Gario

God bless Box.net. I do it all the time... It's even crossed my mind to just turn in a partial remix then finish it later so it goes through the process faster, but I tend to be a little unreliable when it comes to time of completion. Sometimes it's a single day track, sometimes it takes months, so I don't feel like risking it. Best of luck, bro.

Hahahaha... epic. Love this song, loved it since I found it on Youtube with the video. You have an amazing way with words (I needed a translation of course, but it works great), and the production is superb. Great track - everyone will need to download this.

Hmm... well, from what I see you're probably not in any immediate danger. However, at the very least for the sake of making things easier for your family it wouldn't necessarily be a bad idea to get out for a short time. I don't know any details past what you provided in that post (and whatever is on the news, of course) - there might be something with your wife's family that would make it better for you to stay in Japan, or you still have work that needs to be done out there, or something that would require you to stay, but I can't say. I'm just saying that all other things being equal it isn't a bad idea to leave Japan for a week to act more as a spectator than a participant of the events out there. I'm going to guess with all the things happening there right now that plane tickets will be expensive, though...

Nice sound you've got going, there. The production is clean and the instrumentation is interesting. The drums are also quite the sexy beast. I'd fix those strings and remove the auto swell that they have on them (if they're the 'swell strings' from General Midi or a variation of them, change them to 'strings') and I'd add a swell at the beginning via programming the volume. The swells that occur every time the note changes is distracting - it's not needed every time like that. When the snare comes in, periodically I hear it pump the volume. Bring the snare down a smidgen, to fix that, or perhaps just EQ the highs a little bit. I like the track so far. It's short, it's incomplete, but it's also awesome. Keep at it.

I'm with Willrock on this one. This track is one sexy beast. Personally, I'd sprinkle the master track with a hint of upper EQs, so help give it a little shimmer (nothing more than 0.5 decibels in that range), and I'd take a good, hard look at the mixing and just be sure that everything is where you want it to be (I think I hear some melodies that could possibly be brought out, but I'd need to tweak the track myself to be sure), but I think this is a pass worthy track even as it stands, bro. Very nice - glad we were able to help you with this one

Ack, I still owe you a track from that!

My my my, PRC is getting one hell of a dry spell, eh? Due Friday? Cool source? No one else seems to be paying attention to the compo when they should? I'll see what I can do. EDIT: Oh shit, it's 12:00 noon? I don't think I can get something by then. I'll get something by that night, though :\

Got something coming this way, for sure - this is one of the rare moments that I didn't write the track 2-3 hours in advance, so it'll be pretty sweet. However, I think we need moar competition. Five days left, certainly enough for someone to provide another awesome remix. Let's see something happen

As long as you know the orchestra that you're working with, there shouldn't be a problem. Just things that you need to be aware of, is all, and it looks like you are. Best of luck with it - and good luck finding the money sum for the track. With that price, though, make absolute sure there's no mistakes in the score you'd regret later...

Before you try to get donations for an orchestra to perform your rewrites for Sonic music, realize that they probably won't touch copyrighted music without expressed permission from the copyright holders, so the best you could do is get someone with good equipment to sequence it so it sounds realistic (and people nowadays can do a really good job at that, btw). It's well over 95% cheaper (if you asked someone to get your orchestral rendition run through their system for 400$ or even less I'm sure people would jump at the opportunity - I mean, make that offer to Nutritious or Vampire Hunter Dan and see what happens ) and there won't be nearly as much legal struggle, since people do this sort of thing all the time (for free most of the time, no less). Aside from that, if you were to get a real orchestra to do anything you need to pay attention to what it physically possible. I can't say for sure, but I suspect horns would have a difficult time getting those quick runs performed cleanly. Horns tend to do a lot of lip work to make their instrument sound correct, so it would be very tough, at best, to get that effect. Trumpets that focus quite a bit on their valve work would probably be a better choice for that. You need to be aware of things like that if you want to write true orchestral music - otherwise money will be wasted on excessively difficult performances that don't come out as clean as you'd like. I can hear the variations, and they work well. There are a few notes in there that don't ring well with me (like that run at 0:44-0:45), but those can easily be fixed with a couple of listens and comparisons with the source. Best of luck finding someone to help you with this.

It's a very sweet track, no doubt (although it doesn't ever seem to know what it wants to do - I assume the frantic genre swapping is on purpose?). Like you said, though, it's incredibly liberal with the source tune. I'm suspecting it's too liberal for OCR's front page, in fact. If you want to submit this, here are a few suggestions. Make the melodies much more prominent. It's there, from time to time, but for the most part you focus on the arpeggios. The arpeggios alone don't pin it to Jenova, since many songs have those arpeggios. There's a lot of empty space where reinterpretations of the main melodies could be playing over the textures, so there's still room to get that theme prominent in your track. tbh, there just doesn't seem to be enough bass in the track, overall. The mids and highs are clean and awesome, but the bass range is lacking, especially for a dance-style track. It doesn't need to be hardcore bass or anything, but it does need to be able to hold the track up at least a little. Love the Philip Glass vocal choir, chiptune-ish synths, 80's drums and overall feel of the track, though. I'd like to see this pass, so try to get some more Jenova into the track and a bit more power in the bass.

Funny, the tracks that I have little intention to send to OCR seem to be my better tracks I wasn't able to tell what portions were noticeable clipping-wise due to the crunchy texture I already had going, so I needed some feedback on that in particular. I can fix most of it pretty easily - I know the spots that are problematic. Same thing goes for some of the transitions + ending. I might keep the cutoff ending, though... I dunno, I think the very fact that people expect something else is precisely why I did cut it off like that. The consensus for the middle cutoff shows that no one likes it . I guess I better do something else with it, then - I always have my NG post to preserve all the sudden cutoffs that I like Thanks for the replies.

Just on the top of that list... Pffft ahahahaha... I guess Hitler really had nothing to do with it.

At first glance I thought this was going to be a 'Charlie Sheen on Gaming' thread.

Even God knows not to fuck up Nintendo. Too many unhappy souls if that were to happen...

I don't think there's a 'limit', and if there is you certainly haven't hit it yet (I've seen people post more than two or three threads in Community before - it's not a problem). Making a general 'This is what I'm doing right now' thread is looked down upon, though - more likely than not Darkesword wouldn't like to see a thread become a sort of blog of what your currently up to. Separating the threads will give each one a focus, which would be better than having a single thread that encompasses a variety of plans and ideas. You could always bring it to a mod's attention when the time comes if you're in doubt (again, Darkesword is a good guy to contact about it).

I was going to post this in your visitor messages, but it was too long. So I'll post it here instead. In response to how I got my CoT mix up to the levels while preserving dynamics... "That's sort of hard to answer, actually, since there's quite a few things that I do to get dynamics in a pretty highly compressed environment (and that song in particular has compression all over the place, for the effect). For my synths & drums I actually set the velocities to affect amplitude, which makes for easier note-by-note dynamic effects. I tend to mix both pre-limiting on the master track and post-limiting, since it's important to make sure those levels are not red lining to start with (the pre-limiting mixing helps with this), but it's also important to hear what the 'final product' is mixed like, so to speak. You can't rely on the red zone alone, since that can only take your mix so high. You really need to trust your ears and raise the limiters in order to get the desired levels of volume. Be sure to watch for both hard clipping (that 'fuzz' that occurs when the mix is in the reds), overcompressing (when the track sounds like it gets quieter artificially to keep the sounds at the sounds at one level) and 'pumping' (pretty much rhythmic overcompression - normally from the drums being too loud). It's really an art that just takes time to get used to. Also, that CoT mix of mine in particular sort of cheats, since I purposely bit-crushed most of my sounds for effect. Since that often sounds like hard clipping the parts that do clip (there are a few in there I know about) sound intentional. That's really an artificial trick, though, that won't apply to most tracks, though, so don't go relying on bit-crushing everything you have for that reason :P" So yeah, there really isn't and avoiding raising the limiters on the master track, if you want to get the desired levels. A little redlining can't be helped, but often that occurs in inaudible ranges before it happens in a range that the human ear can hear so you need to be ever vigilant yourself for the clipping.

I personally use www.box.net, but there are other places like Tindeck and Fireslash's WIP uploader that I've seen used around here.

... damn you Soundcloud and your lack of downloading ability. This is awesome. The scat solo is quiet, but otherwise the entire track is very impressive. If you do a re-record of it I'd recommend making it a little longer, since the 2 minute mark is just a little short. Just saying.

Subtle stabs at your critics ear is biting the hand that feeds you, bro. It's more accurate than you think - the reason I didn't recognize anything is because the source really is non-existent, especially if the listener doesn't have any point of reference (like me, at the time). The middle has a little of the Ocean Palace in the middleground, but that's it (the descending line later is a common musical gesture - calling that Magus is deceptive, especially when those aren't the notes in Magus' song). And yes, I hear what you're trying to do with the source (like at the beginning), but changing the notes by that much really turns it into something completely different. It's not a bad thing, but it's not something that OCR would accept, either. The source needs to be readily apparent if you want this to be on OCR. Not agreeing with the feedback is fine, but it's not alright to direct personal insults at the benefactor, no matter how subtle they are. Watch what you say next time.

That's because Zero Punctuation, as awesome as he is, really isn't too much more than an entertainer. It's not as funny to focus equally on what is good about a game and what is bad - simply bashing on what is bad really makes for a funny video. It's sort of the Rush Limbaugh of VG critiques - you present a one sided argument very heavily for the sake of entertainment. It's fun to listen to and the points can be perfectly valid, but at the cost of a balanced review that knows what's good and what's bad about the subject at hand. Egoraptor's review, on the other hand, took a look at the good and the bad and gave it praise when due and faulted it as much as it deserved. A balanced review is quite a bit more useful than an unbalanced one when it comes to being informative, and it's possible to make that just as entertaining (Egoraptor's voice is pretty iconic & easy to make anything funny, really, so he cheats ). Not badmouthing ZP, just saying how it is. I still watch what he puts out 'cause it's quite entertaining.

Alternatively you could just make a new thread advertising your new endeavors when they come to fruition. I think that would be the ideal route, actually - some people might want to just see Dance Pad action while others might want to just see your reviews, and that'll keep things clean for everyone.

Not familiar with FL, specifically, but whenever I needed to change a function on a MIDI I would set a program script to a different number (0-127) at the particular time frame in question. Not sure if that's viable or not, but that's how I worked around the midi channel limit, back in the day when I wrote MIDIs. I'm sure someone around here could verify if that's possible on FL. Sheesh, it's been close to five years, already...

Best of luck with your music/game review stuff. Rolfe probably won't review Shadow the Hedgehog anytime soon, though, since he sticks to older video games, so it's all on you. If you do review any video game tracks you could take a look through this thread, if you want any ideas. Just saying, you know, if you want to point out any cool little tidbits on any of those classics. /shameless plug Someday I'll revive that old thread, but I never seem to have the time... *sigh*