blue.nocturne

Really great quality and beat going on, I like this best out of all the ones I've heard you done so far. Only thing that bugs me is that the beginning is a bit abrupt and the percussion doesn't really vary much throughout the whole song, it's sorta the same drumbeat. However, I really like the instrument choices that you have made and how the melody progresses. Nice job so far!

I really think the atmosphere you set up is plain awesome. However, it could use a little more variation, and the guitar does not harmonize well with the rhythm and melody. It sorta adds a strange ambient effect to the song, but takes away from the beauty of the setup. Overall, it's really cool and a good start! For some reason though, it reminds me of Maple Story.

Hey I just noticed, the picture of the haunted house on Abadoss's page is animated! It wasn't like that before lol. HoboKa: Me thinks this is your best one yet! Nice.

Funny how most everyone wrote really long stories for this one. It's like a wall of text for everyone.

Final version is posted, any last minute comments and/or critiques would be appreciated!

Does it really sound that out of key? Some of the parts are meant to sound chromatic and may stick out a little bit. It might just be the samples itself too, since some moments I have the strings playing tremolo and low notes can get distorted too, even though they are in the right key. I'll try to listen more closely and hopefully fix any odd spots. And about the marimba, it is actually two separate marimbas panned left and right. The reverb also causes the marimba to have an extra percussive effect... like sorta of a castanet sound lol, so it's not really racing all over the place. I wasn't really aiming for realism for the whole piece, but 1:38+ is 100% playable by a real orchestra. Thanks for the comments of course, it's almost complete now. I actually updated it to 3:13, but I'm not sure if i should just try to end it or go for a whole another run through the melody.

He would make a good English teacher in my opinion, an Australian English teacher that is.

I notice that VG composers sometimes half ass songs.. it's not like every song on the track list is SUPER AWESOME. Usually only like two to three are good, unless they happened to be really inspired at the time they wrote it. Also, most of the time, the percussion follows the same pattern almost the whole song, occasionally changing, but it usually ends up back to the original pattern before the first loop. So I think it's better not to get intimidated by the composers out there today, and in the past. Anyways, I get composer's block all the time too, and I find it helps to just play around with real instruments and to use any ideas you happen to come across there. Playing around with synths that you usually don't use too may bring about inspiration. Try out new time signatures. Nobuo Uematsu uses a lot of odd signatures in some of his most famous battle themes, such as from FFVII and FFVIII, don't rely on 4/4. Usually the good ideas come when you aren't composing, such as at school, work or in the shower, which sucks, so try to remember what it was and hopefully you can jot it down before you forget it. Another thing I notice is that the more I come back to a song, the less cohesive and complete it feels.. so if you have a good string of ideas, might want to finish the whole song then and there or at least a layout of it. Personally, I compose in this order: Melody -> Bass -> Harmony -> Ambience It's sometimes funny, since I often make the finishing touches, then I'm not really happy with the melody, so I have to scrap it and start the section over again. I'm sure video game composers have to go through this all the time too, but of course sometimes they have to submit the song anyways because of deadlines.

Mine's done! It's sorta strange though, not as in the song is strange, but it just is strange because it is strange.

Been gone for awhile trying to make Garritan Personal Orchestra produce a decent sound. And I think it's going pretty well now with this song, which of course happens to be my second take on Gusty Garden from Super Mario Galaxy. I also happened to read a little bit of Rimsky Korsakov's Principles of Orchestration (err Garritan's notes on it at least) as Sil has suggested, but I'm still a little lost... Course it seems it's more practice than anything. The link for the song is here: http://files.filefront.com/Gusty+Garden+ReMix+Finalmp3/;10184281;/fileinfo.html It's more of a temple-like soundscape for the beginning half, and recently I have been adding pure orchestral sections to it, but I hope to get back to a similar type of sound that the beginning has. I'm not really sure if it's up to par yet, but any comments would be nice of course. Edit: Just to clarify it's not completely done yet, it's a WIP.

Sorry, didn't mean to make you feel stupid, but ehh it happens.. I was freaking out for a second, because this was midterms week for me and there would be no possible way for me to finish if it was due this Saturday. But I'm glad it isn't lol.

But I thought: 8. All entries must be submitted by Saturday, May 9, 2008 at 11:59 PM - PST, GMT-8. And I just realized May 9 is a Friday.

Well, I personally use FL studio + GPO. And yep, you can use it. Assuming your GPO came with the Kontakt player. GPO comes with VST's, and all you have to do to load the GPO module is: 1. Load FL Studio. 2. Go to "Channels," (at the top) then "Add one," then "More.." 3. At the bottom right of the new window, click "Refresh" and do a "Fast scan" 4. You should now be able to load GPO, look for it in the list, it should be newly added. And you can easily load it from now on if you also check the box next to it. 5. Then once you have the module loaded, you have to set up midi channels. 6. Notice the top right of the GPO module, it should say "Port," and each Midi channel has the same thing. Match GPO's port with the MIDI out Port and you can have as many GPO modules running as you like. For instance, for the first 8 instruments, set Port to 0 and MIDI out port to 0, then match the midi channels with the instruments loaded in GPO, first instrument loaded will be channel 1, next will be 2 and so forth. The midi channel's displayed instrument (default is Patch --- (None)) instrument has no effect on GPO. Some hints when using GPO with FL Studio. If you checked in the GPO options: Use STD. CC#7 and CC#10 for Volume and Panning, then ALL instruments loaded will be set to 100 Volume and 0 Panning, because that is the MIDI default for FL Studio. So you may want to uncheck that box if you are going for realism, but if you want to control the panning and volume, by all means have fun with it. Also when loading MIDI out, you will notice all knob wheels are blank. You will need Mod (expression) and Dampen (for legato) for the bare minimum. Mod is CC #1, Dampen is CC#64. Hope this helps!

Oh, don't forget the talking dog that the group of teenagers brought with them. Looks like they've got a mystery on their hands. But yes, this will be an interesting theme! Dunno if to make it cartoony or dead serious though.

I love the Phoenix Wright series, and it does fit the mood of the game. Although, I find it odd how the bass is stacked on top of the percussion panned left. I would suggest moving the bass more toward the center or at least center-left. Also, the volume, tempo, chords etc. do not change much if not at all throughout the song. It might become a lot cooler with a little more variation.

Chord disagreement around 0:23. It seems way too slow paced, and I feel the intro could be expanded. The pace should pick up at least at 0:30, I was expecting the song to go much faster and become much livelier but it ended up being the same speed as the beginning. Tempo does not need to be sped up, needs more energy overall imo. However I do like the section at 1:00+. Course it's a WIP, so hard to tell how it's going to come out at this point.

Some of the effects you use are a little bit painful to my ears. It's not that they sound bad, but the texture and/or tone of it is just a bit too piercing. Specifically the glitch stuff at the beginning then the synth at 1:07 that sounds like a fake brass instrument. The quality of the song overall is very well done. Very well compressed and balanced pretty much throughout, but it doesn't really stick. Some really cool effects and such, but it seems a bit overdone nowadays. Judges might think otherwise, but I hope the best for ya. Oh yeah, also there's no need to make it 320 kbps. It makes it too big, and I don't think much quality will be lost if you lower it to 192 or 160ish.

I've decided to scratch out completely what I did before. If you want to hear what I left off with, you can click here for the old version: http://files.filefront.com/SMG+Remix+v+13mp3/;9964672;/fileinfo.html After getting about 2 minutes, I really don't feel it will get any YES's at all. After doing one of Abadoss's CMCs though, I finally hit inspiration for this piece. I took totally different approach, so it's still an orchestral remix, but now it is now mainly rhythm based. Here is the NEWEST version: http://files.filefront.com/Gusty+Garden+Temple+Remixmp3/;9964673;/fileinfo.html Think the judges will like this type of style? First post is updated for more details.

I sent my entry in just now. I'm actually quite happy with it. I stayed away from brass way too much with my other entries, but I'm trying to learn to use GPO's brass, so expect to hear some.

Some good soundfonts that can be put to use: SGM - My favorite soundfont, I still use it for ethnic drums, sine wave, etc. Decent Orchestral samples too. http://www.geocities.jp/shansoundfont/ FluidGM and Cadenza are decent soundfonts too, although I hardly use them as much as SGM. Equinox Grand Pianos - Best grand piano soundfont out there imo. I can't find a link. About your song, I really like this one actually. Especially at 3:00+, some really good stuff. I feel there should be more instruments in the background, like strings or something to bring out more emotion, or even strings playing with piano to accentuate the theme. But I'm a string addict, so that's just me talking. The beginning builds up a tad too slow in my opinion. It is all panned left for an extremely long time, so I just find that odd. As Alex said, it's definitely a huge improvement, and I can't agree more.

Here's the newest version (v.1.2): Finally at the Gusty Garden part! http://files.filefront.com/SMG+Remix+v+12mp3/;9911832;/fileinfo.html Everything here is pretty much complete, except (1:50 - end) will be extended of course, and will be made better than the part just before it. I think it's going along quite decently, except I have 3 major things that I'm debating. 1. Is it original enough? Zircon mentioned I stuck to the source quite a bit. Is what I have so far "original" enough? Right now I'm at a spot that can allow me to add all sorts of material, so this is the best time to catch me on this. 2. The intro. (0:00 - 0:10) Harp + Glockenspiel (bells), it's meant to serve as this "appetizer." To make the other sections sound more grandiose. Should I make it more interesting or keep it as is? 3. Sine Wave Bass. (0:46 - 1:14) It reinforces the bass and adds a little more personality to the section. Is it a good match or is it just annoying being the only synth element in an orchestral piece?

The guitar and bass still overpower the drums. I think the bass is what is causing a lot of the distortion. It might be fixed if you pan the guitar and bass away, not entirely sure however. It sorta seems everything is panned in the middle, so I would suggest trying to separate the instruments to achieve a stereo sound rather than mono. The intro is a little abrupt, it might work better with fade in. Even though it's short, it seems to work. Melody and progression is strong, but I feel the drum rhythm becomes odd at around 0:40, or it may be just because of it being drowned out by the bass. Work on quality, and it will be a pretty good remix imo.

For some of the held notes, I feel that there is too much overall vibrato. It makes it seem a little robotic in that manner. It sounds pretty good so far, but I hope you add more "energetic" parts later on.

Thanks a lot for the comments. Sadly, I messed up the hyperlink, and it was still the old gimp bass version. However, I finally have some direction and I feel it is polished pretty well at this moment. I however, felt that I was in a bad key for accenting bass, especially for the Gusty Garden section. No matter what I stacked, the bass seemed either weak or had really bad tone. So in this update, you will see in the end, I am going to go for a Orchestra + Synth setup. The Orchestra will be the main focus of course, but the synthetic elements will cover over sections that the orchestra is a little weak. Sil made a really good point with the bass being the moving force behind the song, and I will probably focus a lot more on a strong, yet appropriate bass. And he was right, I DID hit a major brick wall until I decided to use sine wave to help out the bass. I actually attempted to scrap the entire idea I had now, but after failing a remake, I'm keeping the original idea. I am really starting to think version 1.1 might just have a chance. http://files.filefront.com/SMG+Remix+v+11mp3/;9904605;/fileinfo.html

I know what you mean, since a lot of people lurk around the forums and don't reply even if they like/hate it. Remember though, everyone does it, even you and me. I suppose the best you can do is reply and comment other people's remixes and hopefully they do it back to you. And about your latest version: Do not be offended by anything I say. I'm only saying what I think and hopefully it brings you toward a "YES," because to be honest, this is no where near a "yes" yet. Hopefully this is the kind of feedback you wanted. This took a long time to write, so I hope it gives you extensive use. What I feel you need to work on is your tone, balance, chord progression, and melody. Also, when you listen to your song, do you think that this "would this be professional level remix?" Most of the remixes I've heard are at a professional level, or if not, very close to it. It seems it's also about perfecting the slight imperfections of things such as noise, chords/notes that don't quite fit, panning, etc. If you already know this stuff, you can skip it: Do you have good headphones? With good headphones (that don't enhance the music at all, but only play what is intended), and by turning off audio enhancing effects, (for instance Creative has reverb effects, EQ, bass boost options, turn all those off) you will hear what you made at its "worst." By having it at its "worst," then when you add the audio effects later, then it will definitely turn out better. If you have to add any effects or change the volume of your speakers just to make your song sound better, then you have some major editing to do. Also be careful, bias will make your songs sound better than they really are, so don't be disappointed by harsh reviews. Now details about your remix... The beginning does not really draw me in, it's really bland and the violins sound really cheap and synthesized. It is also fairly left heavy, so panning may need to be fixed. The panning is fine at around 0:13 to the end. Another thing I noticed is that you don't really reach the volume cap. If you open your file with a mp3 editor like Audacity, you can see the actual sound wave your remix produces. Most songs at least touch the very highest amplitude, (where the wave cannot go higher) but yours does not touch it anywhere. I notice a lot of remixes settle on the verge of crackling (it crackles if the wave attempts to surpass max amplitude) in order to give their remix more OOMPH. Just open professional remixes and the remixes here and compare. Also, sometimes it's better just to stack more instruments on top of each other instead of trying to add harmonies and rhythms and stuff. Like the violins in the background don't seem strong enough. They need to be reinforced with more strings or some type of bass is needed to blend with it. I find the tone really confusing. I'm not sure what the melody is. Is it supposed to be the violins or what the piano is playing? Course don't answer this question, this type of question should not be asked, since once you balance it, we'll automatically know what is the main focus. Basically, if you have to explain parts of the song, then something is not right. Think of where our attention will be focused and where we think the melody will be, and try to enhance what you want to be the main focus by making everything else softer, making the focus louder, or perhaps make it a middle-high pitch. I think the answer lies in the original song. At the beginning Mitsuda's original piece, you KNOW that the bells are the first focus. Then strings are added in, and they become the new focus, also he adds a harmony to the bells, but they are sneaky and hidden in order to make sure the strings are the focus. After the entrance of strings, you the hear the entrance of percussion about 4 measures later. The focus doesn't really shift to the percussion, but more to the beat of the percussion. As soon as you get used to the beat, he then adds in this english horn/oboe-like instrument, which plays the melody, and that instrument remains the focus of the song until the end. Now, that's actually very simple, but extremely addicting and successful. Your song is a little over complicated in some sections, and it makes the focus sort of blur everywhere. You have to make sure the chords of your song follow your melody. I notice that you sometimes try to progress your song by changing the chord, which is fine, but at the same time you are adding things like piano which don't really agree with your chords. Chords try to show us one thing and the melody another; it overwhelms the listener and it just doesn't work for that reason. Do you, yourself believe that what you made is catchy? Or if it is not, then do you try to make up for the boring parts by adding something catchy? It's hard to find catchy due to it being "all over the place." Try listening to other music, try to forget all that you were planning to do, and completely forget what you intended to do in the remix. Then listen to your own remix. If you honestly can follow your piece 100%, then it should be okay. If some sections are "sketchy" or feels like it is "missing something" then try to figure out what's missing or what seems wrong and try to fix it. If there is even 1% doubt in my opinion, then there could be a problem, or it could be improved. Hope this helps. This is just my opinion, so it doesn't necessarily mean I'm the expert on this stuff. I'm just saying what I notice and what I see, and the tips are just things that I have done. Don't take my word for everything, since I haven't really gotten any successful remixes yet, but no one was giving in-depth feedback and this was the best I could do.