Rozovian

eval Right off the bat, I don't like the bass drum when it's exposed. It fits better in once the track gets going, so not a big problem there. But why does the track keep going back to parts where it _is_ exposed? It makes for a weird arrangement and breaks flow when that happens out of nowhere. You could mitigate this by making the bass drum softer, by reducing level or filtering it or using a partly different bass drum for those parts. Many solutions. Source is undoubtedly there, and there's definitely a lot of interpretation going on in the sound. As for arrangement, it feels like a bunch of disparate parts stacked on top of each other with little thoiught to continuity and progression. Take the 2:31 part. It just starts. New chords, new set of sounds, new rhythm... It just happens out of nowhere. That's a recurring problem with the arrangement. As a lot of the track seems to be source parts placed on top of the beat, you can probably move those parts around to make a more intentional-seeming structure, something with better flow, better transitions, better overall structure. The sound is loud and aggressive, and overcompressed. There are instances where the lead feels too loud or otherwise poorly integrated into the mix, like at 2:31 or 2:59. The overall sound design works though, despite my misgivings about the bass drum. I'm not a fan of the voice clips, but that's a very subjective criticism. I don't think they do anything important for the track, and are mostly there because one of the sources had it. But I might be wrong on that. At the very start, there's also a weird fade effect, as if the first bass drum note was faded in. That's a really annoying problem once you notice it. Not ready for ocr. Overcompressed, messy arrangement. I think all the right parts are there, though, you just gotta put them together in a way that makes more sense.

While I'm going through everything marked for eval, I might as well drop a line here. First, it rocks. Second, that choir is terrible, and the snare is weak.

No source link, no source comment. I'm not gonna go hunting down the source for every remix. The remixer can supply the link themselves. But clearly I should play this game at some point. Seems like it's got great music. eval I think the middle minute's drum rhythm is a bit repetitive, as the track gets stale towards the middle.. Yes, despite the cool rhythm. The transition to the last part also doesn't quite make sense to me, and should probably be signalled better in the dynamics and writing. I'm not saying it's out of place, it could work, but it currently doesn't. It currently feels like 2 separate tracks, one after the other. It might be a good idea to let some instruments carry over, a percussion element or the low strings or something. I suggest you try something like that to make the track more cohesive. An intro in the same style as the ending part might also do it. There are many solutions to this problem. Repetitiveness is a problem in the ending part as well. It shouldn't take much, just a variation to the melody or a change in the overall dynamics, an instrument entering or dropping out. Again, a problem with many solutions. It also sounds like the lead and drums are too loud compared to everything else. I'm having trouble listening to what's going on in the background. You'd best check this against some other posted remixes in a similar style. Not yet ready for ocr, but it's a short and sweet track that has potential. Needs work on the mixing and on making the track more cohesive, as well as reducing the repetitiveness. edit: Link supplied. It's fairly conservative in material, but the structure is handled creatively. No complaints regarding source. Well, that source. Is the ending part from a different source? I can't connect it to anything in Liontamer's source. If so, that means integrating it into the main track is all the more important, as the arrangement otherwise turns into a medley of two disparate parts. That's a type of arrangement that usually doesn't pass the panel. Also, I noticed on this listen that some of the shorter notes from around 0:35, probably on the clarinet or whatever that is, stand out as particularly loud. Instances of individual notes being too loud appear later as well. It's an easy fix once you spot it, reduce velocity or automate a reduction in track level. But you gotta catch 'em all. And you gotta find them first.

I hope this hasn't been on eval since the end of January, as that's a bit too long. We've said (haven't we?) that it should take us about two weeks to notice and evaluate your track. If you don't have an eval after two weeks, PM us or something. MM is one of the first games I have any memory of, along with Battle Chess. Never played enough of it for any of the music to stick, though. eval Long piano intro, seems like it's gonna be a piano-centric track. Odd stuff playing, but I don't terribly mind. It's at least interesting, though it's important that those odd parts in particular feel performed, intentional, rather than sequenced. I get the impression that they're imported from a midi in which they were played on a different instrument. The delay and reverb are messing with my impression of the piano. Later parts have a different keyboard instrument handling the arpeggio, but some rather stiff piano stuff on top. The background stuff isn't as important, but the piano needs to sound more human. Not a fan of the piano+bass sound, but we'll see how it develops. Takes half the track for drums to come in. The track instantly feels a lot better balanced. Drums for the most part are quite straitforward, but there's some nice fills there at times. I don't think drum writing is much of a problem. Fadeout ending. I don't think that's necessary. It almost sounds like a normal ending, one that works fine, except it also fades at the same time. Consider how you want it to end. Source is obviously there, and while it sounds rather conservative, I think the genre adaptation and stuff makes it interpreted enough. No problem there. I can't make sense of the choice of bass. Most of the track, it sounds randomly chosen with little regard for the overall sound of the track. The piano needs to feel more human. During some of the weird writing in the beginning, and when it's playing melody on top of the arpeggio and bass, it doesn't feel performed by a real person. It should feel deliberate and emotive, respectively. And the ending is cheap. You could just drop out the drums and let the guitar stop after a long note. That's an okay ending. There are other ways to end the track, too. But the fadeout doesn't work. Not yet ready for ocr. Sounds promising tho. And nice choice of source.

Like timaeus said, as long as your track reaches normal volumes, it's probably acceptable. The best way to check this is to check how it sounds next to some posted ocremixes in a similar style or genre. Even then there can be a lot of variation. You should probably compare your work to similar, posted remixes anyway, as that'll make issues with frequency balance and some other mixing issues stand out more so you can deal with them before submitting the track.

Orchestral sounds is something you'd best look elsewhere for. Depending on your needs, something like the Kontakt factory library (part of Native Instruments' Komplete; I highly recommend you get Komplete rather than just Kontakt) or an old library like Miroslav might be good enough. I use them - but I don't make much orchestral music. Or you might want to save up a few thousand bucks for the really big orchestral packages. It's difficult to say without knowing your needs. And none of that's free. Logic should have everything you need when it comes to electronic sounds, though. If you're only a few years into this stuff, just now going from GB to Logic, I'd recommend something like this: 1) Learn Logic's instruments, how to get a decent performance out of them. This is free, now that you have it. Find their limitations, and figure out what it is you need from future purchases. 2) Get Native Instruments' Komplete. You get Kontakt, which you'll probably want for future libraries, as well as its basic sound library which includes a wide range of instruments and a lot more options than Logic's own sampler has. Find its limitations, and figure out what it is you need form future purchases. 3) Decide whether to build a library out of smaller purchases (that usually run in Kontakt) or one big monster of a library (often its own plugin). If you're not at this point drawn towards orchestral music, you might find that you need better drum samples, or a good fake/sampled guitar, or more synths, or brass for jazz, or... something else. Figure out what you need before you start spending any money. While there is free stuff out there, I'm not sure I'd bother with it myself. These days, the tools I use the most outside of Logic's own stuff are Pianoteq (mostly the e-piano add-on), Omnisphere 1, a couple of things from Komplete, and a couple of SampleTank things. That's for e-piano, pads, various uses, and drums, respectively (with overlap). But I started with just Logic's own stuff, and that was years ago, before Sculpture and Alchemy. I think my 5 first remixes were done with just Logic's built-in stuff back then, though I can't say for sure. Sorry to not answer the question, but it's difficult without knowing your needs. Even then, it's difficult to say whether a new tool is the right way to go, or just more skill with the tools you've got. What do you want to make?

I'll take something left over, or opened up, once I'm done with sd3 stuff. I think I'm flexible enough by now to be able to make something out of any source, and I've played with the soundtrack a bit for aocc so there shouldn't be anything completely unfamiliar anyway.

If you know it's unfinished, it's _not_ ready for review. Eval/RFR is not for unfinished tracks that lack feedback, it's for tracks that are ready to be submitted, but that the remixer still has doubts about and want people who are judge level or close to give it a listen. Change the thread prefix, keep working on it, wait for feedback from other users and use that. When you think it's ready to be submitted, _then_ mark it RFR.

Well I can tell you this right away: it's not up to ocr's standards. eval: The sound design is all over the place. Some parts are harsh and loud, others surprisingly soft by comparison. I'm not sure where the arrangement is heading at any point, which is a little disconcerting. I think those are the three big problems here. I'm normally not much for sound effects, but your sfx section is one of the more tasteful uses of them. Nice work. I'm not entirely sold on the idea because they don't integrate that well into the sound design, but that's more a sound design problem than anything else. Source is obviously there. I don't think source usage is a problem, it's handled creatively enough. But there are elements that, for part of the mix, are used verbatim. As this is a source I've heard remixed so many times, those conservative bits aren't very interesting to me. That shouldn't be an issue with most listeners, but it's something to be aware of when remixing something like this. A good arrangement gives the listener some idea of where it's heading, even if it takes some time to get there, or changes to head off in a different direction. It feels like the whole thing is deliberate. Here I'm haring variation after variation of the source, and not until the sfx bit comes in do I have some idea of the track nearing the end. And even then, the following part makes me doubt that guess. The softer bit around 1:10 is the kind of thing I'd expect before the last loud part, or possibly at the end of the track, so it gets a little confusing. Listeners, consciously or subconsciously, rely on things like that in the structure to feel where in the track they are, and when those cues come in unexpected places, it's confusing. I'm not saying you have to following predictable, established structures, but learning how to write and mix the thing to signal things to the listener is a very useful skill to have. There's some really weird jumps in level, like at 0:20 and 0:32 and 2:02, that suggest that this was mixed without listening to the actual output. I don't know if that's the case, but it sounds like that's the case. I know a common complain on music is that it isn't dynamic enough, arrangement-wise or sound-wise, but this is the opposite problem. Work on the transitions. The choice of a harsh bass sound in the 1:10-1:35 part is odd, because harsher sounds are usually used in the loud parts, while smoother sounds are used for soft parts. So that's weird as well. Overall, instrument placement doesn't seem to have been much considered here. EQ, reverb, level, pan; use them. The record stops in the last loud part are a cool effect, but I think using it multiple times makes it more annoying than cool. It might be a subjective criticism, but it bugs me. When there's multiple stops like that, it suggests there's gonna be an iteration without the stops that is even bigger and cooler. But then it just ends. With just the first stop, it'd signal that things are getting big, and there's nothing bigger coming, which I think is a good signal. To me, anyway. It's subjective. But I thought I'd let you know how it works on me. And the end is rather abrupt. I don't mind the sound effects, but the transition into it wasn't very smooth. I hope this gives you an idea of what you can do to get this up to ocr's standards. I think it's mostly a production thing, because despite my problems figuring out the arrangement, I don't think it's a dealbreaker. The production, however, is. Get yourself a couple of fairly recent (as in the last 10 years) reference tracks with a sound design you think fits this track, and compare. See what you can learn about instrument placement and level and sound design. It's helped me a lot. Good luck.

You're new here, so I think you didn't read what "ready for review" is for: for remixes that the remixer thinks are ready to be submitted to ocr officially, to be judged by the panel maybe to be approved and become an official ocr mixpost. This remix is not ready for that. You have a few things to learn, including how to mix things more cleanly, and how to write a more varied and dynamic arrangement or a groove. This is a good place to learn that. We'll tell you what you're doing wrong, so you can learn to do it right. Welcome to ocr. eval: The arrangement is essentially a repeat of the source, with repetitive drums on top. Yes, there's a bit where you've created a nice variation of the source, but the structure is the same. When the structure is the same, or similar enough, you need other things to give the track its own - your own - flavor. I'm not hearing enough of that. It's not different enough in tone and mood either. It's also overcompressed. So loud that the elements keep pushing each other down. That's a problem. It can be lessened by using a multiband compressor, but better yet if you avoid pushing the compressor or limiter on the output too hard. EQ the tracks to get rid of frequencies they don't need and to lessen frequencies that aren't important to them. That way you have more room for loudness without overcompression. It's dynamically flat. It's one of the things you can vary if you keep the same structure. Have parts of different intensity, different weight. My favorite part of the remix is at around 2:20 when something actually happens and the track changes. The drums drop out and things get lighter and softer (and as a result, the compression is less of an issue). Things don't have to change that much all the time, but it's good to provide some change to the dynamics in the arrangement and mix. And there are many ways to do this. The beat is repetitive, like it's just one single loop for the whole track. In mixes where the beat is repetitive, there's a strong groove that drives the track, usually a combination of a bassline or riff that works well with the drums. There are usually more subtle changes to everything else as well, filters opening or closing, and new elements coming in during a buildup. But even then there's often drum fills and other changes to the drums that make it less repetitive. Right now, it's like the drums are just put on top of the rest of the tracks. The sound design is rather basic. There's little EQ and other effects to give each instrument its own space. It's like "this is a string ensemble, and it sounds fine on its own, so it'll sound fine in the mix", but that's not how mixing works. You have to give the instruments their own space, depending on their role in the arrangement. There's also a few weird synth sounds that don't sound intentional, that appear sometimes. The high-pitch at 0:21 is the first, I think. It doesn't sound intentional, it doesn't sound good. It's a good source, with many melodies you can use, and your original writing here shows you can adapt to the source's chords and structure. You can get a lot more creative with this source. There were no clashing notes or other devastating problems with the remix, which is a good sign. Keep writing, keep mixing, keep learning. Again, welcome to ocr.

Probably one particular note track missing. I can produce similar effects, mute individual note tracks, though I've never tried with n64 music, in Audio Overload playing nes or snes music. On the snes, tracks aren't bound to a particular instrument, so there could be notes for multiple instruments on the same track. If that track was muted, those things obviously don't play. My guess is that this is what's causing your missing percussion and occasional string notes.

This is how I want evals to work. Actually, how I want feedback overall to work here. Someone posts, someone else adds to it with agreement or disagreement, and the remixer gets a wider range of feedback. Hous3, you got lucky here.

eval: Definitely compression issues. I would recommend a multiband compressor for this, but I would try to avoid pushing it too hard anyway. One way to create headroom is to high-pass every instrument. Most instruments have lows they don't need, and some have lows not needed in the mix even if it makes them sound rather thin and weak when played solo. High-pass that stuff away. Another is to compress background tracks together to keep them from interfering with the foreground tracks as much. Yet another is to mix soft, and use parallel compression to raise the overall levels. Yet another is to spend hours automating track levels. The most effective, though, is to be aware of how loud things should be, and mix levels accordingly. I use all of these techniques. It's taken me a long time to learn them, but I think I'm finally getting a good grasp of that stuff, enough for my hobbyist level anyway. It's loud enough, so every bit of headroom you create should go towards making it breathe more, not making it louder. There's a fairly high-resonance synth lead here that seems a really odd choice. I don't like it, I don't think it fits. There's a more brassy synth lead used too, which works much better. Most other synths fit well with the jazz stuff, even if the levels could probably be adjusted. That one synth, at least when playing higher notes, is something I'd replace. Like with your Mario track, I'd watch the timings of lead instruments. The synths in particular seem to have some weird timing flaws. That includes both when the notes start, and when they end. I'm a long-time Zelda fan, and for much of the track, I had a hard time identifying tracks. The title screen, and the astral/lullaby combo were obvious to me, but the rest took a few more listens. Source is there, used creatively, so no complaints there. It might be that the track is too much of a medley for ocr, but that difficult to say. Mixing levels and compression issues, note timings, that one synth lead... I can't identify any other flaws. It's an enjoyable listen, and definitely worth subbing once you've dealt with the aforementioned issues. Cool stuff.

The O in Of probably shouldn't be capitalized. It looks weird to me, and it's against what wikipedia's referenced style guides recommend. Dealbreaker? No. Bugs me? Yes. eval: The drums are strangely weak. The whole mix is a bit too soft. Not much. Find some remixes from here with a similar sound or style, and compare how loud they are. Try to put yours on roughly the same level. Err on the soft side, but make it louder than it is now. I'm not a fan of the choice of snare sound. It's too short and snappy, and too same-y when it feels like it should be more dynamic. I don't like the guitar sound either. There's a weird tapping sound at 2:30, probably part of the cymbal rise. I don't particularly like the piano-reverb sound. There's a sound probably from the piano's mechanisms that becomes rather prominent on the higher notes, and bleeds into the reverb as well. It might be possible to filter it out of the sound. If it's recorded audio, and includes the room sound, it might be difficult to get rid of it, but you can experiment with eq to try to reduce how prominent it is. The sound choices overall are good imo, but there's those little things that stand out. The arrangement is quite conservative, but the instrument choices are in part different, and the sound and elements like your piano intro set it apart. Can't say if it's sufficient, but I know I've been needlessly critical of this stuff in the past. Tough call. It sounds like a nice arrangement for a real band, and many of its shortcomings are because it's not played by a real band. There's a lack of detail to many of the sound choices and performances that I think a real performer would have done something about. Drums and acoustic guitar in particular. Dulcimer (or whatever) too. Electric guitar is well handled and shouldn't need more work imo. I think it's a mediocre remix. I don't mean that in a bad way. In many ways, it's neither notably good nor notably bad. It'd be nice to hear a higher level of performance (or illusion of performance) here, because I think the arrangement is worth it. Whether it's suited for ocremix is difficult to say. I'd definitely sub this, I'm just not sure how much work I'd put into it before subbing. Definitely raising the levels, looking into the piano eq thing, and trying to get more performance into some of the instruments. Just not sure how much. Nice work.

eval: There's some odd timing choices that I think could be smother, but other than that I really like the writing here. Starting the whole track at a later part of the source was a great idea. On the other hand, the mixing is horrible. Horrible. Level, eq, panning, reverb; they're are your friends, don't be afraid of them. The 1:45 bit is especially bad in this regard. I can't tell which instrument I'm supposed to listen to. The sound design is cool. Really cool. You just gotta bring out the right instruments out of the messy mix to let all the elements really shine. Source is there, handled creatively atop the original chord progression. It works well, both recognizeable and clearly made your own. I don't think you'd need to do much more than clean up the mix and maybe sort out some of the note timings in the early parts of the mix, and then it's ready to be subbed imo. Nice work.

Oh come on, this timing. Well, I already wrote it, so... No link to the source, so I'm completely ignoring source usage in this evaluation. eval: The sound is blatantly synthy, with creative use of effects not to hide the synth-ness, but to emphasize it. I can appreciate that. That makes for a nice soundscape. But the lead synth and drums are laid raw and exposed on top of that, and don't quite seem to fit. I think the choice of synths don't quite align with the mood of the piece. Many of them seem more at home in a hard, aggressive genre, whereas this track leans more towards classic circus stuff, played with brass bands and steam organs. It's a weird juxtaposition of sound and style, and in this case I don't think it works. Don't get me wrong, the sounds are cool, but they don't seem to fit this particular track. The writing gets repetitive fast. There's variation in the iterations of what I assume is a key melody from source, but the variations are fundamentally similar and so they don't break the repetitiveness. There's a lot of unison writing and octave doubling, which in itself isn't a problem and makes for some interesting variations, but I find myself wanting more harmonic and rhythmic variation instead, perhaps a different melody used entirely (from the same source or from another). Voice clips and sound effects don't feel appropriately used. I know I'm biased against them, but they, along with some variations of the melody, seem to be thrown in for the sake of some variation or novelty. Overall, the dynamics seem to wobble around the same level, with some stop-and-go moments. That can work when there's a cool groove to keep the track moving. The more staggering rhythm and arrangement here doesn't lend itself to those flat dynamics. I'd want a softer section, a louder section, a faster section, a slower section, a more sparse section, a more dense section... Something more different than this. Mismatched sounds, repetitive writing, and an arrangement that isn't sufficiently dynamic (or varied). I'm not convinced this could make it through the panel. I'm sure it was a fun experiment, but it didn't work out. It might be worth fiddling with, but I'd take what I learned from it and move on to the next track. Work on your arrangement and sound design choices. And clearly I have a very different impression of it than Gario did.

Bumping to remind myself, Gario, and any other evaluators to eval this.

Well, since you asked so nicely... I agree with the crit about vanilla sounds. They're not terrible, but when not much else is happening they get a little grating. Like at 0:25-0:40. The same notes played the same way each loop. Once the reverse crash comes in, it feels like a buildup, but it should feel that way earlier. There are things you can do with automation (feels like the kind of place I'd automate an opening low-pass filter), but you can just start with low-velocity notes and increase the velocity. That makes it feel more like a buildup. If the synth responds to different velocity by making notes more muffled and soft at low velocities and brighter and louder at high velocities, you can get a lot of dynamics just with velocity edits like that. The point is to make it feel like someone's playing, like someone's putting some emotion into a performance. Right now, it feels like a loop of notes that a machine is playing. Any of the tricks I suggested should help make it feel more alive. Note that I'm not talking about humanization, which is when it's made to seem like it was played by a real human being. That's a different thing, and not that important in electronic music. The emotion, the dynamics, the sense of performance is more important than any actual performance. The sounds themselves aren't terrible. I'd be okay with something using these sounds, but they'd have to be mixed better. (and more alive.) Give each instrument its own space. There are many articles, videos, and other information on how to do this, but the basic idea is to use reverbs and equalizers to push some things back behind other instruments, and bring others more into the foreground. At 2:00 you have a lot of instruments playing, and it gets messy. Making some of them more clearly foreground instruments and others background instruments will make it less of a mess. It's also a way to bring out the big hitters like the bass drum more, if that's the sound you want. Just don't overdo it. That leads to other problems. I like the arrangement. More dynamics, more life to the sound, and a more focused mix, and it'll be a really nice track.

Progress is being made. I had my own unrealistic expectations on the pace of the mastering, but we're well on our way with that. It's one of the last things left to do. That excitement I had earlier this fall has subsided, but I have a feeling it's on its way back.

eval: Soundwise, the first thing that bothers me is the level glitches in the 0:30 buildup. It sounds like a compressor is being fed way too strong a signal. Maybe you need some lighter compression earlier in the signal chain, and softer compression on the output. Maybe you need to clean up the low end. Hard to say. The next thing that bothers me is sound design. The ostinato synth at 0:34 isn't great, nor was the choir earlier, but the lead at 0:48 is not a good fit. That they're both rather loud doesn't help, either. Next enters the drums, and they're another step down in sound. Which is a pity, because you set it all up so well with the bass, pads and glitchy sounds. The drum writing is also not that great, not very effective. They don't drive the track, but they do draw a lot of attention. And not in a good way. I'd look into redoing the drums entirely. Sound design, writing, purpose in the arrangement. The arrangement itself is fine. Source is used well. No huge surprises, but some interesting inserts and nice performance aspects to some of the lead melodies. It has some stop-and-go moments that stand out as cool design choices. The glitches get a little annoying at times, when the lead should be the focus and the best element in that part of the track, and it's not. The glitches then distract from the lead. They don't add to the track like that, when they're fighting the lead for my attention. Something as simple as lowering their level would help. I think that's the problem with this. Too many elements fighting for attention, being too loud or too upfront, doing too much, drawing attention when they shouldn't, not knowing what their role in the arrangement and mix is. I think this would get you a NO, RESUB. The arrangement is good enough, and many of the sounds themselves are fine. The mixing and drums need work. I'm not sure you need any changes to the sound design besides the drums, as the instruments I've noted as being not that great might fall into place once the mixing is cleaned up. Cool stuff. Keep working on it.

Epic stuff. eval: It seems to hit all the high points at the same timestamps. Probably too conservative. Too much of a cover for what ocr sees as a ReMix. Soundwise, the only thing that really bothers me is the rather synthetic bass drop, that doesn't fit the orchestral sound. Nothing else stands out. And that might be a problem. It might need a more clear lead, a more clear mixing, as the whole thing sometimes sounds like a big orchestral mess, more so than the original. 1:46 is a good example of this. This is either solved in the arrangement or in the mixing. Unless you want that less hierarchic ensemble sound. I wouldn't bother submitting this, it's just too similar to the original. It's a really cool cover, and you've clearly got the technical chops for this stuff. Looking forward to hearing a ReMix from you at some point.

Let me start from the top. Reverb isn't realism. A perfectly dry performance with a half-decent piano sound will sound more real than a robot playing on a real piano. The most important thing is performance, and it's more important to the music than the sound of the piano itself. So let's not worry about the sound as much as the performance. A real pianist will not hit every note exactly the same velocity. But it's not random either. The suggestion to imagine playing the part is good, you can even pretend your desk is a piano, and figure out the velocity levels from there. Be mindful of how hard, how quickly, and for how long you "press" a "key". Also, listen for any changes in velocity layers in the piano sound. If you can hear a different sample between two close velocities, it's not a good piano. But you can use it to your advantage. Decide to use velocity layers to emphasize or de-emphasize particular notes in a phrase. I know I did this with a Majora's Mask remix (got NO'd, but for other reasons). The piano becomes very emotive that way, it feels like a performance with just this one change. I don't know about this particular VST, though, it might be better than that. A real pianist won't use perfect timing, even if they wanted to. Some notes will trail behind the beat, others slightly ahead. There might be a slight swing to it all. Again, pretending to play a piano on your desk might work here. There might also be a keyboard->midi tool in your DAW, that lets you use the computer keyboard to record notes. It'll get you the timing needed, though the computer keyboard doesn't read velocity so you'd have to do that manually. But you were gonna do that anyway. Those are the two important ones. But velocity has to actually do something to the sound itself. Some pianos have a setting for how strongly note velocity affects the sound. There should be a small but noticeable difference between notes that are 20 velocity levels apart, and a very noticeable one with notes 40 velocity levels apart. If there isn't, you'll probably want to use a different piano. Obviously, there'd be huge differences between extreme values. Provided the piano is responsive to velocity, this should be enough. But if not... A real pianist will use the piano's pedals, depending on what they're playing. Among the midi CC, there should be sustain. A real piano can have three pedals: sustain, sostenuto and soft. I doubt (but I don't know for sure) this particular VST has support for the other two, but sustain is a given. If you think the writing would benefit from sustain, use it. I would recommend starting the "on" level a few ticks into the first note, and switching to off just before the end of the measure/beat, on whatever beat you want to change it. This is optional, however, and given your piano piece is an element in an electronic mix, so the sustain might just make the piano too dominant. Then there's reverb. If you want the piano close and clear, make sure to keep the dry/wet mix strong on the dry side, and make the reflections rather late. Experiment with the settings. Large or small room? Near or far from the listener? Reverb-y or dead room? These would all be available in a decent reverb plugin, but the piano VST might just have a single reverb knob. I recommend using a separate reverb, so you have more control. In general, for an electronic mix, I would try a large room (size), close to the listener (long pre-delay, more dry than wet), and a fairly reverb-y room (high reverberation/length, medium-low damping)... but it depends on what the rest of the track is and how the piano should fit in there. Finally, there's also track level (volume), which will help fit the piano into the soundscape too. Reverb isn't always the best solution. In some cases I might try a rather small, soft, or quick reverb, and use a delay instead for making it big and atmospheric. Maybe a compressor with long attack (~200ms attack) after the reverb and everything else. Sometimes I'd want a really dry (no reverb, few other effects) sound, but filter out the low frequencies for a bright but brittle sound, or filter out some of the low mids to take out the body of the sound. You can use EQ to do that. It all depends on how exactly you want to use the piano. It's okay if it sounds like a real musician on a fake instrument. A fake musician on a real instrument is usually not what you want. But you gotta make that real musician part at least plausible. Good luck.

This must begin with an apology. Posted May 14th. Not sure when it was set to eval, but I saw it August 17th, you confirmed it's still on eval on September 3rd, and now it's October 21st. That's 160 days. That should not happen. Please, please just PM us when we're slow. We've promised to eval. Hold us to it. -- Structurally, the arrangement is rather simple. Prelude -> prelude with vox -> prelude with strings and rock -> source-derived melodies with violin and metal -> prologue that starts in a break. It's a bit of a medley, in how sharp the transition from source A to source B is. There is some references to it after 4 minutes, but those could be a lot earlier too. The repetitions of the Prelude make it feel a lot more repetitive than it needs to be. You're essentially repeating the same musical idea, with different rhythms and backings, for 4 minutes. The rather mechanical sequencing of the piano doesn't help the minutes it's there, nor does the simple drum beat. Making those sound more human, more like a performance than computer-played sheet music, would do a lot for the track. The instrument choice is a little odd. Piano, vox, strings; sure. Electric guitar and metal drums; sure. All of that together? It can work, but it has to be handled differently. I can imagine a pretty intro with the first stuff, a switch to the metal instrumentation, a pretty break, and more metal at the end. I can imagine the metal providing backing for the violin, or the vox or strings supporting the metal. Here, the elements feel disparate, like they accidentally ended up on stage together and are doing their own thing to the same song without listening to each other. That's an arrangement problem. When do which instruments do what together with which other instruments, and why? Instrument levels could be more balanced. At 3:18, the violin is really loud compared to everything else. Something to watch out for. I can also hear some compression problems, most noticeable in the crashes in the metal sections around 4 minutes in. Find some good reference tracks and compare your mixing to theirs. Good reference tracks are immensely useful. My music improved when I started using them. Find something in a similar style and listen for how each instrument sounds: how loud is the snare, how bright, how heavy; how loud is the lead, how bright, how big... The sounds themselves are fine. I think the cymbals are the worst, and they're not horribad. I like the metal+violin combo, and there's a lot of cool things that can be done with it. You're on to something good here. No bass? The track's frequency balance seems a little lacking in the lows, despite how the guitars try to fill that up. The stereo balance is sometimes a bit off-center too, which might not be a problem on speakers but is rather annoying on headphones.The Prologue part sounds too fast. You could solve it by slowing everything down, but that would make everything longer and the Prelude parts worse. I would consider a tempo change at the point of the break, just as the Prologue starts. If it works, great; if not, don't use it. The areas in which you can improve: more human sequencing, less repetitive arrangement, more balanced instrument choice/arrangement, track levels, compression, and frequency balance and panning. This is not an ocr-level track, but in the half year since it was posted, your skills might have improved to the point where you could make one, especially if you now know how to deal with the issues I identified here. Next time you've got a track on eval, PM some evaluators if you end up waiting more than two weeks, okay?

An old Vid track. There are a few things in it that I so clearly associate with your arrangements. I can hear them in here. eval The sound design is something that immediately strikes me as being all over the place. There's some weak drums, some orchestral element in a different space, some dry synth or fake guitar things. Things are weirdly balanced and don't seem to fit together. I suggest you pick a couple of recent ocremixes that make use of the same kind of instruments and which has a balance between them that you think would work for your track, and try to emulate that. Maybe things require different samples, layering, changing the writing, different EQ and reverb, or maybe just nudging the level up or down. I like the chill vibe you've got here, but the sound design and balance doesn't work right now. The sound gets in the way of the chill mood. The overall sound seems to have this weird resonant peak to it, somewhere in the mids, while the rest of the mids are lacking. It often sounds nasal. That's not a good sound. See what you can do about that. The arrangement and individual parts writing is a bit clunky at times. Drums in particular, though that might be in part because of the sound design. The timing of instruments entering in the beginning is odd. The lower strings enter on the second beat, which suits the rhythm they take on later but not their entrance. Drums enter well. Be careful with how the tracks enter and exit the attention of the listener. It took me a long time to get an idea of the source usage. Not sure why. I'm cool with the source usage. There's enough that I can connect to the source. The track ends with a really long and seemingly arbitrary fade-out. I'd look into either making the fade more deliberate, or ending the track differently. The arrangement has enough cool ideas that it might be worth fixing up, but you'd have to do a lot about the sound and the writing to make it work on par with ocr's standards. The biggest difficulty in that isn't the changes themselves, but hearing what needs to be changed. If you can do that, you can probably make this ocr-level. Not sure if you want to tear up the old sounds or rather work on something new, but whatever you do, I'll give it a listen.

Welcome to ocr. Just about any decent DAW will have VST/VSTi support, so you'll be able to run the vast majority of plugins with that. There are lots of good free plugins, so starting with REAPER's unlimited demo and getting used to its workflow can be done without spending any money at all. Komplete is excellent. I have a previous Komplete, and use something from there in just about every track I make. With my style of music, it's mostly FM8 and Battery, but for something fitting your jrpg-style intentions, I'd probably be using Kontakt a lot. I tried to figure out what exactly K11S contains, especially the Kontakt instruments, but can't find a page explicitly listing them. You get the "Factory Selection" with it, whatever that means. If it doesn't seem like you're getting the stuff you need from K11S, consider the standard K11. Also consider options from other developers, eg IK Multimedia and Magix. I use their stuff from time to time. But third-party libraries overwhelmingly focus on Kontakt, so if you're looking to expand your library later, Kontakt gives you a lot more options. You say you're not interested in big orchestra, but you want to make FF/CT style music. You do realize a lot of that music is orchestral, right? When it comes to the synth stuff, K11S should be fine, and there are plenty of good, free synth options available too.