Gario

Mmm... math. Welcome back, by the way, HoboKa .

You've demoted me to the checklist?! For shame... THE CHECKLIST!! RAWR! Yeah, I personally don't care for it much, but if you insist .The big problem your song still holds is that the textures are still far too static - you need more variety in the instrumentation and how the instruments are used. The arrangement of themes is great, but the overall soundscape of the music still doesn't sound like it ever changes - so even though it isn't repetitive or boring, it still sounds like it is because the overall soundscape and textures you use don't change enough. For example (yes, I still give examples) - the texture of the bass only changes once. Having that bass repeat the same texture over and over hurts the song, overall. I'll give you credit, though - the use of the themes are top notch, in this remix. You were rather clever in using such a short theme over such a long period of time, and I commend you for it. However, you also need to change up the stuff you composed for this every once in a while. The drums actually do have energy (the almighty checklist is misleading ), but they are too far in the background of the mix. Bring them into the front a little more. Also, it's too quiet - turn everything up without having it clip. One of the purposes of EQing is to give the song some room to increase in volume. Look at your song through a program like Winamp or WMP and watch the bars - you'll notice that the song is loudest in the mid-bass area (yet completely lacking in whole upper range). The problem with area spikes like that is that you cannot increase the volume if even a single area spikes without some clipping - so if you lower that spike you'll give the piece some more room to increase in volume. EQ with the intent of lowering that mid-bass area a bit; that'll give you room to increase the volume without clipping. Hey, that isn't very many things checked off from the list - meaning those other areas are spot on. Good work .

I'd give you a hand, OA, but you can't hear it from here, anyhow - nice job landing that position. I trust you'll make a great judge, seeing as you took it upon yourself to give every single track on this site a decent review. Do that for the submissions and you'll be just pure gold, man .

Ah, the demo screen after the title... I was a little confused at first (The title screen is only like 10 seconds long, and has a clock for the first quarter of it ). I liked it, although it seems a little uncoordinated, atm. Also, the mastering is crap, but your knew that already . Sort of short to get a feel of how the flow of it all is, but I like how you started it - Strings + Electronics + Chiptunes = Awesome. I'm a math teacher, by the way - I can assure you that is correct .

I'll admit that comment made me authentically scared of you, DS - no EQ yet it sounds great?!I was tempted to send a PM or something asking for the secret to your success .

A new week, another analysis... I'm a day late, though, for anyone waiting (by the looks of it, not many people ) - as I've had writing the damn music down on my mind this week rather than writing about it. Thus, my next song will be from that very mix I'm currently working on... Yup, Jurrasic Park - in particular, . If you haven't played this game... well, I can't recommend it, personally - but it had some great music. Unfortunately, the music is also a pain to remix. If it has great music, how could it be difficult to remix?One word - VARIATION. The melodies in the music are variations of the same theme, so when you first listen to it you fall under the illusion that there is more material there than there is. In fact, there are only two themes that you could extract from it - the introduction material (which isn't that long) and the chorus (which first plays at 0:27). After that point there are a lot of open areas where the texture takes over, giving the music a rather 'ambient' feeling while waiting for the melodies to come back... when they do, though, it's merely either a slight variation of the intro or the chorus. Even with two themes, it is often easy to extract smaller motives from them and make up your own material from it and move from there when remixing, but this song has another less obvious disadvantage - antecedent/consequent form. The chorus is set up in such a way that there isn't much material to draw from. By design, one half of the melody plays something called an 'antecedent' (0:27 - 0:31), which is half of a phrase that is designed to be followed up by something that sounds similar to it but completes the motion (the 'consequent', 0:31 - 0:36). Here, the first measure of the chorus repeats nearly the same in the second measure (as well as the third measure), until finally the final measure of the phrase changes it up (in order to give the phrase some closure). Actually, it is because of these things that I use the textures from the background of this music in a more dominant manner in my own mix - there's a lot of texture and things to play off of in this music - great for techno and such . Interesting little details about the music - that help you directly as a remixer looking for good music to remix. When looking for music to remix, study it a little bit - listen to the melodies and such and ask yourself how often that material repeats in the song. From there, listen for the antecedent/consequence form in the melody - if it is a part of the music it'll be difficult to pull more than one or two motives to make a remix out of (which isn't good). Mind you, one can still make an excellent song with very limited resources, but it's always nice to know what your getting into when you start a remix. Hey, this is rather short, for me - yet it's (hopefully) highly relevant to what people do here on OC; I hope it's still interesting .

Don't worry, I won't kill you - if I was, then I'd need to kill a whole lot of people for not liking voice clips in a remix. I'm a part of a minority, I guess - but at some point one does need to take into account that it is their own song, and I love voice clips. It's a guilty pleasure, I guess. As for the 'length' and such... well, we'll see - perhaps I'll just change it so the parts aren't nearly as boring (or cut some parts out, altogether). I'll get to it, though, seeing as no one is taking any of the pie, for the length, for one reason or another .

...now I have to kill you in your sleep - congratulations . Well, you have to admit, the other breaks are considerably shorter than the original at 1:27, thus making them quicker (unless you actually mean a tempo increase, which I'd love to do throughout but Reason 3 doesn't support it at all ). Perhaps this song is a bit long - I'll see if there is anything I can do to prune it (probably taking more from the beginning than the middle/end - I like the material past 2:33 far better than before 2:33). I'll see what I can do to the long notes to make them more bearable, and work with the centering of all the instruments and such - that's the point I'm at now, anyhow . I think I hear what your talking about at 2:34 - 2:46... I need the change in 'texture' for the texture, myself (if that makes sense) - other parts are doing that shape throughout the song, but if I leave it in one instrument throughout the whole song it drives me nuts... Like I said, I'll see if I can make it a bit shorter, or at least make it sound less repetitive - the source isn't that long, so it starts to get difficult to make it fresh, after a while.

Sweet, another update (although getting it to this point today has prevented me from doing an analysis, today... much sadness - I'll get one up tomorrow, instead). I've finished the structure, so now it actually has a beginning, middle and real end - check it out . I got rid of one voice clip (Dennis) and added another in order to frame the song better (so it does have a purpose now, everyone ), and I added over another minute of music to the whole thing, capping it off at over 6 minutes. Listening to the music up to 2:40 I'm not really happy with how it sounds, at the moment (RK's sentiments are the same as my own, about that), but that'll change soon enough. I also decreased the bit rate so it's less than 6mgs, but now I'm afraid a significant amount quality is lost, so I need to figure out a better way to encode it. Enjoy, and don't forget to let me know what to fix!

Umm... this song? I don't know, really. Just compare to other tracks on this site; I meant the genre to be a sort of joke, but I have a knack for running those into the ground so they're not funny anymore . I think I have your first WIP lying around somewhere - I'll take a look around (I gave my old computer away, though, so if it as there I won't have it anymore )

Oi, I almost didn't catch your birthday on here, 'cause I was celebrating my sister's birthday today, too... and your the same age as her, too. Freaky. Anyhow, happy birthday, man - and may many more of your 80's rock / awesome synth remixes get posted on OC before you hit 20!

lol, well, that's the opinion most people hold, too - but seriously, the intro NEEDS that clip (all others are subject to change ). I'm glad the bass is passing, though - it was my major hurdle, for this song - it should go smoothly, now (and I'll lower the bitrate so it's under 6mbs, in the end ).

Congratulations - by one point (wow, that's close - I take it the voting stage went far better than the remixing stage )! Can't wait to see what the next ORC will be Good luck!

I did a quick runthrough of your original, just now, and immediately I can tell you whatever you did to the drums in the EQ'd version made them far better - do it again Otherwise, the EQ on the other instruments were fine in the un-EQ'd version. Overall, the sound is too quite on everything - not the worst thing in the world (people can just turn their speakers up to hear it) but it's best to try to match the sound with whatever else is going to be on their playlist (check out other 'Neblixsa' style music on this site and compare the volumes - you'll find yours is significantly quieter than other music that sounds like yours). Generally, people will be listening to the music in conjunction with other OCR music, so you'd better find out if your music sounds good when placed next to other music, and adjusting the volume helps greatly in that regard. I'll say it again - have you considered tweaking with the mastering of the song? That will help give you the volume (by raising the levels on the compressors and such) and can clean up the overall sound (using an EQ on the whole song - tweak the highs and a little on the bass, here). Check it out - it would help a lot.

Woo, an update (finally). It's taken me this long to find a bass drum and snare/clap that I was finally satisfied with and integrate it into the mix without it sounding like a muddy mess. So, here's what's different... -Voice clips added (not too many, but enough to give it flavor) -Better intro -A hell of a lot of tweaking with the mastering (particularly with the bass) -New drum samples and such (although the pattern is still rather boring, through most of it) -A few new sections (anything after 3:13 ) -I tried to adjust the hats so they were centered better (it's hard to hear, though - You've got some sensitive ears for panning, Rozo) I have not changed the bassline up much until the new material starts coming in, so if it sounded boring and bland before it will this time around - that's something I'm gonna get in the post-production (along with the drum pattern). The first post is updated, so check it out .

I hear a few instruments that could use some more high-ends, as right now I hear a lot of mids. That organ instrument and piano are specifically where you could use more highs (the drums wouldn't benefit from the highs too much ). Have you messed with the mastering, at all? You could make up some of the highs with your mastering equipment rather than individual instruments, but you always need to be careful with mastering, as your raising the sound of all you instruments, when you do so. I haven't heard the un-EQ'd version, so I can't really say anything about the EQ on it (as my internet is acting incredibly slow, atm - took me about 20 minutes just to get the EQ'd version ).

Man, when someone told me this yesterday I thought they were shitting me. No, that was the sad, real truth of the matter - it's surreal. Not only will I miss the music, I'll miss the choreography - he was a master of that, as well . Goodbye, MJ.

I don't have FL studio, so I can't help you with specifics - use your ears, and if the dynamics sound the same then change them up until they don't. To my ears, some of them still sound the same, so I still say some of it is still a bit mechanical. Sometimes looking at the numbers and the program doesn't help - your ears will probably be the most helpful tool you have, at this point. Oh, and don't be hasty - you aren't accepted at OCR yet... but if you are soon I'm pretty sure you'll be the youngest accepted remixer here .

Alas, my 'Jackal' song didn't get through either (it is, in fact, the one I analyzed here a few days ago)... Ah well, I'll get to work on my source soon - it's very rich so it'll be fun to work with .

Hey, look at some of the songs that get accepted... I don't think any of those names (or even the weird suggestion of mine) would get rejected, if the music was good enough . It is now, bizatch - it needs to be included in all lists of genres. That's a philosophy that I used to hold, as well... the big problem with it, though, is that if you don't catch some things early, it becomes hell to fix them later. The replacement of the sax was a good call - I didn't listen to it last time, but I did now. I think the sax could have worked still, but the change wasn't a bad call, at all. Now your music doesn't sound like jazz at all... it sounds like pure, unadulterated Neblixsa. Yeah, I agree with you on a lot of what you said, Rozo - although I'm terrible when it comes to the shrillness of notes (you noticed that in my own music often enough, lol). The bass is pretty quiet (I personally don't mind how high it is, per se - as long as it's recognizable as a bass) - I'd bring that out a little bit more. Rozo is absolutely right about the drums, though - they sound great, but they have no punch. Keep them down, like you have them, but bring out some of the mid-lower frequencies more. Compared to before, though, the performance sounds a lot better (I can tell you spent a lot of time with the velocities). There are some cases where more work is needed (like the keyboard at 1:05 - it still is a bit 'mechanical', although the attacks are nice). A rule of thumb - if the volume of an instrument is the exact same from one place to another immediately next to it, then it'll sound mechanical. Varying the sound even by a little bit from note to note will improve the performance dramatically . If you could bring up the volume overall (without clipping, of course), that would be great, and bringing out the melodies would help the music, too. It's not terrible, what you've got now - but it does sound like ambient music, at the moment, as you use the melodies as the textures of the song (which is cool, by the way), so it's difficult to tell what you want the melody of your song to be. If you didn't want a melody for the listener to stick to, then you've done an outstanding job (actually, I don't mind the lack of melody, as long as that was what you wanted - but I doubt it). Oh, and I like the length of it better, now - that's a perfectly acceptable length for OCR.

Dude, I think he has more than enough 'I have voted' stickers to go around .

Umm... actually there is no panning work in this, yet (except at the part you mentioned, of course), so I'll take a look at what your talking about and see what I can do. I didn't put the panning in there on purpose, anyhow, so thanks for catching it.The drums suck, I agree - they're temporary, for sure. The transition, though - that's something you don't hear very often (the sudden change), and it's an aesthetic I really enjoy, as long as it's not overused in a song. I'm actually upset that people don't do it more often . Thanks for the comments, though .

Okay, nothing works... and I mean nothing works (Diablo II, Warcraft 3, etc.) on any online server. I'm beginning to suspect that the problem is much larger than I had first anticipated, as these things used to work (a few months ago I played DII with Tensei, so it worked, then). Yeah, in short, I'm really up a creek with this tourney... I suspect that it's something to do with my connection, as it's incredibly unreliable with live feedback and such on the internet (I can't connect on IRC either, for example), so I really think I can't do anything about this one. Sorry, but I really do need to forfeit this (I really did try to get it working though ) - by the time I get this working again you guys will be done with the tourney. Thanks for trying to help though, Garian and Battousai.

Zircon, who is this 'Zircon'? Why do unknowns keep getting their birthdays posted, here!? Ah well, happy birthday, anyhow .

1. I like the sax, personally - I don't think you need to change the instrument, there. 2. I thought I gave you a suggestion for that . 3. Perhaps a bit too short, but it's not that bad (~3:30 is the average, you can base it on that number). I didn't listen to your edit (and I may not be able to, right now), so I don't know what your sax replacement sounds like. Next time, I guess. If I have a choice on the title, I'd go with Slippery Stars of Spiritual Superstition .