Calum

This was a piece for my final year composition portfolio. I had quite a lot of trouble mixing it - please let me know what you think! http://soundcloud.com/calumbowen/carriages HERE'S THE SCORE IF YOU'RE INTERESTED: http://www.pdfhost.net/index.php?Action=Download&File=cf4bb55aa8c8ed96b7fc9a098e1cb29d

Animal Crossing, Phantasy Star Online, Windwaker. PSO was probably due to the time i spent on it as opposed to being suitably comforting as the others certainly are for me.

Sounds like a great idea! count me in whenever it happens!

Thank you eradicate for introducing me to some great music! Yes, this is definitely a great direction to go for this toad remix. I agree with chimp that the lead flute sounds like you're using 3 flutes or something and would benefit from being a solo flute. Definitely play around with different tempi as farnon does - keep it cheeky, keep it fun. It also feels very loopy right now - with that accompaniment literaly looping. If you don't want to change any of the harmony or spacing, at least consider changing the instrumentation around a little bit. As far as your own interpretation goes it could definitely do with some harmonic change. It stays based around F for basically the WHOOOLE PIECE. It actually comes of more like a piece of minimalism by the end! You could add a new section using a jazz chord progression or circle of fifths or anything really. Just get away from that F at some point! OR turn this into super minimalism. Great start though!

I'm listening to undersea palace right now...there doesn't appear to be anything particularly wrong with it. It's very central at the moment. You could do with panning somethings around the stereo image. It sounds like your rhythm guitar is the most suitable for this. Double tracked and hard-panned rhythm guitars IMHO are golden! It also doesn't sound like you've got much bass in there? Did you record or bass? Or were those the lower notes of your acoustic guitar? Anyway you could do with emphasising the bass. Do tell us how you're setting up your mic (with a picture would be even better!) so we can get a better idea of what you're doing. Generally i don't think these sound too bad at all! Secret of the forest sounds very nice to me (maybe that's just cos it's such a lovely tune). I think some other members of this forum would be better equipped to answer your questions as I am also a bit of a noob with regards to live recording etc. Good luck with it! I was expecting much worse from your description!

yah... well. The people that weren't happy just aren't talking right now. I voted similarly to you. Most were 3s. Seems to make sense to me..

oh no! I didn't receive such insinuation, not to worry. Anti-syne's Johnny C Good mix was giving me a lot of slap-my-knee laughing moments! I really loved it!

XPRTNovice: hahaha, yeah that was reaction i suspected... although i took it completely seriously. @Rexy If i remember correctly, I recorded live acoustic guitar, electric guitar, backing vox, snare drum (brushes), a bunch of other percussion things and then Jesse's awesome vocals. The rest was all electronic! Hearing it between two other very well produced tracks it sounded to me a little quiet so i'mma try and get limiting some more and pump that volume up! Also the drums were a little loud. Rexy, I do not remember which one was yours but i'm downloading the tagged tracks now and i'll continue this lovefest when that's done!

Then let this be the turning point. WELCOME TO THE FFVICOMP BIG TIME PARTY THREAD. You did a great job XPRT! I felt yours was such a solid entry that really shone (perhaps in comparison to many of the other entries) due to it's overwhelming liveness.

Interesting... i'm certainly not looking for a tracker substitute as the music i'm making is pretty non-trad chiptunes but yeah i think this could be useful. I just wish it was a little cheaper so i could be positive in buying it. i'll give the demo another go and see! Thanks so far for the responses guys.

I'm thinking about buying it and i think i can trust the opinions of people here. So, are there any reviews from people here? So far it looks good - i haven't really loved any of the preview tracks but i kinda get the feeling it's more the music than the sounds. At around £70 it's just enough money for me to have to seriously consider it so are there any huge fans here?

both... Well, both of the tracks are finished and it's unlikely that i'll change them but any feedback is stuff that i can take forward into every other song i do. So feedback is waaaay welcome but these aren't WIPs i'm looking to improve in particular!

agreed. Zircon, please post when you've contacted people about album inclusion : ) unless you have already! so we can know whether to move on with our tracks or keep them in relative (to this comp) obscurity before going on the album.

i'm interested in making beats for this. just a general interest really : ). Will get back to you hopefully. Certainly don't give up. Maybe all the sonic love is focused on SuperiorX's ( i think that's their name) comp right now?

I have a bit of a problem with the bass instrument. I'd definitely consider changing it to pizz cello or an upright bass sound. It's kinda making everything very muddy when it comes in. And the bass and low strings/pad are kinda not gelling well together with me. I love the nature sounds and the drums are a great improvement. I still feel overall that it's not 100% clean in terms of foregrounding and backgrounding instruments - it still all feels very at the front. And also that the arrangement is a little boring sounding to me harmonically... it stays on those two alternating chords (which only really get played in the bass + pad) for a really long time - i like the 2:00 section but feel the lead panpipe type thing could be better sequenced. This is a crazy huge improvement from when I last heard it and I love to see two people put their strengths together to work on this track. Just my two cents on what i'd change. Good luck with the track.

Glad you enjoyed it! Maybe i could get you to sing some phrases sometime! hahaha that would be funny. I'm gonna be posting some manga transcripts - pictures of the pages with translations and notes about it. It's gonna be pretty hefty and comprehensive but i think that's a good way to learn.

So my friend who knew very little japanese did a school exchange to Nagoya. I've been learning Japanese on and off for a few years so I decided to give her some easy lessons in the best way i knew how. So far I've done two and hope to do some more. The videos are hosted on my japanese learning blog which may be of some interest to people. On that blog I state that these videos are REALLY DREADFULLY AWFUL learning tools - pronunciation goes out of the window as performance and style blur any helpful utterances! I am very open to feedback on the 日本語 however they are intended as little entertaining supplements to actually learning japanese and really fail to comprehensively teach you too much in an accurate or comprehensive manner. OK, SO DISCLAIMER OUT OF THE WAY! please enjoy and i'll hopefully post more soon!

@theshaggyfreak - i'm checking out tape-op right now - it's proving to be a very interesting read. Might have to sign up for a sub! @sirjordanius - i appreciate the effort you went to, that thread still looks interesting, i may have a play around with some of the stems posted there. Don't worry about finding the other one. I am wholly grateful for all the suggestions from everyone but I suppose in a way I was looking for feedback here not feedback on how to find feedback As stated in the first post, i'd love to trade tracks with anyone swapping feedback back and forth etc. at any time. Just PM me if you're interested.

Thank you for the responses. I guess I don't think i've plateaued, I know I can do better... it's just I suppose I can't find a clear answer right now and thought someone may have gone through this and could recognise that i'm failing to do this or that... i'm sure i will slowly progress on my own but speeding up the process with some feedback/just assessing where i'm at at the moment would be great for me! : ) SnappleMan: I think your advice is useful, not sure where the class and status thing came from... It would be good to gauge what a non-musician thinks and i often ask my girlfriend... to be honest though, purely in terms of production, firstly, i don't think many non-musicians can distinguish subtle differences between a what is considered a good mix and a bad mix and they have a hard time articulating it. I do not wish to come off as a snob but I see that as a useful process as a general gauge of how someone experiences your music but i'm not confident they'll necessarily give me what i'm looking for right now. Unless you're saying i'm looking for the wrong direction, which perhaps you are. Sir Jordanius: that helps! it does. I'd be interested in having a look at that ping-pong comparison stuff. I'm really glad you like the tracks. Looking into different styles will certainly help i think. And maybe too, taking a break! : ) GallenWolf: thank you! : )

congrats XPRTNOVICE - i voted you a 5 i think. A deserving winner. This isn't an ego thing, well maybe it's an ego thing but the xarnax42 is ME with Xarnax42 providing vocals. I'm glad to have come 6th, particularly as it was so tight between 6th 5th and 4th. I could hear between the others that my production values were a little off - the track was considerably quieter than the other track which sandwiched it! Congrats everyone who entered. : ) Oh ya, mine was the vocal bossa blackjack, maybe you can tell by the name though. I loved Johnny's got the funk, an outright 5 straight away from me. Excited to see what comes of this comp in terms of the album.

OCRemix has been essential in improving my music production skills. I can tell i've come a long way but at this point I hit a relative standstill and i want to assess my skills right now and see how to take them further. Here are probably four standout tracks for me at the moment in terms of production. CHIPTUNE http://soundcloud.com/calumbowen/returning-to-earth ELECTRO/CHILL http://soundcloud.com/calumbowen/space-float HIPHOP http://soundcloud.com/calumbowen/silent-infiltration ORCHESTRAL http://soundcloud.com/calumbowen/frantic-flight Please feel free to chime in with feedback on what does and doesn't work with these. I would also love to trade tracks and discuss with someone regularly who is at a similar level to me (perhaps a little better ; )). I know this kind of thing goes on so i'll happily listen to someone's tracks and give feedback if anyone's willing to start a kind of active feedback session thing. ANYWAY, please anyone feel free to give me feedback of any kind. I hope the advice that may be in this thread can be useful to other people.

The video was incredibly impressive - looking forward to hearing this!

even positive comments can have a negative impact on the voting of the subject - but i hope people will not feel in any way cheated because of that impact. After all, most voters should not be too frail in their own judgements to be too swayed by comments here. As objective as we all try to be - I can see some of the tracks i voted high getting low votes elsewhere and vice versa - only 5 days left until the voting ends! : ) Cannot wait to see where everything placed - it'd certainly be more than willing to hear any feedback on my track as i suspect others may be, after the voting ends.

I considered it but was put off because I suspected there'd be a lot of other locke entries and also because it may have been the most complex and thus difficult to work with (in my opinion) creatively. Perhaps everyone else thought someone else would do it so no one ended up doing it! It's a shame though.