Flexstyle

Where dose reviews at, dawg?

I've finally got my own 3DS! 0963-1012-2958

Old McDonald had a farm E-mu E-mu oh! And on that farm he had a bird E-mu E-mu oh! With a Yes vote here and a No vote there Here a yes, there a no, everywhere a yes/no Old McDonald had a farm E-mu E-mu oh!

I found one for Frozen Factory. EDIT: And is it just me, or does Eino's track kinda remind anyone else of Money for Nothing by Dire Straits?

Just sent my mix in. Get ready for your feels to be punched by sappy '90s-esque vocal pop. Definitely gonna polish this one up with Jason after the compo is over!

Best birthday thread ever. Thanks everyone! <3

The bones of my arrangement are finished, and the drums are pretty much set in stone. Got a lot of instrumentation done, but need some variations done. Need to finish writing the bridge, but it's bare-bonesed, at least. Basically, I'm right where I expected to be right now. Jason Covenant is also working on contributing some vocals--the return of the Concrete Men is imminent, y'all!

Pretty sure Bruno Mars was sponsored by Pepsi for the show, so even if he wasn't paid by the NFL, he assuredly got paid by someone.

Started work tonight. I'm finally getting to break a soundset out of the ol' deep freeze (har har), as it's from a never-released WIP that happened back in the DKC3 days. I think I know exactly how I'm going to work these two sources together, and I'm super-excited!

I'm starting to sense some of this: If we're going to post recommended modern OSTs, here are a few that I highly recommend as memorable: - Bastion - Starcraft II - Rayman Origins - Rayman Legends - Shatter - Shoot Many Robots Also I kinda made a soundtrack recently so maybe see what you think?

Origins was spectacular, too, although I think a case could be made for Legends being the better soundtrack.

I cannot wait to see the matchups! :-D

Major titles may be declining in musical quality, but I don't think the same can be said for video game music as a whole. I mean, have you heard some of the stuff coming out of indie gaming these days?

I am super ready to start remixing. LET'S GET THIS SHOW ON THE ROAD.

If you don't want to open up your computer (although I guarantee there's an iFixit guide somewhere), then this external Thunderbolt to SATA adapter might just do the trick.

Hard to say what we think if you don't link, man!

Careful when converting. Byte = 8 bits, not 10 bits. Makes a small difference, at least.

MW, you might want to check the numbers in your comparison post. Pretty sure SATA3 is only 6 Gb/s, etc. So, Thunderbolt should be a 10 Gb/s connection, which is actually faster than SATA3. You should be able to run an SSD through Thunderbolt without much problem, if you really want to have an external drive. If you're going with a hard drive, Firewire 800 (which I'd assume your Mac has) would be plenty fast for that application. And sorry, I have to say from personal experience: my load times were cut by a factor of 10 (at minimum) once I switched from a 7200 RPM hard drive to my SSD for EWQLSO. I still stand by my recommendation for buying the biggest possible SSD you can find, and then making that your only drive in the Mac. So basically: 1. Buy as big of an SSD as you can. 2. Clone your current hard drive to this SSD, thereby making it your sole drive. CarbonCopyCloner makes this stupidly easy. 3. Copy the EastWest samples to the SSD. 4. Revel in blazing fast load times. Plus, keep in mind that EastWest will be doing a lot of disk streaming, since its libraries are just THAT huge. That's why they recommend the faster interface for their hard drive. The SSD will help a lot more with that, too. As far as limited lifetime on SSDs: you should be able to squeeze five years out of whichever one you get without much issue. With all the algorithms in place for cleanup, plus the fact that they do technically include much more storage than is quoted, you shouldn't have a problem at all. Or you could just build a custom Windows box with RAID0 and get tons of space and lots of speed for much less cost. There's that, too.

Yeah, I've (a) gotten a lot better at singing and ( gotten a lot better at vocal mixing since I created this track. It's something like three years old at this point, if you can believe that. Still holds a special spot in my heart, though!

I'd never heard of Parasite Eve before, so this was an interesting listen. Good source tunes, actually, now that I've listened to bits and pieces of the OST. So hey, this remix: it's clearly laden with source, and arranged pretty nicely. No problems there. I like how you tend to keep the frantic energy of the original soundtrack in your mix as much as possible. Unfortunately, my problem with this remix comes with the fact that it's mixed so loud--there's almost no dynamic range to speak of, and it's almost painfully compressed. With as much ambiance as you've got going, you're really hurting yourself more than helping with all that master compression. I'm also personally not a fan of the drum sounds, but that's not necessarily a dealbreaker. The kick in particular, though, sounds incredibly compressed, and probably doesn't really need that. Basically, I'd clean up the mix, give some of the ambient stuff room to breathe, and take that master compressor down a couple notches. After that, I think I'd be comfortable passing this one. NO (resubmit)

So. I thought about this for a while, checked the guidelines, drank some water, etc. I'm going to vote in the affirmative on this one. The performances are tight, the production conveys a very intimate feel, and it's definitely on point in all technical areas to my ears. As far as the arrangement goes: yes, it's clearly a medley, but we've posted those before (what is it with Castlevania and great live medley-mixes?). I think the playing chops make up for medley-itis in this case. Plus, a few musical motifs are re-visited towards the end, so it's not like it's just playing straight through and ignoring everything once it's been touched. YES, and I'm downloading it to my folder of Good Mixes regardless.

For earbuds, I have a pair of Skullcandy Smokin' Buds that I bought in a hurry at the campus store for $45 two years ago. Considering how long they've lasted me and how decent they sound, that actually wasn't terrible. I've carried them around the world and around campus, and they're still in excellent shape. They're only $10.xx on Amazon though, so for that price I can absolutely recommend them.

Here's the thing--this is a really awkwardly-handled electronic mix, to my ears. I get that it's a good arrangement, but let's see if I can really vocalize why this track bugs me so much. - That kick drum is so. freaking. compressed. I mean, it sounds like it's distorting when its tail comes through, that's how compressed it is. It's hogging the entire bass spectrum, leaving no room for any kind of legitimate bassline, and it's mixed very far forward. I get that the genre requires that, but it's not working when it's this hot. - The snare isn't really helping, either. It's a long snare, and it's used a lot, which means that what is essentially white noise is crowding a ton of the song. - The hat pattern is killin' me. It doesn't flow very well, as if it can't make up its mind whether it wants to be a rock-style (every beat) or electronic style (every off-eighth) hat. Sounds jarring. It's also taking up a lot of that upper midrange spectrum, which tends to be a problem since that's where the meat of every single one of your synth patches is, too. - It (the hat) is also pretty repetitive, and that also goes for a lot of the drums. What would help a lot is if you introduced new percussive elements as the song goes on, instead of throwing everything at us all at once. Start with just the kick and snare, add the hats in and out, etc. - There are only so many ways to do a mostly-clean detuned saw, and it gets really boring after a while. I mean, there are other kinds of patches out there, honestly! A square wave? Maybe some distorted sines? Something with a bit of character? That would be nice. Part of the problem this creates is that every synth patch occupies the same spectrum, since they're all using the same set of harmonics. This makes it sound messy, especially in the upper-midrange. It also doesn't help that a lot of the synths sound like they're at the same volume, giving no room for the mix to breathe at all. So yeah, get that overcompression cleaned up, get the mix cleaned up (give every instrument its own space, and don't let the kick take up your entire bass range), and then I'll be happier. I'll be especially happy if you can get some more interesting synths going to really give this song the character it deserves. NO (resubmit)

Mmm, good to know. Well, hopefully the fact that (a) I'm not really taxing it terribly and ( it's plugged into a monstrous APC UPS will mitigate some of that.