aselectbselect

This starts out strong - the reverb on the snares at :10 is way too much though, you need to limit it a bit so it doesn't pick up so much of the mid range. I love that un-apologetically dry synth at the beginning, though. The section that starts at :43 is where the song feels like it gets back in the swing of things, and the back-and-forth between the two leads at 1:01 is really fun, especially when you get to hear it get more electronic at 1:12. The quiet bassy break right after that is great, percussion is spot-on, and manages to have that sonic-esque bassline without the patch sounding too stereotypical, which is sweet. Yeah - and then it ends way too suddenly. I'm not sure where else you can go from there - but it definitely either needs a better way to end, or another section to keep things moving. Anyway, keep it up - I'd love to hear the next draft.

Ha ha, oh my god, you weren't kidding, this really is nearly 19 minutes long. To be honest, I'm actually on the fence about the 'piano tuning' - more and more recently I've begun to appreciate the ever-so-slightly off-tune 'character', especially in old pianoes, where you can hear some notes striking a bit differently, or different key-noise - brand shiny new baby grands just sound too overly polished, almost unreal - whereas worn clunky pianos sound like the real deal. So give that some thought. It's hard to give focused feedback on something this long, but after sitting and listening to it for 3 minutes while I'm typing this, it moves along well enough - there's enough variation in the way the melody is expressed that I don't get tired of it, and the range of notes is great, hitting the super high plinky notes and super low clunky ones as well. The sloppiness is noticeable, it's true - but not really in a way that interferes with the overall piece. I almost this whole thing stands on its own as a really interesting performance with lots of depth - I'd be curious to see what the more OCR-friendly cut sounds like. I'm at 7:24 now - I'm probably going to leave it playing and go lay down and go to sleep now - it's certainly peaceful enough.

Cool though FOF might be - why would you post this in the 'works-in-progress & releases' forum, when it is in fact neither work in progress nor release?

First off, I've got to point out that the guitar sounds really sequenced - not nearly as organic as what you'd expect from the real instrument being played. But that really only strikes me at first - by the time we get to that cool bendy synth at 1:49 I've forgotten about it. The drums are a little iffy - they also seems a little too obviously programmed, as far as consistent note velocity and those incredibly fast triplet kicks go. I know, there are crazy drummers who can pull that off in real life, but there's something to be said for the value of introducing just a bit of artificial variation, just so it doesn't sound like it was so obviously made on a computer, you know? I don't claim to be an expert on that myself, but it's worth playing around with, just to see if you can introduce that variety that helps people hear it as a little more organic. The sound effects sampled in are cleverly used - I love the little breaks at :22, and the little sequence at :58, and the chiptune section at 1:15 - actually, all in all there are a lot of brief 'break it down!' moments, which is refreshing, and provides a much-needed break from that grinding guitar. Yeah, listening to it for the third or fourth time, I'm so relieved once I make it through the first minute - up until then, that constant guitar is kind of harsh, and the spacey section at 1:36 is a total relief. I'm not sure if there's much you can do about that (and besides, heavy guitar like that isn't really where my musical interest usually lies) but if there's any way to lighten that up - more breaks, a few more diversions into different sounds, just at the end of every other phrase, or something, that breathing room would be appreciated, I'm sure. Yeah, this is pretty close to being perfected, it sounds like - the last tweaks are the hardest, but it seems like this'll be a sound submission when you're through!

Disclaimer - I'm not familiar with the source. That said - I think I can hear that buzz/hiss that you mentioned, especially right off the bat at :28 and in the background during that passage - if not, then my guess would be that something is peaking too much and crunching up the rest of the sound, and needs some more attention to EQ/mixing if that's the case. I love hearing the little references to the original NES 'castle' theme tucked away into the part at 1:24 (if that isn't in the music for the 64 you're a genius for adding it.) I almost want it to be more pronounced, but I'm afraid it would ruin the effect. The percussion is all great, and the handling of the cymbal/hat is spot-on. The brassy grunts and sweeping strings and all are pretty expertly orchestrated to communicate that epic setting. Yeah, this is a totally solid piece, and I'd be surprised if you weren't able to successfully submit it after a little more EQ/mix polish to fix a few of those areas where things are getting cropped out.

First off, I've got to admit that I don't like the instrument choice - it sounds like default MIDI soundfonts, especially that bass, that 'plucked' thing that starts at :06, and those drum samples - they're so overplayed and easily recognizable that they're distracting. It's like using Comic Sans in a design job - most pros try to stay away from it, and with the wide selection of free softsynths and samples available online, there's just no reason to use those. (or things that sound similar, to give you the benefit of the doubt) The reverb is pretty heavy on a lot of the instruments, especially for those runs of 8th or 16th notes - things start sounding muddy, and you can't really pick out the parts that the individual instruments are playing. Especially at :56 when that dark bass hit comes in - it just gums everything up. Pulling back the background instruments and focusing on it would make it sound better, more epic. The bright piano/strings at 1:28 are good, and this is where the song feels like it starts to pick up... things are balanced a little better, for sure. So you've got a good idea, but what sounds like a rough draft, basicly - it needs a lot of polish, and swapping in higher quality instruments for what seem like essentially 'placeholders'. Also a lot of the accompaniment lines are pretty repetitive - it seems almost like some are repeating more 'because there's nothing better to put there' then 'because this is what the song needs there', you know? A little more variation would go a long way. Keep it up!

First off, your percussion is lots of fun, and it's unique enough that it doesn't feel too repetitive- that said, more variation certainly couldn't hurt. I'll second Red's call for more bass - especially the kick. I want to hear it pumping! The lead that comes in at :08 is good - especially those tiny breaks and staccato notes, which keep it from sounding too 'drone'y. The thing is, it stands out too much - it doesn't feel enough a part of the rest of the music, it's almost like it's just sitting on top of the other instruments, you know? Maybe a little reverb, or panning it around a bit could help sort of fill that out. And once it's gone at :40 (or once it's transitioned into the higher notes) it feels like it leaves a hole in the sound spectrum. Also, in general, although there are a few areas where this changes, for the most part the bass and sort of airy accompaniment pad are just doing the same notes of the same chord over and over again - it really needs a little progression to help move things along, even just transposing the notes so they're not so repetitive would be good. The ending synth fade down is cool too - and lends itself to a quieter, more sparsely instrumented passage, maybe with some sort of spaced-out drums with some delay - some nice classic snare hits or claps perhaps? Anyway, you could easily carry that on for a while, maybe taking things up a minor third before returning to the previous pattern again, and that'd be a great way to keep things fresh, while sort of lengthening the track.

@Willrock - yeah, we've had a little bit of trouble integrating that square lead, and listening to it on head phones, you're right, it doesn't sound like it's really meshing as well as it should. It started out being a lot more prevalent, but we've cut it back as it became clear that it didn't quite fit into where we were going in the long run - maybe it'll get cut back even more in the next round of revisions. Also, the patch has a weird tenancy to randomly decrescendo - I fear we might have to try recreating it on a different softsynth, one that is a little more tweakable. Oh, and as for the source, I'll edit the first post to include a link to OCR's download page for Kirby's Adventure - it's the 18th track on the .nsf .

First off, disclaimer, I haven't played any starfox aside from a little on the 64. That said - The intro is cool, and intriguing, because that little arpeggio makes me expect something distinctly chiptune-ish, which isn't the case at all, and makes the orchestral instruments sound really nice. I've got a problem with the little chippy sound dropping out completely at :44 - after being hit with it constantly for nearly a minute, suddenly missing it leaves quite a hole. But after that, everything seems to be meshing well - the chord change at 1:16 comes just as the pattern is getting to the edge of my attention span, so that's sweet. Yeah, anyway, what you've got is cool - I want to hear a 'break' area, where things drop off and get a little more staccato or syncopated, to sort of take a break from the bass and brass that've been blanketing things up to that point - the percussion would be nice to focus on for a few moments, if only for the sake of mixing things up before sweeping back into the orchestral bit again.

'unexpected and a little dark' is a great way to put it - in some ways that's what we were going for. as far as the bell lead goes - out of curiosity, at what point through the track does it feel like you've had enough? I feel like it's pretty solid through the sort of fade in at the beginning - if anywhere, it might need some tweaking when it's alongside the porta-square-vibrato lead thing at :34... maybe somewhere before the transition at 1:40? Oh, and I'll edit the first post to say this, but that drawn out synth at the end is totally an accident. If I've got a second, I'll re-export the .mp3 with that removed.

Hi everybody! This is a way slowed down version of a classic Kirby track from the Kirby's Adventure on the NES (track 18 from the soundtrack) - check it out: mattlohkamp.com/aselectbselect/kirby.mp3 So - bells, strings, synth, and percussion - what do you think? We'd love some feedback. Note - the synth at the end isn't supposed to sustain like that - I hit the wrong setting when we exported the mp3 and it didn't cut off where we wanted. So disregard that.

Alright, this might be it - we've messed around with the mixing and EQ'ing, fiddled with some volume, et cetera, and compared headphones versus speakers and whatnot. Unless anyone sees any glaring errors, this'll get submitted. Thanks for listening, and for all your insightful feedback, everybody! mattlohkamp.com/aselectbselect/tetris c.mp3 (finished track)

Alright, this might be it - we've messed around with the mixing and EQ'ing, fiddled with some volume, et cetera, and compared headphones versus speakers and whatnot. Unless anyone sees any glaring errors, this'll get submitted. Thanks for listening, and for all your insightful feedback, everybody!

Check out overclock's listing for the NES version of Tetris: http://www.ocremix.org/game/tetris-nes/ ... as you can see, the remix you linked to is a remix of the second theme, not the third one. To be fair, it's not 'c-type', it's 'music - 3' under the heading 'music type' (the original is up on the TV as we speak) - are you thinking of the gameboy version, perhaps? If memory serves that one had music in a different order, or different tracks - but we're reasonably sure that the theme we've remixed is the third one available in the original NES version.

Ha ha, yeah, we like the kick thing too much to change it. Yeah, the EQ did end up a bit flat... it's that 'difference between speakers effect', I think. Going back through and working on the individual channel mixes will fix that though. This is good - if we're talking about leveling and eq, it means the rest of the song is in a good place! And that was a pretty shrewd guess - it is dBlue Glitch. We were using a few 'random' blocks, but I'll take a closer look at the seed setting.