Rozovian

I get something like this with a short noise-based sound with a high-resonance LP filter that opens and closes. It's not quite the same sound, but it should be close enough to achieve the same effect. An optional 30ms delay with some feedback adds some robotic flavor to it, if you want that.

Got some art in, so I thought that's worth mentioning. Note to self: add our artists to the front page staff list thing. When I feel like it. In other news, my BadAss track is pretty much done, wav sent, so I'll FINALLY have time for my own sd3 tracks again. What have I learned from taking on like a dozen or so project tracks at the same time? Don't. One at a time is plenty, and gets stuff done faster.

Okay so, I've been going on about how there's lots of free resources out there on teh interwebs, but never really put it to a test. Until now. teh remix I wanted to see how it'd sound without using my more pro skills and tools. Sequenced by hand in Logic. I tried stuff out on my keyboard but wrote them by mouse, no humanizing. Basically, this should be possible* to reproduce exactly in any AU-compatible DAW, and with the exception of some of the effects I used, any VST-compatible DAW as well. *theoretically, not practically. All instruments and effects are free plugins, I used none of Logic's built-in ones for this. Addictive Drums demo and Kore for the drums and percussion, TAL's NoiseMaker for the arpeggio chords, Elek7ro II for the bass, Ticky Clav for the e-piano, u-he's Triple Cheese for the lead, and FreeAlpha for a couple of backing things. Among the effects, KResearch's delay and reverb, and LFX-1310 are used on about half the tracks. Questions, comments, crits welcome. I don't think I'll do anything more to it, but feel free to pick it apart and crit everything for practice or whatever.

Too much reverb, seems like you wanna use it to mask the sounds themselves. Doesn't work that way. And when the instruments aren't as covered in reverb, they'll be more exposed, so you should humanize the foreground stuff - they're the ones ppl will notice most. Niiice bass...too loud tho. But hey, you're learning. Cool source, nice take on it. Sound-wise this is the kind of track that I wouldn't mind looping in the background while doing stuff. Could be better, but it's enjoyable, and you've done much worse before.

There's some nice references to the source in the bass, but it's mostly sourceless. If you listen to my windmill hut mix, you'll hear some of the things you can do with the source. As for the overall arrangement, the first 50 seconds seem like a mandatory source use before venturing into more original territory. It's a valid arrangement style, but it sounds newby. The bass melody work ok for most part, but it feels like the wrong timbre, it sounds like it's 2-3 octaves too high. I obviously hear the low end part of that sound (and that's a nice big low end), I'm just taking an issue with the higher components of it. There's some other sounds design stuff you could work on, like the 1:43 instrument which doesn't sound like it belongs in the same soundscape, and it shouldn't tale a lot of eq and other processing to make it fit in better. Yeah and the drums are just a loop. Trouble writing in this time signature? Even some basic fills and secondary percussion can spice up a loop-based track's rhythms. One of the more liberal and more interesting takes on the source that I've heard. There's room for improvement tho. The overall production is some ways from ocr's standards, but man it'd kick ass it it got up to that level. Arrangement is a bit too repetitive and needs more source to meet ocr's arrangement standards. It's a cool track, a good start, doesn't need much to be great.

ppl become addicted to the support they can get from the wip board during its more active times and then get discouraged when they don't get as much feedback (as Vidilian brought up). I've seen ppl post a new wip several times a day because someone pointed something out to them. Relying on other ppl's ears like that is just lazy, and expecting random ppl to hold your hand like that - for free - is actually kind'a rude. This is yet another reason to make friends - to have someone who'll take the time to listen to your tracks (and whose tracks you should take the time to listen to). If you befriend someone who can teach you stuff, yay! I'm not saying no to encouragement, I'm saying the wip board turns into a n00bfest if ppl just sit around waiting to be fed appreciation and instructions. A n00bfest is not a good environment to grow as an artist, and not at all a good place for newbs. A sense of accomplishment for achieved goals (such as completing a track, meeting ocr's standards, getting a track on an album, learning to make a particular synth sound yourself, whatever) is a much better motivator than a virtual pat on the back anyway. Should I take this personally?

Thanks guys. I'll revisit this thread when I get back to this wip... probably in.... um... within 6 mixes or so. Stupid project commitments...

Gonna quote myself from a while back, when I was analyzing a survey I did on wip feedback and stuff: Been thinking about what makes ppl comment on a post, and I think there's a few things you can do to attract listeners: 1 - Remix popular sources. ppl are more likely to listen to stuff they're already familiar with. I know this flies in the face of ocr's promotion of exploring vgm you haven't heard before, but it's just how the wip board works. 2 - Make friends. There's more ways to interact with ocr ppl than on the forum. Get in touch with ocr ppl via IM, irc, youtube, facebook, and wherever. ppl will listen to their friends' music. I wouldn't still be making remixes if it wasn't for Willrock and Tensei, and when I see a familiar name on the wip board, I usually check out what they're posting. If I have time. 3 - Thread naming. Yeah, it sounds silly, but it does a lot. Nobody is gonna listen to your remix because of it's great and awesome name in the flood of wips; put the source and possibly the genre or something in the thread title. Put the game if it's not one of the top ten or so remixed franchises. Metal tracks attract metal fans, jazz tracks attract jazz fans, classical tracks attract classical fans. 4 - Cross-crit. I mean, give other ppl feedback on their tracks. Some of them might check yours out, and some of those might comment on it. Then there's stuff like not coming off as being in constant need of appreciation and approval and stuff. There's no-one here to hold your hand every step of the way. If you wanna make music, make music. If you want ppl's approval, show it to your grandparents. If you wanna improve, learn to use your own ears, and use the wip board for the stuff you can't figure out yourself... and, of course, to share your music. Three things that ppl should do more: Finish your tracks. It's easy to start a track (I've started several thousands) but hard to finish them (I've finished a few hundred over the years). Finishing your tracks puts you through the whole process, which is enormously helpful when you work on your subsequent tracks. Talk to ppl. Willrock and I developed our skills together on ocr, sharing a lot of tracks forth and back and getting lots of good feedback from each other. Wip board, AIM, msn, whatever. Get in touch with ppl, whether they're pros or newbs or whatever. The worst that can happen is that they tell you to stop bothering them. /rambling short, angry-sounding version: OCR IS NOT YOUR MUSIC TEACHER, NOT YOUR GRANDMA, AND NOT SOME TICKET TO THE INTERNET FAME YOU THINK YOU'RE ENTITLED TO. So if you're not happy with the culture of the wip board, start changing it. If you're not getting enough feedback by sitting on your ass waiting, do something. (this isn't directed at anyone in particular, Modus and the rest of you just managed to bring up my own frustration with the wip board back when i used it more)

Bored, made more avatars. From Halo, which is surprisingly underrepresented on this site. (pictured: elite, hunter, master chief, arbiter, 343 guilty spark, emile) Here's the rest. edit: also uploaded zips of all the avatars in four separate packages to make it easier to dl and evaluate them. Oh and I made yet another avatar pack, mostly Crysis 1 and 2, and one from Haze. LT: Will sort through the mega-pack...

Seems more like the kind of thing you'd rather do in a sampler (eg Kontakt), not in the DAW.

Do it yourself. With this.

Been a while since I posted one of my wips here. Been so secretive and project-y lately, but here's something I've been playing with when I should have been doing something more important. teh remix Not concerned about source usage or interpretation (and I'm lazy, so no source link), just about the general arrangement, specifically the times listed below, and whether or not the arrangement makes much sense at all. Sound design is mostly done, and there's some nitpicky problems like the pads' slow attack, one of the leads being ugly, production stuff that I'm gonna deal with when I feel like it, so no need to point out every little faily part (tho I appreciate any findings I've missed myself). 2:10 whole transition thing, too abrupt? 3:16 this part sounds more like an ending thing, need something in before this part? 4:22 transition weird, and the subsequent part too tame? Obviously missing a proper ending, too. Gonna be another crazy long mix, I guess. Too long? So, arrangement crits/suggestions?

I'm less bothered by the fakey choir samples than with the disparity between the background and the lead. Whent he lead comes in, it's like it's just copy-pasted into a picture with no regard to brightness, contrast, or color, to use a visual metaphor. it's probably just a matter of volume and frequency balance, give the other tracks some highs, drop the volume of the lead a bit and you should be fine. I like the drums, but as it's been said, they're pretty repetitive. Consider filtering highs or lows out of them, writing some additional percussion elements, chopping the loop up, and stuff like that for variation. btw, don't focus so much on original content as on different ways of using the source melodies. I started out making midi rips and then trying to pull them into ocr-level interpretative arrangements, and I learned that it's much easier to start from some new way of using a part of the source and build from there, and if necessary pull it closer to source. Sometimes I start from something original and end up turning it into a remix. Original content is cool, but a track can be both too conservative and not have enough source, both too liberal and not interpretive enough.

Hard to say exactly without getting a look at the stems, but the bass in the Pendulum track is pretty loud around the 40-80Hz area, and filtering out everything else still leaves the rumbling, so I'd say it's just a low sine. Can't have a look at the other without an audio file, but I'm sure it's the same thing in principle - something loud in the <100Hz area. Testing it out, I get about the same amount of rumbling with a pure enough sine (use a spectrum analyzer to check - your EQ might have one, which you'd probably be most familiar with), tho how to get the bass loud enough without messing up the track compression and stuff is a whole other matter.

Good sticky. The obvious exception to this is of course releases with multiple tracks. Just making sure it's said, for those crazy rule-reading ppl out there.

If all it does is add sub any sine wave should do it. Just write it low enough. personally, I'd add a it of overdrive or filter a triangle or something to get a few harmonics to make the sound a little less low-only, but still have a clean, low sound.

It's more about the compression ratio than about at what level the compressor kicks in. Heavy compression is when you have a high ratio and the compressor is working almost all the time. Light compression is, well, lighter than that. Threshold by itself is meaningless, since a quiet track will need a lower threshold for the compressor to matter at all, whereas a louder track usually should have a higher threshold. It's threshold relative to input level that matters.

All right, you should all have gotten some feedback on your tracks now (if not, blame the hige tracklist and just PM me and I'll get right on it). Well, everyone except luhny and Mozzaratti, luhny having just started, and Mozzaratti being all done. Updated the tracklist with some color edits. More blue and green ones.

Lotta wips based on this source here atm. Clipping, or some other kind of distortion. Avoid it. Also noticeable compression. Again, avoid it. In other words, it's too loud. Gonna echo the other two posters here, it's a bit too conservative in the first half. See what else you can do with the source. There's also something about the mixing that bothers me, possibly how prominent the delays on the lead are compared to the other tracks. Could just be how empty the track is, which one of DL's suggestions should solve.

Yeah, the suite is really quiet. I boosted the whole thing 7dB before a Limiter, no ill effects. The limiter barely has to do anything. I also gave the bass a 4dB boost (might be a little excessive) from 220Hz and down, it put a little more power in the lows. (eq before limiter) As for the full mixdown, there's all kinds of techniques you could use. Can't say what you should use without hearing them, but multiband compression comes to mind as something worth looking into. Don't normalize past the peak levels, instead limit the peaks and normalize... normally. Really cool track btw.

Strings are really dry compared to the other tracks. And yeah, it becomes conservative fast. That sitar-y sample sounds silly. I like your string quartet-y start, but the focus shifts from that to the sitar. You need more cool ideas (like the intro) for this, it feels like you went conservative because you didn't know what else to do.

Yeah, intro is nice, tho you should use the sustain function on the piano for more realism and a thicker sound. And then it goes into midi rip territory until after 1:00 somewhere. Around 1:08 or so you go into this cool play on the rhythm rather than the melodic parts of source. Some parts expose weak samples tho, like 1:38 with the strings, or 1:06 with the choir sample. Layering them with other string/choir samples should give you a more complex sound, and as long as you have a foreground layer you can use obscenely wet reverb settings on the other layers (just don't mix those tracks too loud).

My answer is that you perhaps shouldn't start from a copy of the source and make it more song-y, you should start from a new rhythm, chord progression, an alteration of the source or an original song where the source fits in. When you do need to add source, don't copy the arrangement of the original, add it to your arrangement differently. Use a part of the bassline in the lead, or vice versa. Use the drum rhythm on the bassline or on a gated synth. Play another part of the lead melody as backing. Stuff like that. Just don't do 100% source, that's way too liberal. (yes, Js, I'm still a bit annoyed by this)

Funny how you wanna ask a few questions but there's not a single question mark in your post. Some general observations first: humanize the guitar rhythm and velocities (some strums should be softer), it's not a bad sound but the sequencing is pretty mechanical. Get stuff to sync up, I notice the trumpet notes are a bit too far ahead of the others (having them start earlier to counter a slow attack or just for general humanization is cool, but atm they're too early). As for the question, bringing out the full qualities it just a matter of giving them their own space and letting the right frequencies through. Because the trumpet's pretty important here, I would start by trying to find the frequency range where its most important frequencies are, and boost those slightly; I'd also cut those frequencies slightly from the other instruments. Then I'd pick another instrument, probably the guitar, find its important frequency range and boost that slightly - unless it's the same as the trumpet, in which case I'd have to shift the eq slightly in different directions to separate their sounds more - and cut the guitar's boosted frequency from the other instruments including the trumpet. I'd do this with all instruments. Can't say about the arrangement concern tho. Might work, might not work, depending on what you're trying to do and wether you can pull it off or not. In any case, good luck with the mix.

Force yourself to sit down and do something. It might not feel very productive or creative at first to sit down and just do stuff, but once you get going, you'll be glad you did. Having hard deadlines helps, too.