Calum

This is a lot better but it still has that strange mickimoo sound! This strange ambiguity. Things seem to be far more in time and the quality of the samples is much better. I just think the writing is at times very strange, like when you had the organ playing a single line which was exactly the same as a the choir line. It was very thin textured. Perhaps I feel like you don't thicken out your pieces. A section can be bereft of a bass, some kind of mid-chord and a high melody. Not that you have to follow these strict rules but a grounding in conventional writing would help I feel. Yeah, everything is quite strange but things are vastly improved! It feels like there are some parts which are missing at times or too quiet.

I know I said I'd work on the old ones but here's something kind of recent - super sentimental, japanese-inspired lullaby: enjoy! I think some of the humanisation and mixing etc. isn't perfect on this, i was just getting ideas down.

with a drum kit you may wish to pan it in correlation to the different parts in front of the player - the snare slightly to the left, kick in the middle, hi hats to the left, ride to the right etc. Bass and kick drums are rarely anything but centred (please correct me if i'm wrong). Often a rhythm guitar track might be panned left or right as it might be seen as less important. I tend to go with that - accompanying instruments are often panned left or right in my pieces but the melody often remains centre or something that is playing on its own is centred - perhaps i need to break out of this thinking though. If you wanna try and recreate the positioning of an orchestra then yeah sure and maybe it could sound better but with VSTs etc. you have the opportunity to make things HYPER-REAL so panning can really be all over the place and that can be super effective but if you're trying to trick people into thinking it's real then i suppose follow that chart! I don't think there are any hard an fast rules, just seeing what works. Sometimes it's really hard to listen objectively - someone with fresh ears might not notice how extreme you might think some panning is. I often have a really quite centre-focused stereo field which i wanna break free from but it's hard to make things not sound "weird"!

I don't know the source all that well but this is just really nice - sounds like your style too. As it's just a sort of cover or update i suppose I can't offer all that much advice on what other things you could do. Top quality productions, just lovely.

The reason I said melodic variations was because they didn't seem to me as distinct as perhaps they could be of the original melody. They were in A minor with a similar character - try a melody that is faster or slower, has longer or shorter notes, moves to closer notes or jumps around a bit! Also changing the harmony underneath it (which you have done a bit) will really make the melody seem different! As you've said - "they only sound similar because they are the same instruments playing" - then change it up a bit, give it some variation - particularly for an EPIC JOURNEY! But generally i feel as though the melodies are all a bit not very distinct - perhaps on their own they may be but because there are so many different but yet similar melodies, any prevalent hummable melody gets lost in the crowd!

I don't think looking back to Bach and Beethoven is very helpful. They were living in a time so ridiculously different to ours and were writing music for a profession, which most of us aren't. Expecting to compose as "fast" as them (who said that was a good thing) will just destroy your confidence - not because they are infinitely better composers but simply because they lived in a completely different time with different preoccupations. I agree that you can lose focus after a day or so but there are advantages of spreading out the work. But I would never write off a song because i didn't get down it's overall structure within a day.

While i don't necessary agree that it's super simple, it's not crazily complex either. Although there are lots of different variations on the melody, you always seem to end up back on the Aminor at the start of every 4 or 8 bar phrase - perhaps that is what makes it sound so repetitive. Think about going to the relative major or dominant or just even starting a phrase on another chord (you do this at some points but it does feel like we keep coming back to the A minor with mild melodic variations). I'm not a huge fan of the bass drum sample - it could do with a little more reverb or just sound a little huger and more powerful. Also the semi-quavers it plays are a little uncharacteristic of a bass drum - perhaps you are going for a big old taiko drum, in which case that would be more characteristic but the bass drum sample is kind of unconvincing and unsatisfying. I think you need a little more definitive structure - decide which is THE melody and make that the most important - at the moment, any distinct melody gets lost in the millions of variations there are - make a distinctive dramatic point for the song to go to - perhaps this could be triggered by a change in key (as discussed before) to give it a more definite form. These are all suggestions of what i'd do or like to hear so you don't have to take them but you seem quite defensive about your piece and how complex or amazing it might be - i don't see anyone questioning how "good" it is, just giving suggestions and comments which you should take on board but not to heart. Keep working on it!

I take your point but it's really a matter of opinion - do you want the note itself to be longer or for it to be heard for longer? I'm kinda happy with it but perhaps thats because, as you say, i've listened to it over and over again. I still need to work more on this and add new sections, fix up and mix things but yeah. I haven't looped it, it will have just looped on tindeck but yeah OK, I get that if this was looped then little articulation niggles would get very annoying but as i said this is certainly unfinished! Thanks for the feedback.

Yeah, i dig all of this. This probably isn't a very helpful comment but my only problems would be the quality of the samples. They seem to be used well and I like these musical ideas - like the chromatic falls at the end of the phrase in the title screen one (reminds me of the title screen of Ocarina of Time (not the style or instrumentation, just those falls)). I don't know how the crazy ending would fit in with a title screen or any part of a game really but, for our purposes, sure it's cool! Haha, i've not been very helpful really. Yeah, expand upon then, make 'em sound great. Could have been a bit more helpful but my brain's not in check right now. Keep it up!

The Bb? Considering it's played by pizzicato/staccato piccolo, that's not really an option, but i also never intended for that. Are you sure you mean this? Seems like you're picking some arbitrary thing to tell me to "correct". Like the second chord of 'In The Water Garden'. Have we got really different ears or are you just picking something to give feedback on for feedback's sake. I mean, if you're sincere then thanks but i don't think I agree (again) in this case.

hmm perhaps i turned everything else down as well when i turned the drums downnn... ahhh! Oh well - here's something new. I'm gonna go back and sort out all the old stuff soon: It's called A Pleasant Walk - reminds me of some of the Twilight Princess soundtrack + a little bit FFXIII: It's unfinished and there are quite a few things to sort out but i just thought i'd post it to get some general feedback. EDIT: OK upon relistening it's very sketchy but the essentials are there.

I really was going for a corny kind of old school lo-fi type of sound and i'm really happy with the bass sound. The trumpets were actually not that bad until I put loads of chorus on them but I just thought real-sounding trumpets (as with bass) wouldn't suit the song/instrumentation. But I will make the trumpets a little less jarring - I decided to double track them and pan them L and R a bit and make them slightly out of sync - i thought this would beef them up but it kind of just made them a bit weird! Here's a new version - it was actually flanger on the trumpets but i've turned it down quite a bit and made the drums a little quieter - let me know if you think this is better?

Yeah, I was kind of into how corny the slap bass was. Did a similar thing on my sonic-type track earlier with it. Mmm, OK. I feel I get really into certain bits and then pump them up quite subjectively - with 'Happy Street' I was really into the drums so i probably pumped them up a bit too much and then on 'The Journey Continues' i was loving the violin so I whacked it up. I think with leads/melody lines I need to develop learning how to integrate them more subtly with the rest. Mmm on the journey continues I was so into the suspensions! It was really quite cinematic and dramatic for what I usually write but I enjoyed working with this kind of grand sound. I think your advice has been really really great regardless of genre. Thanks a lot!

Another tune - called Happy Street. I spent a while trying to mix this, let me know what you think of that aspect and others? This one is a little repetitive perhaps. Can't decide whether i love or hate the over-chorused trumpets!

I've been posting super positive feedback forever so perhaps it's time to give some constructive - i super love all your work as usual but perhaps I feel it's always quite chord driven (correct me if i'm wrong) and perhaps I'd like to see a lot more hummable melodies coming out of those lush chords. Like the Phantasy Star Online soundtrack has all these parallel sci-fi pads playing parallel extended chords but on top of it are great melodies and perhaps that's what I feel are slightly missing from your work! Keep it all up and let me know if you think my comment is fair.

At present I am working on a small game which shall remain disclosed but if you look not very hard at all you will found out. And what is expected is that I hand over mp3s (ogg.s actually) which will then be looped within the game development programme from start to finish. Which means that I must produce something which starts with silence and ends with silence otherwise the loop will be extremely unclean. For very ambient tracks this is very hard to do tastefully - I have resorted to fading out the track at the end which isn't the best result. In other pieces where the main instruments don't have a ton of reverb or delay on them looping isn't as difficult but is still quite a chore to get just right. In professional situations, what are the processes - because it seems that the soundtracks that loop do not have to wait for the silence before looping successfully. Is there some sort of inbuilt music section for looping in the development software? Which doesn't just rely on a bounced sound file?

Ah thanks. I had never thought of that but it's totally similar - Balamb is one of my faves! Mmm yeah, i think i agree the sitar is a bit abrupt - i have faded it in a little and eased off the delay and reverb. Sometimes particularly for me who has come from a composition rather than production background it is easy to try and hide sounds in vast amounts of reverb and not keep things clean. But i'll have to listen more objectively in the future. Mmm, i think the effect on the snare is quite explicit and in your face buuut, i kinda like it too. Mmm yeah, most of these tunes haven't really had all that many effects put on or mixing done. It was just a kind of, found this sound, now lets make a song! I will post a new version of this with less reverb on the sitar and a new section soon!

Fine-pitch would effect both the first and second chord. Changing the octave will ruin the phrase. I don't hear this "off" anywhere, if anyone else agrees then let me know but I don't think i'm gonna change it i'm afriad i simply disagree.

Thanks for the feedback What do you mean by off? Considering it's a two-chord progression through the whole piece are you saying that half of the whole song sounds off? Listening back, it's definitely the chord I intended. It's Fmaj7 to Em7 (I add a 9th & 11th sometimes to this chord, perhaps that is it? so it is E G B D Fsharp and A)

This mac pro certainly looks pricey, although I could be wrong - my computer is freaking out for some reason but all i saw was about £2000, is this about right? There's the tension between really good like studio gear and quite good gear - because at the moment i'm definitely working in a little home project studio with minimal stuff. I don't know if buying super good stuff is just a shortcut because it'll be an inevitable buy or a needless waste of money for the the level i'm at now. I'm sure other people have gone through this in building their studios or collecting gear.

oh! At 0:13 of the video i'm sure they were chords 0 were they single notes? Perhaps I just got confused. Yeah I understand how it is, keep working on it, i love the source and it's a pretty cool take.

I can't decide whether i really like the harmonies or really don't... Sometimes i'm like - woah ok new harmonies they sound great - not just in thirds (please don't embarrass me and reveal they are infact just in thirds haha!) but then perhaps I'm like... didn't that really sound great? I'm a bit confused about them. I think it could be a little more beefy? As with most of the youtube comments I think there could be a bit more low end and I have REALLY bassy speakers so i don't think it's just people's speakers at home. The dubstep section, i don't know an awful lot about dubstep but that just sounded like the tune with synths - the drums didn't change into the characteristic dubstep half-time triplet type thing and there wasn't any wobble. It was all quite clean which I don't think is characteristic of dubstep. i found that section quite boring as well. I'd say stick to the metal for the whole piece and look for perhaps a more clean section where you play the chords arpeggiated and perhaps slow it down or go half time or something just to mix it up if you want. I think the chords are all good but don't sound clean enough (a bit muddy i think) i think sometimes when you played the lower strings it sounded a bit detuned... but don't quote me on that. That's just what i think, Keep it up

Mmm, i see. Format is a big thing for me. I had enough trouble moving from PC to Mac and moving back again will mean for me a near absolute restart software-wise. So for my own learning time and buying new software money, the extra price and tech support (which i have found invaluable - I TOOK A BATH A RUINED MY MACBOOK KEYBOARD AND THEY REPLACED IT FOR FREE) seems worth it. It's something i'll really have to look into in detail though and that's a while away for me!

I am and I will! thanks for the heads up on crucial? Is it common to install ram yourself? Or is that a dangerous idea? I thinking of upgrading my ram from 2gb to 4gb right now to make the relative non-stress my computer is under just a little bit less stressful.

Another side of the story! I do heavily rely on logic and a system change might shake things up a bit. I'd probably like for my laptop and desktop (in this ideal future world full of money) to be same format so I see merits in this choice, particularly now that you've told me this new pricing option! Thanks for resurrecting the mac!