Hausdog

So I'll have to change the arrangement? Well, that's good to know. BUT! Before I do that, would these speeds be achievable by picking with a pick? Because it could still sound good, if a little bit harsh.

That's what I was afraid of. Would it still sound good a bit slower? Or should I deal with a sampled guitar?

The MP3: freewebs.com/gbawesome/lm3.mp3 Well, this sounds quite a bit better in my opinion. I took everyone's advice. Rozovian, I fixed the strings so that they hit the meat of the note at around the same time as the other instruments. I couldn't fix the attack (sorry.....) so I moved everything up but the strings. Not only that, but I put some decay and release on them so they don't lurch from note to note. Tensei-San, I produced it basically to your specifications. I put the whole thing in a big room, and did some tweaking. The entire track sounds less... crappy now. A bit more organic. Sixto, you saved me a lot of time. The theremin will return next draft. It's 2 in the morning and I don't want to wake everyone up by singing in too-loud falsetto.

Wow. I like it. The samples are convincing and the industrial sounds are awesome. I'm not sure I like the fact that that one sound gets repeated every measure in the middle of the song though, but that's my only complaint.

Well, I'm listening to it right now. I really like what you did with it and even the bad recording quality makes it sound sort of 8-bit. Jolly good show! *lots of presents to you*

Well, you can understand where we're coming from, yes? I mean, the song's about a person who creates human beings. If you want it to be disconnected from the rest of the song, you can change the class from biology to, say, English, but the idea that he's tormenting his teacher just seems so amazing. I mean, really, that could be the best part of the mix.

Yes. It's the subforum on the top called Non-ReMixes. Now that I listen to it again, I recognize that those aren't supposed to be actual orchestrated strings but synths. I like!

Wow... standards sure have gone up since 2003. There are midis that sound EXACTLY like this on vgmusic minus the drums. I like the song, but it's not a remix.

To this song (word of warning--it's 16th notes at 150 bpm): http://freewebs.com/gbawesome/anotherone.mp3 The guitar part starts at 51 seconds. The sheet music can be found here: freewebs.com/gbawesome/LuigisMansion.png If you can make it sound like the MP3 but better, you are a beautiful human being. If necessary, I can slow the song down a little bit to meet the player because it would sound better live and slower than fast and sampled. Thanks so much!

Oh... It never occurred to me that someone would use software to work with a live recording..... I was just thinking you were one HELL of a production expert.

So far it sounds good. The instruments sound very much like the real thing and the composition is nice. I'm not too familiar with drum music but what I see here is excellent.

I took your advice and got Cadenza Strings and it sounds SO MUCH BETTER than what I had before. Thank you so much! Here's what it sounds like now: freewebs.com/gbawesome/anotherone.mp3 Changes I made: Adding a cartoon "WHOO" sound Fixed some volume levels Added the sped-up "theremin" sound Applied that lovely Cadenza soundfont Changed the string ensemble to a solo violin Let me know what you think! ALSO: I need to get somebody to play the guitar for this. Do you think anybody would be willing to play guitar for THIS? Or is further tweaking required?

I think that vocal sample is absolutely amazing. Good call on putting it in and making it loud enough to make the words clear. One question: is it supposed to be the guy talking to his biology teacher? Or the guy talking to the other guy playing with matchbox cars? Because the tone is somewhere in the middle. The first guy sounds like he's taunting (hey teacher, you suck! Look what I made!), but the second guy sounds all excited (yeah, I remember the matchbox cars. Good times.....). I'm not going to make a suggestion, because the entire thing sounds... well... evil enough to be either rubbing his success in the face of the biology teacher OR boasting to his friend. Of course, I may be reading too much into it, but I really think this sets the tone for the rest of the piece.

No problem. And don't be discouraged if you are having a hard time getting notes into the software... It took me a really long time before I got good at it. If you work at it and are actually interested, you will be able to do the left-brain work. Coming up with an arrangement is a different matter, but I'd like to see what you can do.

Umm... I was using "Generic boom-tss techno" as a complex modifier for the noun "crap". It's crap of the generic boom-tss techno variety. You know, the stuff that would get the letter. And I'd like to voice my support yet again for ads. Hell, I'd even be willing to deal with jpeg ads in all the places they sell them for unregistered AND registered users because this site definitely deserves the money.

I'm scared of the beginning... sounds like generic drum loop. The lead's too loud and the background is drowned out. It's just a midi rip with new soundfonts and a drum loop and a falling square synth. It starts to get into some original material around 2:37, but then quickly switches back to the MIDI. And then it ends. The first thing you need to do is make your own unique MIDI from scratch. It needs to have something that's completely its own, where no one will say that it sounds like you made a mistake in writing a midi for the original song. And that doesn't mean different instruments, either. The easiest way to do this is by putting it in a different genre. If it were a song typical of that genre, how would it sound? What would the instrumentation be? (That last question requires getting good soundfonts) How would the rhythm of the melody be different? The next question is important enough to warrant its own paragraph. How would the harmony be different? The melody can be verbatim a rip from the original if you have a harmony that's damn good and damn unique. While you'll likely have to change the melody SOME, you still won't be able to get away with keeping the harmony intact. I really like the choice of instruments you used, but I would like to see them playing something unique.

Not a lot happens in the beginning and it's a little repetitive. You need some new soundfonts, but hey. I like the transition from the second part to the third part of the song.

Best I can tell you is to change the vox to something else.

Okay, I got all that working. HOWEVER, I can't import an audio clip without losing my MIDI stuff and vice versa. The theremin singing is hard. I tried to sing it at the pitch it was going to be in my song, but one of the notes is at a point where one falsetto goes into another. So I tried an octave lower and twice as long but I ran out of breath. So after a couple more trials with the second method, here's the result: freewebs.com/gbawesome/suckytheremin.mp3 There are a bunch of pops and cracks that need deleting from the theremin audio file and I desperately need a string soundfont.

I could try to take on Ai no Uta after I'm finished with my Luigi's Mansion mix.

Well, I like the instrument that plays right before the beat comes in, but it sounds sort of grating when there are two of them. Keep that one playing one part and then find another to play the other. The middle has a bit of a generic (not in a terrible way, but it's certainly more bad than good) beat, but I really like the bass. On the whole, it seems to just be new instruments playing the original's melody with a (completely generic) beat below it. This sounds like it could be good if you added something melodically your own.

Ugh. 56 views and no responses. That's rough. Strings sound a bit muddled right before the part where they take center stage... the notes run into each other. Maybe take off about 1/16 beat of each note on that beginning part Also, they sort of start and stop abruptly, taking away from the illusion that they're real. I'm working on something right now using string ensembles, and I know they're really hard. Guitars about 2/3 through sound very General-MIDI-ish, and about 5/6 through the acoustic guitars sort of sound like they clash. I love that string ending. Basically, from the arrangement perspective, I think you're almost done. You just need to un-clutter the notes on the guitars and strings occasionally. Maybe dig up the original midi, listen to the entire song again, and when you hear something that just sounds wrong, play around with it and fix it. You're gonna need someone else's advice on the production, though. I just recently moved away from MIDI.

Okay, I can handle all that except connecting it to the midi track. I'm afraid I don't know how to get anything but middle C played on each 16th note of the first measure followed by a big droning note afterwards. Well, never mind. It's still really time-consuming, but I can actually make the soundfonts play some notes. I didn't notice the "Piano Roll" option until just now. What's been happening on the musical front... For one thing, I screwed around with the theremin long enough to convince me that it would probably be easier just to sing it. I staccatoed the beginning part of the tuba and that's about it.

Blargh, rapidshare..... Nothing really happens for the first 1:49 seconds... You can just plain slice out a lot of the repetition. I'm really liking the stuff from 1:50 to 3:06... the voices do a great job of adding a little something extra. I'm gonna let someone a little more experienced comment on the last part. I'm not sure I like the fact you dropped a half step or so off the top and off the bottom... but other than that, I don't have much to say. Overall, it sounds good, but you don't need to expound on the last part so much as you need to chop a lot of it out.

I'm using 7. I mean, it probably works, but I don't quite know how. How'd you import it? And also, all the sequencing stuff sounds pretty hard... I think I'll just try to recruit a live player and record the theremin-type sound myself.