Flexstyle

Hey everyone, I just wanted to notify y'all about a brand-new electronic music podcast I've started up. It's called "Flexstyle's Favorite Five," and I'll be featuring five excellent electronic tracks every week, usually releasing every Friday or Saturday. Genres include trance, dnb, house, electro, dance, breakbeats, downtempo, ambient, etc. You can grab the podcast over at podcast.flexstylemusic.com, and hopefully iTunes will approve it soon so you'll be able to grab it there, too. I welcome (and crave) any and all submissions (from any and all artists), VGM-related or not! Just drop me an email at [music (at ) flexstyle music (dot ) com], with a link to the track and maybe a little bit about yourself and the track. If I dig it, I'll make sure to play it eventually! Hope you enjoy the 'cast!

Hey all, thought I'd plug this little collection of rap instrumentals I'm selling over at Bandcamp. http://flexstyle.bandcamp.com/album/the-urban-instrumentals If rapping is your game, you might find some of these things worth checking out.

I like it, but I've run into an issue with the bridge where 64-bit plugins, which had been working fine, now crash any project they're brought into. I'm gonna just use good ol' 9.1 until they straight up release 10.0.

I did this remix for a friend of mine who's having his stuff promo'd right now by Dangerbox Recordings, an electro/trance/prog type of label. The was a 133BPM trance epic, but I sped it up to 175 BPM and threw some DnB breaks into the mix. Check it out here:

Played this with some friends last night, and I must say that I really enjoy it. If anyone wants to play with me, my Steam username is doctor_uncanny.

Like I mentioned in the thread I posted in the project forum, I'm sure most of the mixes I come across won't need much more than a little volume tweaking (if that) just to make the album cohesive. I'm sure that I'll only have to go after a couple mixes to get an unmastered version if the remixer has done some overcompression, funky EQing, or whatever. I'm a rather late addition to this project, so I still don't know who all is involved with it (I'm pathetic, I know), but the more I hear from folks the more I find that OCR does indeed have a LOT of highly talented artists with a full set of mixing and mastering skills, many of whom are working on this album (side note: why aren't more of you guys plastered all over the remix pages around here? ). It's just the ones for whom the arrangement talent comes first, succeeded by maybe a smaller amount of mixing prowess, that I think I'll need to do any serious work.

I gotcha. Fair enough. Sounds like you've got a good idea of what you're doing--not everyone does, though.

Brandon: I'm going to post a formal thread about this a bit later when I have time, but basically if you'd rather master your own projects, would you at least be willing to give me an unmastered (no master compression, etc) version of your track and see how the two stack up?

Longtime FL Studio user here. I started with Sony Acid, but switched to FL early on. I love its piano roll and the ease of use it has. Default sounds aren't spectacular, sure, but I'm a much better sound designer for having to learn my way around. The workflow for me has been second to none, and I'm Digidesign-certified Tier 5 in Pro Tools, and Apple Professional certified in Logic, so I've been around a bit. Toyed with Live, Reaper, Reason, Cubase, and others, but nothing's been more flexible or workflow-oriented as FL for me. Granted, I tend to work primarily inside the box, so if you were more into recording live instruments, I might recommend Logic (my favorite recording software, also muuuuch more in-depth when it comes to editing anything).

For me personally, the first game from which I can remember truly enjoying the music has to be the first Rayman. I had it for PC, and had a cool lil' 233MHz AMD K6 with 32 MB of RAM to run it with. I believe the hard drive clocked in at about 2GB, huge for the time. Since it was a PC game, the soundtrack was actually CD Audio, so I actually took the CD and stuck it in my boombox to listen to the tracks over and over, back when I was about 7 or 8 years old or whatever. I still love that soundtrack and would love to make a ReMix album out of it...but I digress. What soundtrack first got you into videogame music?

Larry mentioned in the email he sent out that you could just reply to the email with a link and it'd get taken care of. The address was admin at o c re mix dot org, of course.

Now here's a genre that doesn't get a lot of exposure around here! Good stuff, although you really need to scale back on the overall compression level. If you need to, stick something on the master bus before any other plugins and turn the volume waaay down. 'Twas distorting really badly. The melody wasn't completely cohesive, and there were a couple spots where I felt you should have added some FX or something to fill in the dead spots. Other than all that, lol, I definitely enjoyed it.

If my 2008 white MacBook with 2 gigs of ram, 2.4 ghz dual core processor, and craptastic integrated graphics can run SC2 on low settings, I'm sure your machine will have no problem at all.

If you're serious about gaming, I'd recommend getting a different card than the 8600. I have an ASUS-manufactured 8600GT (512MB of RAM) myself, and am yearning for an upgrade. It still manages to do well with most games I throw at it, but it's definitely showing its age. 256MB of RAM would be shortchanging yourself, by the way--that's like the bare minimum for most recent games. Good to know myself, lol. I've been strictly AMD-based for the last several years, but considering upgrading to an i7 in the not-too-distant future. This.

Most people haven't had their ears trained to the point where they can distinguish between a 192k MP3 and, say, a 320k MP3. I personally have, and isn't this a matter of preference anyways? I realize that it's impractical for OCR to host larger files, and I certainly see the wisdom of limiting file size in lieu of preventing massively mediocre medley melodies. The original offer I made--that is, to use my own personal site space to host lossless versions of songs that have already been posted to OCR--still stands. On a personal note, there are several songs on OCR that I'd reeeeaaallly love to hear in a lossless codec, and I'll probably PM certain artists and ask if they'd be willing to send me some of their tracks. *looks at zircon*

Okay, maybe "tortured" is a bit of an overstatement (more like "annoyed"), but I stand by my usage of "heavy" in regards to MP3 compression. 192kbps literally strips 92% of the data out of the audio, and I can always tell the difference between a lossless file and nearly any MP3 that's 256kbps and under. I realize there aren't many people who would consider themselves audiophiles like me. However, I figured that there must be enough out there in a community of this size to make this venture worthwhile.

I suspect there are several members of this community who, like me, are tortured by the heavy MP3 compression necessary for OCR to host so many remixes. I like my music to be FLAC, or some other lossless codec, whenever possible, and I'm sure many people here would agree. To that end, I've created a subdomain on my own webspace, OCRLossless.FlexstyleMusic.com, which has my one humble remix to start with. If any posted artists would like to send me their tracks in FLAC format, I'll stick 'em up on my server. Just email them to me at music at flex style music dot com, using Mediafire or Speedyshare or whatever you need to get a lossless file over to me. I'll see how this goes, since my current hosting plan includes unlimited disk space and unlimited bandwidth. Please note: I'll happily terminate this operation if the OCR site staff objects to it.

EFFING SICK. Seriously, this is awesome. I'm a huge fan of your stuff, PR, and this is just another in a long line of fantastic songs.

First off, I would recommend ASUS as your motherboard manufacturer. They consistently pump out quality motherboards, and rarely have problems. I've used 'em several times myself and am quite happy. Sound card--this depends on what you're trying to use it for. Will you be recording, or will you just be producing tracks "inside the box?" I personally use an M-Audio Delta 1010LT and like it very much, but it's a ten-input, ten-output card--I do a little recording on the side and do need every channel I can get. If you're only recording a vocal or an instrument at a time, you're not going to need something nearly as crazy. Processor: This is a matter of pocketbook preference, really. AMD and Intel both make good processors. I think Intel has the upper hand right now in the processor wars, but AMD will get you a lot more bang for the buck in the lower price ranges. Graphics: Again, your needs will dictate this. ATi is the current king of graphics power, with their 5800-series, but Nvidia has historically had better support and their drivers have usually been more stable. Both of them have great cards for their various price tiers. Good manufacturers include ASUS, BFG, XFX, and EVGA. RAM: Get at LEAST two gigabytes. More if possible. Good manufacturers include G.Skill, Crucial, Mushkin, Patriot, and OCZ.

I just picked up Bioshock 2 to go with my earlier purchase, too. Half off, yeah baby. Oh and you should all add me on Steam: doctor_uncanny

That is an epic way of putting it.

I just got Bioshock for $5. Heck yeah.

Oops, I did a cursory scan of the boards but didn't find that topic. My bad!

So, I just bought Bioshock for $5. Too good of a deal to pass up. A friend of mine was able to get TF2 for $7 a couple days ago, and there have been just a ton of awesome deals so far. Anyone else feel like bragging on their purchases?