probably.

Forum name is pretty self-explanatory.

Thanks guys and gals. I'll got over all the wips and stuff I've received tomorrow, and that's tomorrow as in when I wake up tomorrow, which should be within 10 hours. I've got a bunch of tracks and more amazing art. iirc I promised a preview of some kind. I'll get you all something once I hear from Stevo about the consent form stuff.

Your questions: 2 - If you feel comfortable with it, then yes. Most music making software today is good enough to do decent music with it, and FL is actually one of the top ones. You'll find that many of the big names on ocr use FL. But it's not about the program, it's how you use it... which brings us to... 1 - Pick something. If you want more emotion in your piano stuff, focus on that. If you want more power in your tracks, focus on that. If you want more quirky, funky stuff, focus on that. I have an in-progress intro to music-making, which covers the basics of writing and production. zircon has his compendium which neblix already brought up, and there's more guides and help all over this forum and the internet. Learning to make good music is something that takes a while to learn, and because most posted remixers do both the writing and the production (and recording their performance, if applicable), the learning curve can seem steep at first. My top tips for anyone starting out: - experiment and have fun, challenge yourself and try new things - get feedback on your music so you have a realistic idea of what you're doing wrong - listen and try to find faults in other ppl's music - and figure out what would make it better - read everything you can find, try to make use of it in your music - compare your music to better music with a similar sound/style, figure out what you're doing differently As for one of the specific problems you mentioned: presence. If everything sounds close, nothing does. Add reverb to instruments that can be more background-y. Take out high frequencies from background instruments and boost them a little in foreground instruments (use an equalizer on both). Figure out the right volume levels for each track (compare to well mixed tracks). And welcome to ocr.

Thanks guys. I even got wips and stuff today.

Just gonna echo the sustain pedal thing. It can do a lot to the sound, especially in otherwise sparse passages. But the most important thing imo is that all the edits are deliberate and not random. Many sequencers already have a "humanization" feature which is just really a randomizer that screws with timing, velocity and whatever else you let it do. Random imperfections may make something seem less mechanical, but it won't be as emotive as even a basic deliberate humanization. Just adding a bit of quantized swing to a part can give it more life than random imperfections... so don't randomize, be deliberate.

We're pink-ish. Yay.

More like that, yeah. But it could have more width. More length. More breadth. MOAR!! Not that it's necessary, it's cool enough already, but... why not?

A hundred is pretty good, no more than a hundred, imo. The last GMRB ones were 91 pixels tall, and I requested and got one that was 74. Not sure how well your design will work with that, tho. If they're around a hundred (or more), they'd need to be fairly wide to not look too box-y. Dunno if our team has any color preference, but I do think the teams could be given different colors so ppl can tell them apart more quickly.

Looks great but it's quite tall. The thread is gonna look more like a gallery than a discussion if everyone's got one of those in their sig, especially if they've got other stuff in their sig, too. btw, separate colors for each team?

Codified or not, they're using music theory, to whatever extent they know it. If they're using chords, they're using music theory.

Lemme add to this that most of what sounds good does so because of music theory, whether you've formally learned it or not. You don't have to spend years in a conservatory to be able to use chords. I've learned the most from doing something that was new to me, and later reading about it. time sigs, musical modes, syncopation, chords that aren't minor and major triads, etc.. At that point I know how it sounds, I know I like it, and reading about it is a lot easier when I already have an understanding of it. The dark room metaphor works well here. So you're using music theory pretty much no matter what. Of course, the more you can use, the better your music can be.

So, four remixers without a team, three incomplete teams, and three days or so left... btw, when can I start talking about making salad out of the other teams?

Since you're joining now, or rejoining, or something, I have no problem exempting you from this deadline. If you've got anything yet, throw me an early wip so I know what you're doing with it, but beyond that, don't fret this deadline. I'll mark the track as yours when I get your wip/proof-of-wip/sketch/whatever. And Dj Mokram was asking about track titled Secret of Mana, so I'm seeing interest in the red ones... which there hopefully won't be more of come Oct 26th.

I am an idiot. I do this distance thing all the time, without even thinking about it as a room. And I never do it with orchestral music. No wonder I don't like my orchestral music. Thanks, Y. Also, welcome to having contributed to my remixing guide. This picture is so going in there.

There's a certain amount of musicianship involved in the composition and the production, as there's, uh, composership and producership in the respective two others. There's an important human element to production, which I know you're all well aware of. You can teach a monkey to turn knobs but you can't teach it to do it with the same deliberation as an artist, likewise a music theory program couldn't make art as a human would, nor can a virtual instrument produce a human performance without intricate, deliberate instructions for every note. I'm saying you should be an artist with all you've got an all you know. If you don't know much, be an artist with the little you do know, and expand your knowledge base as you go. If you can make sick beats and awesome rhythms but know jack shit about chords, you'll be approach the chords differently than someone who's been indoctrinated with the theory and knows jack shit about how to mix. Hm, I was supposed to write this short, lol. TL;DR: you all know there's a performance, a composition, and a production component to music, and nobody's gonna learn these the same way anyone else does. Do what you can, and try to grow your skills and knowledge all the time.

Any and all sd3 save states welcome (but _especially_ late-game ones), ad.rozovian is my gmail name so send whatever you've got there. If I don't have the right tools to record stuff, at least I'll have a whole bunch of saves to hand to someone who does. Hey, for once I'm looking forward to my birthday. Thanks guys.

My picks: top man (3) chill man (10) crystal man (5) solar man (10) star man (5) And if there's no further team shuffling going on atm, I'm joining SuperiorX and Phonetic hero. They'll make it official if I'm in.

neblix, just cuz you're now a posted mixer doesn't mean you can make fun of n00bs that jump into random threads thinking they're being so smart when they're pointing out what the OP had already figured out instead of contributing something substantial from their own experience, skills and knowledge.

My learning has kind'a stagnated for a while, but that's cuz I haven't actually been working on music much. The time when I learned the most was probably when I started critting ppl's works on the feedback board. Forcing yourself to find flaws in other ppl's music trains yoru critical listening skills, which you can then apply to your own mix. You tend to not be objective enough to learn that much from your own mixes unless you put a real effort into comparing them to other ppl's works... which can lead to frustration when you find that you just can't get it to sound like x because you don't have the right tools and you don't understand the principles behind stuff. I think the best way to learn, going from babystep 1 to leap for mankind x, is this: - get familiar with your tools, make noise - try to write melodies you already know - write original songs - learn some instruments irl, at least somewhat - listen critically to other newbs' music - listen critically to your own music - talk to ppl roughly on your level or higher, ask them stuff - compare your own music to well-mixed, similar tracks - experiment, challenge yourself to make tracks based on limitations (single instrument songs, all (incl drums) synth, no drums, record all midi yourself, etc) - find new tricks, techniques, tools, theory things to try; read and study; listen to new styles, whatever - make loads of music And make sure you're having fun with it all.

I'm joining neblix' and AMT's team unless the position has been filled or my would-be teammates have a problem with that. As for robot masters, all I've got so far is Chill Man. The rest... I'll figure out later. I'm not at home atm.

Enjoyable, fun take on a forgettable track. What's not to like?

Jumping an octave up or down can add some variation to the parts that are otherwise mostly predictable retreads of the least interesting parts of an over-mixed source. Most of the track avoids that pitfall, tho. II's a nice, emotive, elaborate... thing. I was zoning out a bit after 3 minutes, but the 4:00 stuff quickly won me back. The stuff approach 5:00 feels more like improvisation on the backing rhythm. That part could be closer to source, in whatever mode you might wanna use for that. The arrangement is interesting enough, but like a lot of ppl new to how ocr wants its mixes, you're either sticking close to source or deviating far. Cutting it shorter would probably help keep ppl from skipping to next after half the track, or you can just add more variations of the melody to it. It's a very distinct melody, both in pitch and in rhythm, so you can (as you have done) do a lot with it and still have it feel like just another take on the same familiar melody. So yeah. Nice track, good luck with it.

The bass lacks definition and needs rhythm. It's okay when the other instruments provide that for it, but when it's solo in the intro it doesn't quite work. The off-beat timing (syncopation) is cool but on those long solo notes it can just as well sound like you just suck at writing. Which I can hear you certainly don't, green as you may be. Actually, your main problems are sound design and mixing. Like the ending. The kick pretty much wrecks what'd otherwise work as a really sweet ending (except those very last notes, which take it from sweet to cheesy). I'll just list the instruments/sounds that I think you should work on: - the bass instrument, which could have a more closed filter - you can open it for some parts of the track (automation). it could also have more low frequency content. - kick drum and floor tom, which don't sound like they belong in the same kit, the kick being really short and dry while the tom is long and.. uh, open? also, during the softer parts of the track, lower the kick's velocity and/or use a softer kick. soften the low frequencies of the floor tom and find a softer kick for the softer parts of the track. - the higher organ doesn't quite fit with the electronic instruments - you can make it work but it's probably easier to replace it with something else, maybe a different organ, maybe a synth, whatever works. - the weirdly tuned sounds around the middle of the track have a lot of low frequency content - bass tones in them - which you could filter out with an equalizer. That's what I hear. Hope this helps. If there's anything you don't understand, google it. If you still don't get it, just ask.

Transition from 3/4 to 4/4 now bothers me, and the whole thing begins a bit abruptly. Humanizing the piano and solving the transition somehow would let it begin smoother. There's some other places where some piano humanization would improve the track, like around 2:10. Also, in keeping with the vinyl noise in the intro, more of that might help cement that the intro is just an intro, as well as distract a bit from the mechanical sequencing. I'd start with the piano and probably also add some soft old record player noise to the intro, but that's me. That the lead goes so high towards the end creates a bit of a problem. The backing tracks get quite high in the frequency range to cover it better and keep the whole thing balanced, which imo doesn't sound right. Having a more melodic mid-range backing would help, and softening the lead could smoothen it out a bit more. Then there's the classic methods of doing some eq separation. The current backing still has a problem with repetition. It's nice and detailed, but it still feels like it's written over a loop. Breaking up the rhythms a bit with fills and syncopation (in appropriate doses and places) would help cure that. Having two breaks so close to one another around the middle of the track really breaks the structure of the track. The more upbeat part in between them (1:13) would either need to be more substantial and longer, or mellowed down to their level, making it a single, longer break instead. Then again, that's the Rozo way of doing things, which gets stale and predictable after a few remixes. Nice and detailed, varied and interpretive... it has a lot going for it, but I'm not sure I'd YES it if I was on the panel. There's something intangible and mystical missing, and if I knew what I'd have a lot more remixes posted myself. You could try running it by one of the judges and see what they think, or you could put this on mod review and get a workshop mod to have a look.