TheHands

She suggested that they were done with a humorous tone, and if they were, then they were successful. I forgot to state that in the previous post, sorry.

Oh, also, I just let my fiance listen to this pile of MIDI, and she nearly died of laughter listening to the piano and violin attempts. She seriously was crying, turning red in the cheeks, and had to bury her face in pillows to not cause a ruckus. I must now inspect her for burst blood vessels. Good job.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YHeFVS6rzJU Nothing but love for Richard Cheese.

Photoshop, 300 pix per inch, 4.5x4.5 inches. This is the standard size for an insert or sleeve, if you want to get fancy and design a wrap around paper box like Nine Inch Nails and Dresden Dolls use exclusively, then you need to change it to (about) 4.5x9.25. Sleeves are 4.5x9, but you need .5 inch tabs coming off the edges of the 9 inch side halfway across. I use Photoshop, but I keep hearing good things about Gimp too. Really though, just go with what you know. Even if you make a collage out of newsclippings and scan it, it can be a cover.

I'm actually really, really digging this mix. The vox fail in the beginning, but I do think that they add more than they would if it just started without them. Possibly a different phrase or sample, something closer to the source. Everything else I would say has already been said, but this is staying on loop for me for a few more sessions.

I must have one. I will chase my dog around with it while watching Shaun of the Dead on her back.

This is a very nice mix. The drums do need to go up a little, but I'd actually like to hear the vocals a little more clearly. I know they're simple things like "We gotta grove!" in a female/mock Robert Plant tone from what I can hear, but I think they'd better assist the song if they were more audible. The ending doesn't feel like it has as much payoff after the slide as I was hoping for, but that's just because I'm a fan of flashy endings. Good stuff, looking forward to the album.

I'm not quite sure I understand what you're doing here. It sounds like sound-fonts on MIDIs with some strange panning and occasional reverb. Since this seems like a cry for help, I'll do my best to be constructive with what I'm hearing: Green Greens: Don't skin the MIDI, write your own piano sections based on the original. It's a content heavy enough song to easily have strong bass and treble sections for a single person on the keys, rather than having to have a near retarded sounding duet. Also, if you write your own song, you can have a real ending, instead of a spot where the loop is supposed to be with an abrupt cutoff. Sky High: Don't skin the MIDI, write your own piano sections based on the original. For a piano, there's too many fucking notes for what this seems like it should be. The fact that it was skinned makes it sound very... bad. Really, atrocious. Same looping problem as above, please write something new for it. "Dream Pond": This is bad mixing (even for a midi), and 30 seconds long. Do not rely on looping points. They fail you. Instead, consider writing original work for the piece, and possibly sampling some instruments. Like drums, or getting a synth, or anything to give it depth beyond a puddle. Vegi Valley: For the love of fuck, this thing hurts my ears. The midi violin is painful to listen to, seriously. The most merciful thing about it is that the looping point failed you, at 27 seconds. Do not skin a midi, write your own music to go along with some of the original work. Please use a sampled violin (or a real one, if you play) instead of a midi, and please make sure to EQ the shit out of it so it doesn't cause cringing. Heart of Nova/Nova's Core: This is annoyingly repetitive, even for a 1.36 midi thing. The melody is lost in effects, the midi percussion is irritating to the point where I want to stab something with a spork and eat it's entrails for dinner. Please, write something to go based off of the original, instead of doing whatever the hell it was that was done to this track. It doesn't sound good, it just sounds like someone vomited into a keyboard and that's what happened. Please clean up your vomit. Milky Stars: This one's actually cute, but it's still just skinned midis. If you used samples, and write some parts for it, this could be an interesting mix eventually. Get a synthesizer, learn how to use it, and this is the only thing out of the two albums worth of garbage that could ever be salvaged. Maybe it's just that the source material is cute on it's own for this one. Who knows. Marx's Theme What the fuck am I listening to? There are random pannings and pitch bends that displease me. Another skinned midi with the pitches all shot to shit. Everything I said above (except for Milky Stars) applies to this. The only thing this has that might make it almost a real mix is that it's two minutes long. Sadly, that's a bad thing when listening to it. Squeak Title: Never, ever, do this again. You have no idea how annoying it is to have to shift ones' focus between two ears to get a whole fucking song. It's not counterpoint, harmonies, or just a specific instrument. It's the whole fucking midi. Don't ever fucking do this again. It isn't artistic, it isn't creative. It's what happens when you want to pretend you remixed a song and have nothing better to do. You also have the stupid cutoff at the end, which is the greatest fucking blessing in this whole piece of shit "album." In short, please revise everything, and listen to as much music from OCR as you can to find out what actually sounds good. This will help you immensely. After that, if you're feeling up to it, get a copy of Audacity, FruityLoops, Reason, Acid, Reaper, or anything else, and learn how to use it using tutorials on this site, or in other places online. Then, after all that, pick one song to actually work on (Milky Stars), and write some original work around it. Make it sound pretty, something that is unique enough to matter.

That's what it's supposed to be though. It is it's own system. Pretend it's a console small enough to carry with you, and you've got the DS.

I'm diggin' it a lot. I like the groove, and I like how it's fairly straightforward after the cute intro. For some reason that intro reminded me of the start of "I Am Not Your Gameboy" from Freezepop. I'd actually like to hear more come from this.

We are not amused. It doesn't sound as much like reworked music as it does a collection of MIDIs on 'shrooms, in a bad way. It could easily have been reproduced in my Gameboy Color. What the hell is up with the panning on the frozen thing? It's like listening to that smelly guy on the bus wheezing into your ear as he falls asleep. Stage 2 sounds like the noises I picture a ferret to make when it's having a seizure. Zero Two is the only one that almost has power, production, and my interest. I'd strongly reconsider "releasing" this. VERY strongly.

I enjoyed Galaxy, but only because it was better than Sunshine, and Super Paper Mario got my appetite going before hand. It's still a fun game, but it doesn't feel like Mario ever transitioned as well into 3D after 64.

After a google search, I found this: http://db.tigsource.com/games/iji Ditto for what Taucer said too, to you, Akourah.

In order I got them: Turbografix 16 [Grew up with this system. Bonk is my hero.] Sega Genesis [shortly thereafter] Gameboy [Tetris, LoZ: Link's Awakening, and Mario 2 owned me] Atari something or other briefly [spiderman, disappeared.] PlayStation [CD motor burnt out, currently in pieces.] NES [stored with a game compressed, the prongs can't be fixed anymore. Currently in pieces] Gameboy Color [My portable for 10 years] PlayStation2 [The Fatty] XBox [Only use it for Halo and... well, that's all.] Gamecube [Melee machine] Wii [brother's, actually, but I'm too cheap to get anything new yet] DS [My main system now]

Surfing With the Alien = Greatest thing a human can do with aliens and a guitar. Vai and Satch are both good examples of technical proficiency and musical theory intergrated with the passion for your music. Malmsteen is an amazing example of nothing but proficiency and theory. He's tallented, but he doesn't really care what he's doing.

Passion: Any random jerk off hitting his fist against the side of an acoustic guitar, wailing at the top of their lungs about the woman that cheated on them. Technique: Dragonforce, a band that won't matter in ten years' time, except for maybe inspiring a few guitarists. Both: Bob Dylan, David Bowie, old Metallica, The Dresden Dolls, Nine Inch Nails, Nightwish, Dream Theater, Vanessa Mae, etc. Mixing for the win. ALSO! As a guitarist for the last 8 years, I can tell you outright that using a synth to perfection is just as difficult (if not moreso) than any other instrument. Aside from being (basically) an electronic piano, you also have to take abstract sounds and make them sound the way you want them to. That's really fucking hard, harder than sweep picking and just knowing a pentatonic scale and hitting every third note in it, in alternating reverse order like most metal guitarists do for giggles when they want to wank on stage. Maybe not as hard as 8 finger tapping, but pretty high up there.

Hey Swordslayer, welcome to OCR! Have some faith in yourself, even if you practice by composing MIDIs and then learn how to use other programs, you can start and get involved if you wanted to. As for the song, I didn't want it to have the same solemn feel of the original, I wanted to make it more agressive, as if it went from being a sad song to an angry one, which is the next natural flow of emotions. Even though it does have some spans where it is only just barely in the original song (if at all), I wanted to put just enough of the original to make sure that the message would get across. I'm not sure which version you listened to, but they do all go back to the piano at times, blending with other instruments. In the times when it does, it is usually for the source work, so it's understood that it is still the same piece, only a little more furious. I do appreciate your feedback though, and look forward to seeing your posts in the future.

I've been working on the EQ now that I've started to figure it out, this is what I have so far. http://soundclick.com/share?songid=6919610

It looks like what Mario Galaxy should've been, honestly. No one really gives a shit about 3D Mario games anymore, not since 64. Wario looks like they've realized this, but don't want to admit defeat. Also, are Wario's moves and game play reminding anyone else of the old Sonic games?

I just listened to the newer version, which is definitely better as far as the drums go. For me it's not a matter of the layered textures in the beginning (I'm a big fan of it, personally), it's just how long it takes to do so. As much as I hate referencing other artists, if you look at the way folks like Metallica, Avenged Sevenfold, Coheed and other bands that tend to layer intros before hitting with energy, it seldom goes on for longer than a minute without something drastic going on. It's not that it isn't cool, it just feels too long for me. But that's just one person's tastes, and honestly, the composition is strong enough to look past it once you get past that point. I like the concept of what you wanted to do with the end, and honestly, you don't need the powerchord there either. It's probably just my adrenaline thirst when I hear rock pieces around this site, I always want to hear the kind of zazz that makes me say "Fuckin' A!" when a song kicks out, especially when it's got a strong midsection. The production thing was an error on my part, I was too lazy to find my headphones and took a gamble on the comptuer's speakers. It sounds better than I'd remembered from the previous listening.

Make sure it's plugged in somehow, or miced. Also gotta make sure your soundcard recognizes your mic, otherwise it'll come up with this ugly feedback that causes crashes from CPU taxing.

This upsets me. I wanted to write the screenplay. Fuck the Real Ghostbusters.

Even with your changes (which definitely helped, a lot), it still takes considerably too long to build. The guitar doesn't have enough presence early on. The drums sound very hollow, it sounds like better samples are needed. The ending is weak, it lacks the power that the rest of the piece sets up. There isn't as much payoff for listening to the song for that long as you've made the rest of it promise the listener. I tend to agree with everyone else that's a cool piece, but it doesn't feel like it's been mastered beyond some velocities and mild reverb. It is not OCR quality yet, or at least it doesn't feel like it. It's got the potential, but not enough umph yet.

I have broadband, and a willingness to seed. Once I have them all, I will seed them.

Civ Rev keeps me so occupied it's not even funny. I'm working through each civ on King difficulty right now.