timaeus222

How about The Coop?

I listen to everything at the same set volume as I'm already good to go on a consistent volume, and everything is audible to the extent of the mixing. 2:30 - 2:50 wasn't cluttered. Sounded normal to me. Things were mixed audibly/distinctly.

Really awesome big band sound!

Make a hip hop beat for dropbox! :DDDDD

Yeah, things felt a lil washed out, but overall, I liked it.

This is awesome! I haven't heard a good orchestral arrangement in a while. Yeah, just look over this for minor details, polish it up, and make sure that exposed piano at 6:55 isn't overly quantized. I'm pretty sure this is a good balance of source usage vs. original, too.

Perspective: You have 80's-esque synths plus some acoustic drums. Sounds to me like an 80's approach could be interesting.

Sounds nice so far. The violin sounds more upfront than the rest of the instrumentation, so I think it should be a bit quieter with a little more reverb to let it sit in the mix more.

Yup, sounds like Industrial Metal to me.

It's too low, but I think it sounds fine in context. Nothing's wrong, the bass volume is just low.

Hm. Something at 3:10 - 3:56 is making the mixing sound washed in reverb. Could be the bells.

Yeah, that's what I was referring to. It isn't a big deal though, just something I thought I should bring to your attention.

Hey, when you've got it, you've got it.

This is one of zircon's layerings.

Heavy stuff, bro.

Happy early Burger Day, rex!

Sounds fine to me. The orchestral written as it was would have sounded pretty much the same even if the mastering was a smidge quieter. In fact, I don't have substantial complaints about the mastering at all. I can hear the bells at 1:32 clearly, and the arp remained distinct beneath the lead at 2:17. Someone musta dropped the bass too hard on your speakers, bro.

I like everything except the shrill/grating portamento lead sound. Can you try finding a different one? That aside, this gets pretty loud, and could be mixed more cleanly above 16000Hz, especially at 1:04-1:24 and 2:58-3:30. 3:19-3:30 also gets kind of muddy in the low end. I think you can do it.

Yep. Your drums don't have to be complex. They just have to match the mood. https://soundcloud.com/zircon-1/ashes-to-ashes-super-metroid @ 2:38 ~ These drums are just Kick. Snare. Kick. Snare. And then later on an off-beat hi hat with 2 kicks and a snare. That's it, and it works, because who can focus on those in that section if they were more detailed than that? Loooootta Izotope SE in thar.

It's a good idea, but I think sometimes the dancing could match the music more (Tal Tal Heights made it seem like you were moving too quickly too often).

wat Too awesome for OCR

At 0:47, I think the lead you have there is good in timbre, but the piano is a bit hard to hear. I would suggest bumping up the volume on the piano a bit, and partially summing the lead to mono (if possible in Logic; a Stereo "Enhancement" plugin might be able to do it, and if so, it would be just the reverse of that). That way, there would be more literal room, and anyone can hear the piano if they focused on it. Hm... that snare processing is a little bit weird right now (1:16). It sounds like there might have been some transient shaping on it to lengthen its sustain, or maybe a longer snare sample layered on, but the sustain feels detached from the dominant/prominent timbre. Maybe it's just an odd sample, and it could just be me. Also, at 1:29, the mixing gets pretty stuffy, partially due to the snare's sustaining tail being rather long. It sounds better overall though, so keep it up!

Sometimes I just know what I'm going to use because I'm imitating a particular style, but most of the time, if one sound is inspiring enough, I just pick them as I go, as long as they go together, even in unconventional ways. For example, a normal combination is santoor + sitar + dulcimer + duduk + saz + zourna (not necessarily at the same time/rhythm), though that can be thought of before writing any song simply because of the natural middle-eastern match. A different, much more complex and eclectic, but working combination is this set of 12 layers (without melodic components so that what this came from isn't so obvious). Maybe it'll give you ideas on what might go together, especially the trebly components. Sometimes what you think up isn't exactly what you write out though. At times I have a whole section planned out in my head, and then maybe it turns out that I made use of about 80% of it by the time I'm done. There are times where what you actually wrote works, or maybe it just doesn't. It'll take a while, but eventually your intuition will just work for you.

Happy birthday, Ben "chthonic" Briggs!

Hm... I'm still hearing that piercing resonance at ~13000Hz (medium), ~13600Hz (strong) and ~16800Hz (weak) at 1:01 - 1:14 and in other places where it shows up. Those can be addressed by using as-thin-as-possible peaking EQs to boost them more to confirm that they're there, and then notching there. Even if you don't hear it at first, you may feel a ringing in your ear, perhaps. https://app.box.com/s/nfd7j9ztkcb6ctxl20tg --- How it was https://app.box.com/s/8t91uvvpnzgdizq210bq --- How it could be with tamed resonances This sounds better overall though.