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ectogemia

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Posts posted by ectogemia

    Ruffneck Terra (FF6)

    in Post Your Game ReMixes!

    Posted

    Ok, now I like the shuffle in the intro. What the hell.

    The percussion is much more varied, and the glitching + bass in the beginning set the tone for what will inevitably be some dubstep destruction. Great arrangement idea.

    The subdued section beginning around 1:10 is excellent the way it slowly weaves layers in and out.

    The Rhodes-y thing immediately after that does a great job of subtly holding the harmonic structure together while the rhythm goes from chill to double-timed. Another excellent arrangement decision.

    I hear the percussion and the wubz synchronized much better now. VERY cool effect :D

    I love the interplay between the wubz and those ostinato arpeggios around 3:00ish and after.

    I know it's already submitted, but man, this was subdued for a semi-dubstep track. I love the new version you posted -- you satisfied all the criticisms I had -- but I think with the double-time drums and the wubz, there could have been some seriously heavy wobble and glitch going on after 3:00. Certainly, it works as it is, but I was kind of expecting the climax to be a little more climactic. Oh wellz, though, just my expectation. Again, nothing wrong with the more subdued climax you made.

    And you turned the rez down on your filter-out. Sly dog, thinking I wouldn't notice you filtered those drumsgrumnblemumble...

    Verdict: badass & never let it be said that halc does not listen to his critics.

    Congratulations, I bet this remix will finally get you posted on OCR!!!

    For the 30th time or whatever!!!

    How many segments in a song?

    in Music Composition & Production

    Posted

    Cop-out answers. :P How do the pros do it, what are your observations?

    YOU ASS!!

    I kid.

    But no, really, it depends. Your question is sort of like asking how much blue should be used when painting the sky in a landscape. Well, obviously don't paint the whole canvas blue because there's grass and trees to be seen, but don't paint the whole thing green either because there has to be some sky. Make it just right. You are the only arbiter of what is right. If you're making a song to impress yourself, take that into consideration. If you're looking to impress as many people as possible, be more traditional (or more experimental if your work-in-progress is sounding like something special).

    How'd it all start for you?

    in Music Composition & Production

    Posted

    I started playing piano at age 9 and took lessons til I was around 14. I didn't really touch music between ages 14 and 16, but from 17-19 I played so friggin much guitar and got pretty good at it. Around age 20 I tried composing for the first time on FL Studio, but I suuuuuucked. So I took inventory:

    .I had no idea how to use a DAW.

    .I had only ever played other people's music off a sheet.

    .My failure on FL Studio (evinced by Rozovian's blasting of my first ever remix, "Another World of Beasts" from FFVI) had me pretty discouraged with it all, and I vanished from the site til a few months ago.

    So I quit trying to compose... in a sense... right around a year ago. BUT, I decided to try to learn to improvise on piano, although I hadn't played piano in years.

    Best decision I ever made for my musical development.

    I probably improvised at least an hour a day 5 days a week for the next year. It came surprisingly naturally, and I could hear my playing ability, improvisational ability, and ear improving every day -- WAY faster than it had when I had practiced piano or guitar more just playing off of a sheet.

    About a week after I graduated from undergrad, I opened up zircon's demo file on FL9 and analyzed the mix again and again until I understood how FL9 worked and how subtractive synths worked. For some reason, this go-around with FL was a lot more fruitful in learning how things worked than my first attempt.

    So with all my improvisation improving my ear and phrasing and such and analyzing zircon's (and several others') project files to learn techniques, I attempted an original. I pumped out like 4 or 5 in the next week, they sounded pretty damn good, got very positive feedback once posted on OCR, even had people download my music (WHOA!!) and it's been an addiction ever since. Rozovian even gave me positive feedback, so I feel redeemed from when he ripped apart that old remix from last year :)!!.

    How many segments in a song?

    in Music Composition & Production

    Posted

    However many the artist deems necessary.

    I usually write songs without traditional structure -- remixes included. I have, for instance, an A, B, C, D and E among which some common elements are shared, but there's rarely a repeating section. Yes, I know it's a little weird to admit it, but I don't much enjoy traditional song structure. You've got creative license, so do whatever feels right to you.

    That being said, writing something like A, B, A, C, B, D or what have you is much easier to fill time with, but is it appealing to you? Does it work in that particular mix? Would more original material be most appropriate?

    I'm sure you weren't stabbing for an absolute answer, but this kind of decision is just totally situational and would be approached differently from person to person.

    Minecraft [1.7.2/4?]

    in General Discussion

    Posted

    Friendly reminder: it is ALWAYs a good idea to make a backup of you minecraft bin folder, but especially the minecraft.jar, just to save it for a rainy day aka you update and realize no other servers are running the updated version of minecraft.

    Gotcha, but I haven't even thought about the game in over a year :P I'm a bit out of the loop.

    And thanks much, Abadoss.

    FM synthesis: uhhh what?

    in Music Composition & Production

    Posted

    Thanks, fish. Very useful info.

    I had surmised most of that after seeing the first half of virt's seminar linked earlier in the thread, but I hadn't heard about the modulation index. I've just been doing FM by detuning the modulator by even octaves which maintains the integer ratio, but I guess I've been missing some potential timbres in doing that.

    Do some FM synthesizers come with tweakable modulation index parameters or do they tend to expect the user to tweak the frequency of the modulator by hand?

    Ruffneck Terra (FF6)

    in Post Your Game ReMixes!

    Posted

    halc, ecto... looks like the 9bit Inner Circle has been summoned.

    Now that ben has commented, the 9bit circle is complete (claims the unposted remixer).

    hal-see, I hereby challenge you to end this mix with something other than the drums filtering out! God damn it, you're just gonna switch it to a high-pass aren't you...

    Ruffneck Terra (FF6)

    in Post Your Game ReMixes!

    Posted

    One of my favorite sources ever. Nice. :nicework:

    I wasn't a huge fan of the swing at the beginning ex-pecially given the straight groove of the rest of the remix. Maybe it's just because I'm so fond of the source as it is that the shuffle kind of bothered me since it didn't belie the rhythm I expected.

    It seems a bit sparse in the area around 0:45.

    The percussion could use some more variationfrom 0:45-1:45ish. You like glitching stuff. GLITCH IT. GLIIIIIIIITTCHHH IIITTTTTTttttttttt.

    Slick transition to the double-time business around 2:15.

    When the wubzywubbbzzz come in around 2:35, I thought that it and the percussion didn't gel very well. Dub-step wubz are very percussive, and it felt for a bit like there were two different rhythmic ideas going on between the wubz and drums.

    I know shit-all about production and hardly any more about sound design, so I can't much comment in those areas.

    I enjoyed it, but in my opinion, there's still some work to be done.

    Hah, and just a random thing I noticed recently is that almost all of your mixes end with the drums filtering out. Always a cool effect, but every time??!

    Advice for a Beginner/Noob

    in Music Composition & Production

    Posted

    I can't really add much to young neblix's advice other than a) stick with it; you're at the beginning of a brutally tough learning curve and B) seek out project files from other remixers who are willing to give them to you, if at the very least to see how they sequence their MIDI data and automation. Despite the fact I rarely had the artist's plugins, and as such, the file I got was little more than the arrangment and MIDI data, this analytical process was and still is critical for me. It just requires PMing someone who wrote one of your favorite remixes and asking if they'd be a sweetie and send the project file or MIDI data for it your way. Don't be surprised if someone says no, but you'll get a yes for sure.

    Then, it's time to study, study, study.

    The Decline of the Western RPG

    in General Discussion

    Posted

    Well, I think you just about hit it.

    I rarely play new video games anymore because I think they're all missing something, or rather they're all packed with too much crap. When I play anything but an RPG, all I care about is gameplay that challenges me and forces me to be creative. That just about never happens anymore -- instead, you get a focus on shock value and graphics. Woooo... :/

    Buuut I digress. RPGs today don't seem to take many risks, and the world-building is fairly derivative and superficial. Take PT as an example. Derivative? Uhhhhh, never seen anything like it. Superficial? It was hardly a game at all, but rather an animated novel. If you're in to that kind of medium, the experience will be a memorable and lasting one. BG2 is more of the same, but with a somewhat deeper focus on gameplay and less on storyline development.

    The same can be said of Morrowind vs. Oblivion. Morrowind was more of a first-person animated novel, albeit not as well-written as that of PT, while Oblivion was more of a 'AWWW YEAAAAAAHHHHH' kind of modern game. Morrowind's often vacuous and backwater world was frequently empty, yet profound, evocative, and immersive. Morrowind relied more on the generation of a truly wild and teetering land which made the wandering and adventuring feel genuinely exciting, novel, and heroic. Oblivion's world made you feel like an errand-boy in a Medieval universe you've already experienced a thousand times in books, movies, other games, at Medieval Times (dragon tail soup = the shit), wherever.

    When it comes down to it, I think it's a question of risk and novelty, and often the two come in tandem. New games are almost always built to sell -- an unfortunate but understandable truth. So it goes with movies and music and almost every other medium. Before the video game market grew into itself as much as it has now, I believe developers were more willing to produce unique worlds and stories because the market itself was composed of more sophisticated gamers on average and the developers were usually fairly small, so there weren't many patriarchal pressures from some owner company like Activision or EA to produce a saccharine product that everyone will want to swallow.

    Am I on base?

    FM synthesis: uhhh what?

    in Music Composition & Production

    Posted

    virt's presentation on FM synthesis is also pretty beast, just note that some of the internet links he mentions don't exist anymore

    Ooooo, very nice. This is definitely what I was talking about. Mega bonus points for virt being the speaker.

    Well, if virt is saying that most of the great patches are produced by random tweaking, I believe it. It seems like there's not a lot of rhyme or reason to FM just based on the sideband generation process's nature. Oh, well, it's still fun to screw around with all the knobbies :P

    Anyone else have any other resources or tips?

    FM synthesis: uhhh what?

    in Music Composition & Production

    Posted

    you have an already modulated signal (Op A -> Op C) modulating another already modulated signal (Op B -> Op D).

    That's honestly mostly what this thread was about. I reached a wall because I was doing Op A --> Op B kinds of synthesis, sometimes with a little Op B --> Op C, but I never really did mix two different carriers' signals. I guess what I'm stabbing for is if there are any predictable ways to manipulate FM at the level you described. It's just such an abstract form of synthesis that I was hoping for a few guidelines to go by instead of having to really get into it all on my own.

    Why complicate life if you don't have to?

    Because when I finally produced some FM patches that didn't suck, it got me really excited about using FM as a source for a ton of new sounds. I suppose I just don't know at this point if I'm complicating things to the point of diminishing returns or not.

    What are you trying to do that you can't do with simple FM?

    Hell if I know :P I just started with FM, so I'm not sure what the possibilities are. Browsing through Sytrus presets blew my mind, and perhaps it's because I'm not entirely familiar with Sytrus's interface, but some of those impressive sounds seemed to come from pretty complex-looking FM matrices. At least that's my novice estimation. Maybe it was just creative effects processing of simple FM modulation? Maybe one or both?

    FM synthesis: uhhh what?

    in Music Composition & Production

    Posted

    So I've read half a dozen articles on FM synthesis, and I understand the physics and math of it just fine. Unfortunately, that theoretical knowledge doesn't quite translate to producing a target sound quite like it does for most other synthesis methods. I've been practicing with it over the past week or so, and while I'm certainly getting better at coaxing cool things out of it, I feel like I'm hitting a wall.

    It's probably worth saying that I've been doing all of my FM synthesis out of Zebra2.5 which only has a very basic FM synth within it -- no crazy FM mod matrix in the conventional sense. Could that be what's holding me back?

    Is anyone aware of any tips, tricks, tutorials, common approaches, etc. to producing different types of sounds out of an FM synth? Perhaps some advice on how to wrap my mind around the mod matrix in more complex FM synths and how to use it predictably and effectively?

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