Native Dialect

The piece sounds lovely.

*I've taken down this musical piece

Lovely. It feels improvised rather than composed, like traditional jazz.

*

I'm digging it. The rhymes and the sprites thrown into the video. Good stuff.

I really like the synth choice and you nailed the melody from the song. However, I'm not digging the southern style of hip hop drum production. Though, I do appreciate the use of sample of Ryu's voice used as a harmony in the latter part of the beat. Best of luck in the future.

*revised and reposted in a new thread

The guitar is not live. It is a Reason synth guitar called, "Hell Spawn." After listening to the mix without my Sennheiser headphones, I have determined that the guitar solo sounds muddled, repetitive and lacks a clear tone. It is pure unadulterated crap hahaha. I am just going to drop that idea and go with something else. I do have an Ibanez Talmon electric-acoustic as well as a Samson condenser mic, but my only recording tools are Windows Sound Recorder and Audacity. I may be musical, but I am no sound engineer. Every time I try to set up my mic and record, I wind up with a lot of background noise and "open air" over the recording. It makes me miss my M-Audio Fast Track. Since it recorded straight from the jack, everything was clean. But with the mic, not so much. If I can sort out the fidelity issue, I will probably rerecord the solo on my actual guitar. But all signs point to me scrapping that solo and replacing it with a full on original section. Also, good luck with your Silver Samurai piece. I look forward to hearing it. I am sure it will be infinitely better than my Colossus mix hahaha.

Project cancelled

I had assumed that this track was just a rough cut that was meant to demonstrate the direction you were taking, so I left a few things unsaid, on the assumption that you would naturally address them without being told. After reading Level 99's comments, I felt that I should add some critical commentary on the structure of the arrangement. 1) If you are a fan of the current drum kit, you should at least consider adding reverb or doubling the pattern by creating the same instrument in a second channel. You can adjust one channel for the left ear and another channel for the right ear, giving a nice stereo sound. 2/) The original song is heavily polyphonic. Granted, this seems to be a rock interpretation, and rock only requires a bass, a guitar and a drum to sound like rock, but it would not hurt to take on more of the polyphonic aesthetics of the source material. In the source, you have the bass synth. a second synth for harmony (sounds like a guitar), a horn for the lead, an orchestra hit and the drums. You do not have to use those exact instruments, but you should find some way to fill the soundscape in a similar fashion. Speaking of the soundscape, perhaps you can also add some panning to this mix. Good luck. As I said before, I already like the take you have on the track. I think the mix is great. I hope my suggestions are constructive rather than destructive. Keep up the work, my friend. Also, you may wish to look at an existing remix of this track. There just so happens to be one on Youtube. Granted, it is more of a cover than an arrangement, but from a technical standpoint, it exemplifies my points about reverb, stereo and polyphony.

There is no single technique that is more important than any other technique, when it comes to creating digital music. It is sort of like asking about using a single DAW. True music craft is about using all tools and skills available to you. Master craftsman can compensate for the lack of a particular tool, but can never truly call themselves a master without having all of the requisite skills. Speaking of which, you should add automation and delay lines to your list of techniques. Both skills are helpful in creating realistic sequencing. Panning also helps a song create the space in which it moves through, giving aural shape to a piece. Even old video game music from the era of the SNES (e.g. Tim and Geoff Follin's score for Spider-Man/X-Men: Arcade's Revenge), features panning. The list you do have however, is a fine start.

Now that I wouldn't mind listening to. a Five minute medley of awesome X-Men tunes, would totally rock. Also, OCR does have stringent rules about themes featured in non-video game media (e.g. movie themes, television themes, licensed music). Throwing in the Gambit theme might be a nice substitute.

Hmmm.... 1) Well, right off the bat, I like the choice to reinterpret it as a guitar song. It evokes the old 90s X-Men animated series theme song. It sounds like something straight out of Shuki Levy's music book. The mix sounds excellent so far. If you are really adamant about adding to it, I suggest creating a medley, perhaps finding a way to integrate the character select song with the theme song from the 90s cartoon. To that end, your piece will have a theme. But it is just a suggestion. As it is, you have enough faithfulness to the source, with enough interpretation, to make this a very enjoyable mix. With that said... 2) I don't think you have to lengthen it. Themes that are already short, should really be left short. I know that is considered a sin against all that is holy, here on OCR, but I don't think every remix of a brief loop needs to be the next Climb Hazard Rush. The character select theme is memorable, not just because Capcom used it twice (once in Children of the Atom and again in X-Men vs. Street Fighter), but because it is so brief, with a melody so simple. Of course, I am probably the lone voice on that thought. But I say keep it short and simple. After all, the song is literally the same seven seconds looped over and over again. Does that really need to be turned into a four minute track?

Song deleted

Why has no one commented on this? It sounds fantastic. Your style reminds me of my friend. He produces similar electronic dance music, using the whole break sample, vocal sample chop technique. http://www.amazon.com/Revolutionext/dp/B002PGJBOS/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=dmusic&qid=1300674044&sr=8-1 The EQ is clean, the synth choice is nice. I really have no complaints. My electronic music background is with Drum n Bass (Disel Boy, Pish Posh, J Majik). So I am used to repetitive phrases and droning pads and synth leads (sadly, a lot of DnB is like a 30 second loop turned into a 7 minute song, with minimal transition). By comparison, your track has a lot of variety going for it.

Hmmm curious. I had decided to remix the track because it seemed to me that the initial mix was too loud, especially the drums, the orchestra hits and the bass. I started off doing the EQ while wearing my Sennheiser HD 595s. When I listened to the mix through my laptop speakers, then my television speakers, I went back and remixed the track. This time, I used iPod headphones (nice and crappy) so that I could ensure that it would sound better on listening devices with a poor frequency range. When I posted the video to Youtube, I used the volume control in Windnows Live Movie Maker, to turn the mix down on the song. It was my hope that the track would come through a listener's speakers without deafening them first. I suppose I should have posted the remixed track, without adjusting the volume in WLMM. It would have been louder, but listeners may have an easier time compensating for something that is too loud, rather than too soft. From your comments, it appears that I still failed to address the issue. Though, on my end, things sound far more balanced and clear, even on my television speakers. So I am not quite sure where to go from there, with regard to the EQ and the loudness. As for the source.... On The Blackbird (Original) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PLS2lKjyL8Y I did follow the track closely. The tempo for my mix is substantially faster so that I could give the track a drum sequence that felt more like a dance song (and thus more energetic). I also changed the timing for the orchestra hits. I play the same notes, but not in the same way. My bass line is mostly faithful, but some parts I played in my own way, rather than using the exact same note progression. Otherwise, yes, my mix is sufficiently faithful to the original. I suppose it is more of a remix, than an arrangement. I did however leave room at the end (which can be clearly heard at the one minute mark). I am not sure if I want to continue the track by modifying the breakdown from the source, or going off into my own composition. I will take your commentary into consideration. Hopefully, my next revision will be a bit more promising.

I wanted to contribute a brief addendum regarding Reason. It is true that Reason lacks VST support. However, Reason supports a protocol known as ReWire. ReWire allows you to control software synthesizers and other DAWS as if they were one tool (in other words, all at once, from a single DAW). Unfortunately, Reason can only serve as the ReWire master for the ReBirth synthesizer. In all other cases, Reason is the subordinate when using ReWire. However, if you use something like Pro Tools or FL Studio, you can ReWire Reason into those DAWs, effectively making Reason something akin to a prodigious VST with nigh infinite possibilities for instrument creation. In fact, that is the greatest thing about Reason. You can pretty much create whatever you want just by using the Malstrom, NN-XT and NN-19 and a Combinator. Sure the NN-XT sort of replaces the 19, but everything can be automated on the 19, so it is still useful. And for the rare occasion that you can't create something you really want/need, you can always do a live recording, chop it up with ReCycle (a loop editing tool that exports files in the rx2 format) and sample it with Rex Loop Player. Good luck, and I look forward to hearing your future productions.

^ That means a lot coming from someone with excellent mixes on their own Youtube channel. Thank you for listening to my mix, and for the compliment. Also, your Batman Beyond arrangement is full of win.

I recently made some revisions. Changes include; - Reduced bass in the EQ for the orchestra hits (now they don't drown out everything else). - Redid the sequencing for the guitar heard at 0:17 (now features one less note, making it similar to the transition in the original version of this song). - Redid the sequencing for the synth transition that is heard at 0:33. Now it is better synced with the orchestra hits. - Altered the drum pattern for the verse. It no longer mirrors the entire transition drum pattern. I added a few conga hits as well as a tambourine. - Reduced the bass in the EQ for the bass synth (allows other instruments to come through the mix).

Song revised, and reposted

That sounds very groovy. Almost sounds like it was made on the old Sony chip in the SNES. I dig the modulation of your wave forms. The intro idea you previously had was not bad, it was just too much. All things in moderation, my friend, including moderation. Keep up the good work.

Kill all 36 seconds of that intro. Way too much stutter. Stutter effects are nice in short bursts, but for 36 seconds...that is going to cost you listeners. The actual arrangement portion sounds groovy though.

Once I was able to recognize the original BGM, I was grooving right along with the track. Nice work. And thank you for not doing Chrono Trigger, Final Fantasy, Super Mario, Metroid, Sonic the Hedgehog or Castlevania. It seems like people pay too much attention to the scores for those games. This place is in desperate need of diversity for arrangement choices.

I like the mix. I know how difficult it is to make a shakuhachi out of a synth flute. Unless you are using a VST, you pretty much won't be able to nail the sound. So, I say good job on that part. With that said, your track sounds too much like Heaven Scent by John Digweed. Or alternatively, it sounds like the theme song from MTV's Spider-Man (also by John Digweed, and essentially a remix of Heaven Scent). Maybe it is just me, but it sounds like you are using the same bass line :S

Song revised, and reposted