Calum

Ah, good to know. Has anyone done this specifically with a macbook (not pro)? And can anyone suggest a good make/model?

Which I made when I was 14! http://www.myspace.com/atomicface I have lost this file but it remains on my myspace - it's the second song down "SuperBrotherSisterFatherMother". This was all MIDI done in guitar pro that my friend put into garageband. WELL IT'S A MEDLEY OF ALL THE CLASSICS WITH WORLD CLASS PRODUCTION VALUES! There's no way I can do anything with this now, so i'm not looking for advice on it but thought it might be quite fun(ny) to share my first VG Cover ever! Share yours? wait, i think there's a thread for first music... or is there?

This is a little old but I've dug up some information which is leading me to believe that my macbook can take 8gb of RAM: http://forum.notebookreview.com/apple-mac-os-x/529362-official-apple-macbook-upgrade-central.html According to this my macbook (7,1) which I bought at the end of 2010 has a max of 8gb RAM. Although there are mixed opinions around the internet - it seems that it's kind of officially 4gb but some have installed 8gb and it has worked although I'm wary as I'm not very clued up on this. My macbook info is: Mac OS X Version 10.6.8 2.4 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo 2GB 1067 MHz DDR3 Macintosh HD If anyone could clear this up and suggest any good ones, i'm willing to spend up to £50 or so? I've already checked Crucial's website (on fishy's suggestion) and who stated that only 4gb will work... Thanks for any replies in advance!

Great as usual, really enjoying all the subtle changes in the beat and texture of the piece which really keeps it interesting. As with most of your work, this is right up my alley - you can do no wrong! I don't know the original so I can't comment... although i'm looking at it now, i think... it sounds pretty James Bond to me? Hmm... well I'm kinda treating this as an original as I don't know the source, but it's great stuff. Keep it up!

Battle theme inspired by black mages. Not mixed at all there are more sections to record! But let me know what you think anyway

Enjoying the piano! good stuff - thanks man.

yeah this is pretty cool. The main thing that irritated me was the backing - admittedly you mixed things up with huge arpeggios on piano/harp/xylo in different places but for the main chunk of the piece choirs/strings/everything else was mainly singing for a bar then singing again or singing on every 1/4 beat. I think it would be effective if for one section you mix up the rhythm for example have them just sing on the first beat leaving the rest blank. So yeah, the quite static choir/strings backing was my main issue - but i was looking pretty hard for things to complain about. Make this longer please!

Thanks for more info guys! I don't have a huge amount of cash but this is a future purchase - i would ideally get an apple desktop as I am not at present willing to buy/learn a new DAW and do the platform crossover - i'm really comfortable in logic and have a lot of presets/files and stuff that I don't want to lose. I will probably get EWQL whilst on the cross-over between my laptop and desktop - would the 1tb hard-drive that comes with it be useless if I want to use SSD or firewire or something faster? Is getting a superfast mac with all the drives/processors/ram you mentioned an absolute killer for my wallet? I'll have to look into soundcards too but really I wouldn't know where to start with much of this!

I totally get what you mean about vocals being an uphill struggle - OCRemix seems to kind of be focused on super clean super polished stuff and that's really helpful but i wouldn't post personal stuff here as I use productions for other means and things aren't always supposed to be perfect. So I'm kind of sucked into the OC way of thinking - not that i think it's a super bad thing or that everyone does it, it just seems like an overwhelming response. Yeah, I wouldn't be the one to ask production-wise - i'm also trying to get things to that magic-level! It's really easy just to point out all the things you think are bad when you're just given something to critique - you have nothing to lose and it makes you feel better to be like THAT WAS RUBBISH, THAT WAS RUBBISH - of course i don't think people consciously think this buuut it's easy - ESPECIALLY ON THE INTERNET! Anyway you can critique me too, so i don't stand from a "i'm perfect" perspective telling you everything wrong! haha, and i'd love to get some more plays. BUT JUST SO THIS DOESN'T GET OFF TOPIC we can save convo about that for another time - http://worldmaplostandfound.bandcamp.com/ anyway, i guess my issues were only with the vocals - it's a tricky thing to know what you're comfortable with and i suppose with more time you get used to that a bit. But experiment with really going for it and seeing what happens. A lot of the time confidence is what holds people back. And then produce the vocals well - most singers (who aren't all that confident in their voice) will turn their voice down in the mix - it should be one of the loudest things! Try doubling vocals/adding harmonies or applying some delay to the vocals to really give it some weight!

haha sorry, erineclipse stole the show. I'lll have a little listen to a few of the tracks - a whole album though is quite demanding. OK. TRACK 1 - I'm not a huge fan of the dissonances - i guess it does make me feel depressed about city life. Yeah, your voice - i think it works as a kind of "I don't care" thing but i see what erineclipse was talking about. When the "something something stuck in a bubble" voice comes in it gets kinda lost because it's so low and most of the other instruments are around that frequency range. TRACK 2 - I think the vocals are a little quiet here - through the whole track. And the last word on most of the phrases is often out of tune i don't know if that was intentional or not. Time will tell - The piano doesn't sound hugely convincing - the right hand sounds very mechanical and strictly in time with little humanisation - it's clearly a repeated phrase with exactly the same velocities each time - might be on purpose? I don't like the cymbal samples in the intro - they just kinda make everything a bit messy in my opinion. I enjoy this song a lot more than the other two though. Your vocals kind of suit this one a little more but they're still a bit quiet. Yeah I think there's a lot of potential in that one. You're not really singing with passion ever but if that's your style then sure but maybe make it louder or make it more purposefully "not singing". I'm liking the chorus though. That's all i'mma listen to for now. Are ya gonna sing your heart out? Time will tell. There's a lot of stuff you do right though and i'm just kinda ignoring that cos you don't need to know that, so don't feel disheartened. Keep rockin' Wave One

seriously into these

It seems like you have a good attitude so i think you'll get a lot out of this. My main issues were not with the amount of tracks - although some of my suggestions required that. It was the timing issues in the piano and whistle - do you have a quantize feature on your DAW or perhaps try and re-record particularly the end phrases which always seem to sound unconfident and out of time. Keep it up, i guess wait till your new PC to do the super serious stuff!

I love this source. My main trouble was with the piano (and whistle actually) being out of time. Whenever you play the ending phrase on the piano the one that goes A G F - semiquaver, semiquaver, quaver. Ugh, I wish you could embed sound or notation QUICKLY and easily. anyway, yeah, that phrase always sounds out of time and unconfident are you playing it in? If so quantise that part. The whole piano sounds just a tiny bit unconfident and at times a bit loose whilst the part is very staccato and needs to be in time. Whilst i've never submitted anything and really haven't posted an Remixes here I wouldn't suggest posting something you're not confident will get through just to show you're here. That'll probably get you a bad rep. I think you could add some drums to this - make them quite subtle but that might give it some energy - i would put them in perhaps halfway through at a new section. Also if you're stuck for new material on this piece as you have only really changed up the instruments a bit. I'd suggest just playing the melody and seeing if anything else fits or do the opposite, play the accompaniment and see if you can fit a different melody over the top. try and expand on the melody or write a new section in the same kind of style as thunder plains. These are my suggestions.

I completely understand that the vocals are a major part of the production, particularly in a pop song. I feel the key issue is that I haven't written this song SPECIFICALLY to be judged itself. It wasn't a "joke" to be judged by everyone, it was just a little thing I sent to my friends - I wouldn't put this on youtube hoping for everyone to LOL their heads off. Far from it. Maybe I feel you're taking me too seriously. Maybe I'm just complaining because no one likes to feel like they've done bad. The main thing is that the recording of this song and then the mixing I did were two absolutely separate things for me. The mixing was the part I wished to be critiqued, the song I just happened to pick because I recorded it that day. I'm not looking for any approval for my singing or if this is a good "joke" song or succeeds - all i wanted to know is, is it too quiet? could that be louder? boost these frequencies? use this compression better! The vocals aren't something i'm ever going to re-record. SO MAYBE I'M ASKING How good a job did i do at attempting to polish a turd? I know, i'm stubborn. OK, i'mma shutup now.

I may have come off as a little defensive but my issue was not with the feedback itself but that so much of it was solely aimed at the vocal performance. I admit that I may have underestimated how important a good performance is to production so apologies for that. Thanks for the initial feedback, anyway.

Absolutely love this and can't wait for some serious vocals! Nothing to say - absolutely loving those arpeggios and the trumpets - HELL YES, WHAT ARE THEY?!

OK. Well, i didn't realise this would be such an huge issue. I fully accept that the performance of the vocals is a huge part of the production and perhaps I should have done this with a track with super solid performances but it was just a lil' experiment (is that another excuse?). Perhaps it may appear that I suddenly decided this wasn't serious as soon as people slated it - but i was always under the mindframe that those particular parts which were so concentrated on were not essential. Just for the record I did have an absolute all-out no holds barred party! oh, @me some people just can't read comments. Well i'm super glad I was wrong and it wasn't directed at me! Thanks for the 7.0, I'll wear it with pride! and thanks for the feedback.

i'll assume that's directed at me. I didn't know this was such a hostile forum. No matter what reasons I give, no matter how true or relevant, will just seem like excuses now. Well, shall i say it wasn't a joke now since you don't think it's funny. Hahaha. Well, um... keep the feedback coming I guess.

I get that but i really don't think this applies to me. I don't like that either. I mentioned in the original post that it was a joke before people started "slating me" - i'm not at all offended or defensive about it, even though I don't think I'm an amazing singer what I presented was clearly (at least to me) not particularly serious vocals. The reason I stressed that it was a joke was because people were getting hung up on the vocal performance rather than the production which is what I was after. I didn't record this song for the purpose of putting it here to be judged - it was a "funny" (I guess not) song that i wrote for some friends which i just so happened to attempt to mix. Perhaps I shouldn't have posted a song that would provoke such a reaction. I am aware that when i post something people are going to react to different parts of it whether I want it or not but the hard work only really went into the production here. So all these vocal insults aren't surprising and i'm not bothered or trying to defend myself, It's just like "YEAH I KNOW THEY'RE SHIT, THIS ISN'T NEWS TO ME! I'M NOT TRYING TO SING AMAZINGLY". But really, I personally thought it was glaringly obvious that the vocals were over-the-top and not at all serious. You may think i'm still backtracking but no, i'm not. I completely agree that what you've said i've done is annoying but i just don't think it applies to me as I stated that it was a joke in the original post and thought the vocals made that point pretty clear as well.

Hey, i've sent you my WAV but i'm still unbold gold! Just checking what's going on.

This thread isn't called Rate My Singing. Yeah, did I forget to mention this was a bit of a joke? All of the performances were done very quickly and really not all that seriously so your reactions aren't a surprise but not really what i'm looking for. ANYWAY thanks for the feedback on the productions everyone so far. Yeah, this was like a joke-y soft rock ballad type song. Judging it on its originality or the performance of the vocals (although the latter of which might be relevant to the productions) kind of misses the point. Thanks anyway.

(apologies if this should go somewhere else in the forums) I just made a song with my friend to send to some american friends. It's a bit of a joke so some of the performances aren't super amazing and it was all written and recorded in about 3 hours. But just now I decided to mix the whole thing to the best of my ability and really up my game. The production side of music isn't my forte but i would like it to be on par with other aspects, so please don't hold back and give me your wise jewels! You can discuss the song itself as well if you wish Download or listen to mp3 or wav. MP3: WAV: http://www.mediafire.com/?mi9v32s9cp812f9 Thanks, Calum

AH! It's a song from majora's mask - i never played or listened to any music from that! Mmm yeah, i do like the switch up and think that another repetition of the ZD melody would be overplayed but it was more maybe that i felt the two sections were too different - you went from the reverby, flowing ZD to a really quite clean sound for the New Wave Bossa Nova with this sax sound that was never played before so it feels quite discontinuous. If perhaps you were to introduce the sax earlier playing perhaps a countermelody or accompanying figure then to break out of that into a lead role at the New Wave Bossa Nova section that would please me more. Also if you had perhaps some elements of the icey zora still in there. Maybe you disagree and you think the big contrast between the sort of wet and dry sounds is what you were going for. It's just a tiny thing really! But yeah, i really enjoyed this. I'll listen to your other zelda tunes!

I think it was the whole thing really - it was all quite ambiguous - i didn't know where it was going or what anything was really doing. There were no really hummable melodies and you didn't really frame the melodies or tell us: THIS IS THE MELODY AND THESE ARE THE CHORDS THAT BELONG WITH IT NOW I'M DOIGN A VARIATION ON THE MELODY WITH THE SAME CHORDS. HERE'S THE MELODY BUT IN A MINOR KEY. As lame and constructed as that sounds, i think that is what works in music. It becomes second nature to write music which is quite obvious to people - once you can write music which is simplistic on the ground level you can go beyond this to make it more interesting whilst still retaining conventional musical techniques which allow people to enjoy music and satisfy their expectations. I'm not saying follow all the rules and be a slave to what people what but i feel like you need to clearly decide THIS IS MY MAIN CHORD SEQUENCE, THIS IS MY MAIN MELODY lets work with it in a coherent structure. At least to begin with! Your orchestration is also quite weird - it doesn't fill out all the frequencies and isn't a full texture as we might expect and desire. Sometimes you'll have a melody which is just doubled in unison by another instrument and that's a really thin texture (you did this with the choir and organ). Be a little more conventional and have either the organ playing chords in a lower register with the choir (or solo voice) singing a melody higher. You just had both doing single lines in the same register which sounded weak and a little strange. Basically i wish you'd be quite conventional and plan or atleast play by the rules to begin with so that you can create successful interesting pieces. Instead of what seems like quite an improvised mess. I'm being a little harsh but... this is what i feel would make your compositions "better" to a larger audience.

I love this! Jut sounds great - lovely bossa nova feel which kind of caught me by surprise but then totally made sense. Everything is pure magic! As a rebuild I really have nothing to complain about. I wasn't too sure about the end section with the sax - it seemed quite separate from the flowing pads and icey marimbas (or whatever they are) - i didn't recognise the melody either (I THOUGHT IT WAS JUGGLYPUFF'S SONG!) - perhaps shame on me. Anyway I enjoyed the whole thing but felt i get wanting to break out of it and try to add some originality but the texture really changes up with the introduction of the sax and with all the reverby pads disappearing! BUT i'm not telling you to take it out. keep it up!