hewhoisiam

Sometimes, there exists something so awesome for a certain subset of humanity that I must go and share. I've watched Ewan Dobson for years, because he's awesome. Then he did this. Solidifying his awesomeness forever.

Mhookay, I got a strange itch to come back here after my extended absence, I work 7 days a week, don't quite get ends meat. But hope that all changes soon. This track has got the epic going on. But the transitions in my opinion are sloppy. You're intro is just a volume automation. When the hi hats enter, they're vary strong. Give them some life! Work with the hits of each of them. Then onto your main synth. It's strong and there, and not terrible. It's the same level as those hats! Too strong to start out with, ease into it. The drums are an artist's deception. I'm not a huge fan, but there will be those that are for this style, there really isn't much wrong here other than timing. I honestly like what I heard after that. Could use a bit of mastering (and that might just be me) but otherwise good.

download worked the second time, I'll update this post in a sec. (eating tostadas. mmgood) I like the ambiance at the start, so well done there Snare feels kinda wimpy. It's good in the ghost notes, but it doesn't really have a punch when it comes in on a 2 or 4. The highs at 2:33 are a little grating to me, also they sound thin left hangin by themselves. I love the pickup with the bass at 3:27 EEK! Sour note on that guitar at 3:43! At 3:56 the string lead up is nice, but I feel it needs some bass frequencies in there. The bass you have in the song might work, but I'd lean more to an orchestral upright bass playing with those sustained chords. Might fill out the sound a bit. I swore the song ended in the above crit there ^ so I gotta say the piano coming in was a bit of a shock. I think that outro needs something in the transition so we don't think the song ends. Maybe start the ambiance sooner? Or just rework that 'flow' a bit.

Let me see in a bit after I hammer out the end of my current WIP into something that resembles mod-reviewable. I know, I know, what a tease. But I don't want two projects going at the same time and I want to (someday) finish and submit something. Was going to work on it tomorrow, but I have to work on my day off now, so that sucks. Mmhokay, crits. I want the piano fattened up, for sure. And it could use a bass part. On that note... The only bass sounds I hear are low organ. I'd like to hear a nice fat bass choir part so it's not so static. Brass. I know I'm crazy, but I want some brass in this. If you're going orchestral, be crazy with it. The strings are kinda weak and I only hear them in about one place? Along with the brass, some string work could really be something special. I love that full orchestra sound The only thing filling space in some places is the organ (actually now that I listen, the strings are there, just soft) -still though- leaving the overall sound empty. I'd have to hear it with a different piano to be sure, but I think it could use something to keep it interesting throughout.

I have so many bad troll things that will never see the light of day because that thread is locked! I used to have killer studio chops , Then I took an arrow to the knee! Yo Dawg! I heard you like music degrees?! But, it's not sad that you've been here. That's what we like to call dedication!

...This thread is locked?! Why would you lock such an awesome thread?! And stick with it, my last break took months. I'm making sure I don't burn out that bad ever again. I've seen your stuff off and on here at OCR, I don't just pour honey in your ear when I say that you're improving a lot (and pushing out more work than me:tomatoface:)

First off. I'm not dead. Just been away a few days. I'm making myself finish something, so not moving on made me burn out for a few months. I should have something up by the end of the week (or else) Anyway, the track. Drums - Get kinda stale in places. I'd add another drum track entirely, using the same synth. Put your kick, snare, and the hats that will repeat a lot on one track, then use the other for ghost notes (snare off beats) kick fills (not 2 and 4) Then when you want to change little things like for a transition, it's really easy. I'm starting to do this with my tunes. If you want to layer the sounds, you can do this inserting another synth and just fix the sounds you want. If you want to help out that bass drum, EQ the lows down a bit and the mids up, less thud more body. Some crescendo effects could really make those dark orchestral sounds pop. They're good now, but they could be great with some dynamics. This could use some subtle additions early on to keep it interesting the whole way through. A synth echoing melody or a soft arpeggio, something in the background. The end needs a bit of writing done imho. I get the effect you're going for, but it's kinda boring. The slowdown now with the drums and piano grinding to a halt doesn't do it for me. I picture the drums cutting out before it being too slow, and the piano spiced up a lil. It's conservative, but this is the biggest criticism leveled at me, so uh

wha? No crits on a proto song? Oh hell, it's full of chip tunes! Really not my area since it's so... chip..tune-ish... Guess this'll be a short one. Well, right out of the gate, this is a fun one to listen to. I can groove to it. I might comment that it switches gears pretty quick, the transitions are abrupt, but it seems to work. When you put vocals with this, you should mechanize them 8 bit song should has some 8 bit vocals. The run at 1:46-1:50 could be made more intense without so much lead. It needs some support there IMHO, not just layering with the lead sound. Kinda on the short side, I could see a break in there really doing a lot for the composition overall. Esp with the chip tune feel. Hope that helps.

There's still a lot to be done to really make a piece like this work. IMHO. Think about tempo and volume changes in order to build a mood or emphasize a certain part. Another neat thing is to switch into a different key or time signature. I tend to favor more subtle things (last crit I got that I'm working on is to be more creative) so there is always original writing. As far as originality goes, this could use some work, I only really hear the melody and back tracking, which makes it seem unfinished and kinda boring. I like that you trimmed the intro, but it was less about length and more about composition. An intro can be long, it just has to be done 'right'. Subjective, I know, but I mean done in a way that changes, becomes dynamic, sets up other ideas. Etc. Not bad, keep at it

I like that it's got a kinda old skool midi vibe to it. But at the same time, I'm also pretty mixed on that sentiment. It feels thin. The clap doesn't have bite the way I think a clap should. There are bits like that throughout this piece. The leads that I like because they're midi-esque, also lack the full sound that a lot of more complete instruments have. As it is, I feel like this is right in the middle on this. Because some of the things you use do sound complete. And it's a combination of the two that doesn't work. If it's midi and minimal, some of the thick sounds (like that soft attack synth playing the quarter notes) just don't work for it. And if you want it to be thick and full sounding, you have to do quite a bit of processing to your midi type sounds. Some people can really make this work much better than I can explain it, so I'ma hunt down an example: Now... Where did willrock run off to? http://ocremix.org/remix/OCR02215/ If you want to thicken up those sounds, a few filter automations are going to work wonders for you. The same with some layering for your drum sounds or heavier reverb on your leads.

For me the panning on the organ at the start is too extreme, it's all coming out my left ear, and the whole guitar part and piano, my right. Maybe you could automate the parts so that you get more separation where you want it, but not with the entire track. The drums are kinda weak. I'm thinking reverb, and they need fattened up. The bass drum is just scary weak, it has no punch or body. I don't think this is a very 'punch' song. But it needs some tone to it, some body. The highs at the end are a bit much for me. Might take them down some. Arrangement feels thin, not enough going on at times.

It's not bad, I hate YT for crits cause the sound is usually crap. I do love the wub wub. <3 some wubwubwub. There's a high part that feels like it's only in my right ear. For my taste, that's too hard of panning for that part. This tends to be too repetitive for me as well. The instrumentation is good, and when it changes up it gets interesting again. But it seems like each idea just runs a little bit long with no real change. My first thought (and what I see a lot in dub and DnB) is to really tweak some of the filters there with automation. If dub is what you're going for, you may want to simplify the drum part some. Usually the bass drum parts are very simple 1 and the & of 3. That reese bass has a nice full sound, I like it, but it doesn't get very adventurous. Play with it

For what it is, I feel like the intro is too long. It needs something to keep my interest before the main theme comes in. The glass bell sound with the choir I think is a win. Very fun to listen to. But the track feels incomplete overall. There is almost no bass sound aside from the very low throat gurgle synth. That synth has a way of growing old very quickly to me, it might just be my taste. Same with that drum hit. It's thin and neither one of these adds much to the song or develops as the song goes on. When they first come in, the high wind instrument is too loud, it overpowers everything else. It's texture also doesn't mesh well with the other instruments. This just plods along at that slow tempo. That's gotta be... eh 60? BPM? It's almost painfully slow in places. Some wrong notes in there in the high winds near the end. This is a phrygian (thanks slygen) so they sound a bit off at certain points, but there it's noticeably wrong. C phrygian C, Db, Eb, F, G, Ab, Bb, C for most of it. Then the break is in E phrygian E, F, G, A, B, C, D, E

Did some layering with the drums, changed some samples. Subtle adjustments were made. Got rid of that fuzz and fattened up my ambiance background thing. Still 3-4 places in the end I want to work out, but it's 90% done. One in the middle. Why is it never easy Still nothing hitting me in the way of original writing on this. It uses a lot of pure transition when it raises in the melody and I haven't been able to get something I like (yet) But this update was focused mostly on fixing the drum sounds, and anything else that seemed thin or off. I got no idea what I want to do to add mid ranges to this. I did want to steal an idea from bLiNd, but it absolutely does not work for this piece. Haven't played with the idea of an arp in this, not much experience with em. Got a good example of what yer talking about for me? I may need to actually lower the level of the new snare. Bit too much punch in the areas where it's not in half time. I like that level in the half time tho. We'll see

Thanks for the offer. By the way, a good sample never dates! Truth of the matter is, I have good samples. Just this time I used the drum sequencer and samples that came with Cakewalk. It's sessiondrummer. And the snare here is just awful. I really wanted to see if I could salvage it with effects, eq, and knowledge (I'd have not even known where to begin 6 months ago) And I did, and it sounds... uh. Better. But I'm going to just have to bite the bullet and use my good sequencer. I'll re write the drum part in it. Right now, this drum track has 9 effects on it, 5 on the snare alone. 4 are EQ to cut out some offending tones and buzzes. It's just. Meh. I wanted it to be good. I really did want sessiondrummer to be good. It's just... NOT EDIT: I should say! With minimal work, it can sound like a good 'real acoustic' kit. It's just not good for the DnB or the electronic sound. EDIT EDIT: I'll likely get some work done to this this weekend, on hold since then.

Worked with the drums somewhat. I'm hoping I understood what was said about the drum sounds and snare. So some balance work, some eq work. Took off the multiband compressor on the master. Added some reverb. Let me know. Still want to put some of the punch back on the bass drum. This was mostly a bit of snare work to see if it's going in the right direction. Still on my to do list is to do some writing... as soon as I figure out what I want, that is AND FIX THAT WHITE NOISE!

Thanks for the crits. I actually hit up nutritious and hemophiliac yesterday for a few pointers, so I've got a lot on my plate. The highs that everyone's not seeming to like are my bad. I did have them EQ'ed at the bus level when I was using a synth. I had to bounce it to an audio track to tweak it a bit because the synth is semi-random and it kept buzzing in ways I didn't like. When I finished that, I forgot to route it BACK to the bus, so it has no EQ on it I'ma do a bit of reading on drum mixing. I have some ideas and one effect I really want to use, but the effect HATES working in midi, it's for audio mixing so I may have to bounce the whole snare track to an audio track to get a snare I like. Why is nothing ever simple? I'll try to hammer out some original bits, I kinda know where I want some of it to go. I also want to work on that first transition (Nutritious and Hemophiliac were not impressed ) The mids were uh. Well this song started out as DnB/Dubstep kinda feel, which is usually weak in the mids, but I could put something in there to fill in the sound a touch. Right now I have a few airy sounding pads to cheat and make this sound more full than it is in a lot of places. Changing this back into a WIP since it's not as close as I thought it'd be. When it's next mod review comes around it should be almost there, but feel free to keep poping in and checking on me (keeping me working when I'm not uh. working)

So, a quick bit or reading some mastering stuff and working to get this one closer to being done. -I gave the snare some pop -Changed the delay effect slightly -Worked with the gate -Gave the leads some reverb -Fattened the bass a little bit -Made an audio track of the ambience to take out the fuzz Give it a listen and let me know what you think or if you can think of anything else.

I would have given you a proper PM... But you has been hording your PMs and the system won't let me send you one till you clear out that stuffed in box! I used a different system to do the drum kit in this one (4 ov em, in fact) and ima have to prolly get it sorted out as far as the snare/kick goes. I set the delay 'to tempo' Which is great as long as you don't change it... Like I decided to do... Like 5 times. I'll have to work out another snare part at the very least. Maybe play with the production somewhat. At 5 mins it's not really feeling that length cause of the time put into the intro and closing, so I might tweak them to a shorter version to expand the middle, there's such a thing as too much, which I dun wanna be. Though some epic songs on the FF7 lifestream track had long intros, which is kinda... addictive. Thx for the advice. Anything on 'thickening' the lead? I more or less tweak a synth I like and add a few effects and reverb. (or start from a sine wave in synth 1, which is like ADHD crack) The idea 'thin' kinda... I don't translate that into 'OH THIN?! I CAN FIX THAT' Thanks again fer yer responze to mah summonz

Well, first things first. That's the same YT link 2 times. For a second ever mix, this isn't bad. But it could use some work in the freqs. The bass is lacking in the bass part. Esp. in the areas where you bring it up an octave or two. There is a nice rich bass drum sound to make up for it, but it won't be enough on its own. Gonna need help there. The transition from one source to another is pretty obvious, it could use some help to really integrate the ideas together, rather than just switch gears. So's that I'm not all negative, the atmosphere of this is done very well, somewhere between eerie and suspenseful. Especially at the 'break'. There are places in this that are 'just strings' that sound a bit thin to me, help em out with a supporting sound IMHO. Seems to hug the original MIDI pretty heavy, other than using 2 sources, you might consider tweaking the arrangement. Order, instrumentation, length, lots of things can be done pretty simply to make this pop in a few places. It could also be that I'm only listening to the one source that's kinda repetitive. Though you get massive props for changing it up how you did. It's still pretty interesting, even if repetitive. Hope that helps.

AH HA! CAUGHT YOU Gario! Now you have to go review mine! This sort of thing would be great on shuffle in a playlist somewhere, but I don't know I'd listen to it as an actual album. It is neat to hear them all in piano form tho. I tend to like the boss and final boss themes, but it's all pretty good.

I have a 10 minute bookmark youtube clip of the sonic 2 'final boss' That I get lost in, believe you me, I understand the nostalgia

Best of luck. I'm listening through this, if it doesn't make it past the Js, drag it out here and I'll poke it with a stick and see what I come up with.

Short for a finished product. The glitching halfway through seems out of place to me. It's a neat effect, just not here. This is very repetitive in a few other areas. I like what you have, but it needs more work to get it away from that MIDI sound. It's not a bad mix, but with the crit above, it's sounding very much like a direct midi copy with a few instrument changes. It needs some work in the arrangement. It's a very short source, so there's lots of room for stuff. But the source alone doesn't give much in the way of direction. The mix/master needs some work. reverb a few of the parts and it'll help. You can also remove some of those offending tones and things ---FROM SOUNDCLOUD--- And pardon the slight distortion on the track --- EQ can help that. Not a bad start though.

I have a love hate relationship with the snare. I like the way the delay on it works in some places (Intro) but it doesn't scale with the tempo in others. (end) Sometimes it's playing half time, sometimes normal time XD I might see about adding another snare. I tried more or less to salvage this one instead of picking one I like with a bit more pop. Kick is much the same. Lots of EQ on it, but I dunno if I'm in love with it. Thanks for the crits