DarkSim

Hey guys, thanks for all the feedback so far. I've put this mix on the backburner for a while and am ready to go back to it. It's draining when you're straining your ears to try and figure out all the notes in such an intricate piece as this, so I thought I'd get the hard part out of the way first and then leave it for a while before coming back refreshed and ready to tackle the arrangement side of things. hewhoisiam - thanks for the sour note identification - I'm inclined to agree with you on that one but I've tried changing it and it sounds even worse. Might just have to make it quieter or something... I also agree that overall the mixing is a little muddy, and I do indeed have a bass part competing for frequencies with the bass piano - I thought it could work but I'll have to remove it and maybe add it in to replace the bass piano in some other parts. Malheureusement - thanks for the compliments on the piano! It really took a long time to get it right, and I agree that the bass notes in the piano sound the best, so I'll probably bring those out more when I go back to it. Also the fade out wasn't really the ending I had planned (don't know how to end it - whether with a bang or to wind it down as if you've won the race and are doing a victory lap or something), so I'll have to see where I decide to go from there. It also made me laugh that you said "someone" didn't know how to use the sustain pedal properly - I actually didn't! I'd just downloaded a new VST (CVpiano) and couldn't figure it out so left it out with the intention of figuring it out later, haha! If you listen to the source the piano's very staccato as well, but with some sustain on the bass and the fast cutoff on the treble, that could be a nice combo. Some other ideas I had for this piece were to splice in some sections of the Haunted Woods melody, as I think the two tracks would work well together, and both are probably the "darkest" sounding tracks in the game. It could certainly help to extend the length of the track a bit, although I'd quite like to keep it under 4 minutes due to the intensity I've got going on. I'll have to see how that works out. Sadly I can't upload to tindeck for the next few weeks as I'm at work and the firewall blocks mp3s, but hopefully that'll give me chance to focus more on the making and less on the uploading.

BREAKING: Turns out my work has unblocked OCR so I can actually get on here! I'll try and make those changes when I can, but if you can fiddle with the track to get it to sound more balanced, then go for it. It should be possible as I only have the Kick and bass below 100Hz, with the kick slightly lower, so try quietening the frequency around 100-150Hz. Thanks for the feedback as well guys, with those cymbal builds I have actually panned them towards the centre as they come in from the left. In hindsight, it was probably a little too subtle, but it is there I just added that snare in to replace the first one I had, I felt that any louder and it started to really overpower the intricacies of the track, so I left it perhaps a little quieter than I would have. I'll see if I can bring it up a little next time I have a play with it. Also, big thanks to dbrown/H3L10S for being cool about me hijacking his track! I just sort of had a moment of inspiration and decided to see how I could make it sound "better", and he's been supportive of my work, so thanks a lot This track is still very much his though, so I don't wanna take too much credit for it. PS. GarageBand? Lol... I'm using Ableton Live

He's added the Spirit Temple intro in the breakdown part which I thought was a touch of genius. Don't know what the general feel about that is, I know the judges don't like "medley"s, but this isn't strictly a medley, it's just a break with a source close to Gerudo Valley in it. Anyway, I liked it for reasons I explained before. I do agree the transition is a bit sudden though. Is there any way you could incorporate the breakdown without a tempo change, just do it at half-tempo without a kick or something? Might make the transitions and the track feel more cohesive. As for sidechaining, I don't use FL but in Ableton you can put the sidechain compressors on each track and tweak each one individually, I imagine there's a similar thing in FL.

Oh. My. God. I love this... amazing to hear such a massive improvement over a couple of days. Ain't OCR great? Small criticism on the main melody - I think your sidechain is just a little too harsh on the melody when it comes in, but that's easily fixable, just raise the threshold on the melody track. There is also some clipping from 0:58 onwards until the slowdown. I think your bass frequencies are too crowded there. After that though, the part after the tempo slowdown is just genius... I won't spoil it for anyone who hasn't listened yet, but it just kicks ass. Seriously adds to the arrangement side of the remix and really livens up what was shaping up to be a predictable, cheesy dance track. The buildup out of that again is great, although I kinda wish it was a bit longer, then again I just downloaded the track and noticed that it comes in at 4:11 - was it really that long?! It felt shorter, which is always a good sign. Listening for a third time right now - this just gets better and better, I don't even know what to say. Superb. On another note, this thread seems to have got quite a lot of attention, not sure whether it's due to the source or whatever, but it's good to see you taking on comments and suggestions so enthusiastically, putting them into practice, and then pulling something like this out of the bag. All I can say is keep improving, and good luck with submission, this is my favourite Gerudo Valley mix I've ever heard, and it's not even finished. Wow.

First let me say I love the title! Brilliant pun. Onto the music... Really there's not much I have an issue with here apart from the drums - that snare has to be changed as it's ruining my enjoyment of the excellent arrangement you have going on here. I'd almost be inclined to say there's too much decay on that kick drum too, as it seems just a tiny bit intrusive, but this could probably be fixed by just turning the volume of it down a touch. It's a really interesting track that just needs a few volume changes and a new snare, and it'll be outstanding.

Whoa, I just listened to this for the first time and popped straight into my head - of course LA came before GTA IV (the track's called "King Ring" by Seryoga), but damn that's a similar motif. Also with that in mind, try taking a bit of inspiration from this song regarding the bass and drums - I'm dying to hear a beefy kick drum and bass in your remix somewhere, but even the drums as you have now just still aren't powerful enough.Of course, if you're going for an airy, ambient feel then it's fine how they are now really, but I don't think there's enough variation in the track otherwise to make that genre really work. I think an extra melody layer in the higher frequency register would also fill out this track nicely - some chance to have a go at an improv solo or something after about 2:12 if you build up to it a bit more using some sweeps or something, maybe even lengthen the track another 4-8 bars if you add in some more original material. Apart from that though you've got a really nice track here that sounds well produced and just in need of that extra something to make it shine, keep working on it! EDIT: check your PMs

Hi, welcome to OCR! Decent first effort, it's a classic source and I like where you're going with it - I do think there's room for improvement though before a mod review. Certainly that first lead synth sounds a bit harsh in the mix, and I'm not a huge fan of the fast claps at the start (they sound a bit too "artificial" - try playing with velocities on them). Not sure if you're familiar with bLiNd's work on here but he's the trance master so I'd suggest listening to his stuff and taking a lot of inspiration from that. Then again, the tempo in this track is a lot higher that bLiNd's usual stuff so it makes it sound a bit more like Eurodance or something. The last part of the mix is my favourite, as it has more stuff going on in the mix and there's a nice bit of improv with those delayed synth chords starting to come through. I'd say if your target was getting this mix posted, you'd need to do a lot more embellishment on the source as it's pretty conservative at the moment. I'd also try tweaking your instruments to make them sound a bit more varied - try adding slight phasing to the final lead synth, and definitely some sidechaining is also needed (look this up if you're unsure how to do it in your program, but check out the remix Chemixtrixx by PrototypeRaptor for an example of how it can make a track really bounce). Nevertheless, good start, and keep improving

I use a cracktro from Fire & Ice on Amiga

Can't make it on tonight guys, sorry I have a request though - can we have the cvar mp_c4timer set to 35 instead of 45 please? 35 is the standard, but for some reason 45 is the default. Thanks

I've had this mix kicking around for a few months and after seeing a thread with a Song of Storms remix in, I remembered I should probably post it! I'm not going to sub this to OCR, I'm just posting it to get it "out there" in case anyone fancies a listen. I have actually taken the source and mixed it with an old folk song called the "Skye boat song", inspired as I was whilst watching Dexter and hearing it played on a Spanish guitar in the background. I believe this would probably disqualify me from posting based on OCR's guidelines (borrowing extensively from non-game source), but it might be interesting to know if this would be allowed should I decide to update it. There's also a bit of embellishment on my part to extend the length a bit. A disclaimer of sorts - it was made in Garageband, so the production isn't great (although GB does have a pretty good set of tools built in if you really want to spend time with it), and all the samples are from GB as well. So, hope you enjoy it

Oh wow, I'm really excited for this project now! A couple of standout tracks from that preview are Radiowar's Intoxica and Blue Magic's Chasing Waterfalls, and it was nice to see some clips of the game to remind me how much I loved it as a kid Awesome job guys, can't wait for release.

I really really want them to be advertising umbrellas...

Well this game seriously needs remixing, so I thought I'd give one of the more badass tunes on it a try (also has a little bit of this in it at the beginning). I've been working on this ReMix bit by bit over the course of a few days, figuring out each section by ear (very hard - especially that piano!), so if I've got some notes wrong I apologise. EDIT: Finished version up here http://www.tindeck.com/listen/chyt with a little help from my brother. Changed almost everything, comments always welcome!

Yeah, but it's against the spirit of the game, so that counts as cheating to me...

Nice vid Fireslash, not that I approve of the cheating, it's the whining that's funny! Also those 4 deagle headshots in 1 clip are very nice indeed.

Lol! I'm amazed you managed to get any kills with your ping tbh, it was 300+ the entire time. Reminds me of my first year of playing CS/Unreal Tournament on an internal 56k modem. Harsh times... but then that was 9 years ago Anyone up for playing tonight?

Rofl, never been compared to Jesus before, but yeah picking one weapon and practicing with it really helps. Also an advantage of the deagle is that the first bullet is very accurate when running, so it's useful for a rush strategy. 1 shot to the head kills, so just aiming for the head will get you so many headshots. You just have to trust your aim and not panic This is also good advice - you get the feel of all the weapons pretty quickly. I'm sure they buffed the 12 gauge (m3) shotgun in the last update as well because for some reason it seems to be more powerful at range. It's cheap so also worth practicing with.

gg tonight, WindStrike and some others were on (preditor?) and we had a laugh, must get a mic sorted so I can use alltalk. I'll try and come on tomorrow night but depends how late I stay up (UK time... bleh)

Ohhh brilliant Which tune/s are you working on, may I ask?

This NES game used to frustrate the hell out of me and I remember being so excited about getting to level 3 (it was insanely hard) that I phoned my friend and told him! I played it again years later and noticed immediately that it was actually made by Rare, so no wonder it was fantastic. The soundtrack's by Dave Wise and would be ripe for the mixing, here are a few highlights: Cavern 3/5 Cavern 2/8