timaeus222   Members

Happy birthday dude.

It's good, but there's a lot of copy+paste. 2:41 - 4:38 is pretty much the same as 1:06 - 2:41. You can even hear a click at 3:03. So this is really just 3:26 long to me.

This guy used my old Naruto remix in his cooking video. =P Nice geeky fun! Video: Remix: https://soundcloud.com/timaeus222/timaeus-naruto-main-theme Remix video: Not bad for 2 years ago, eh?

Just yes. I mean really, I don't see the point of that show other than to be annoying. I don't get how that should be making any money.

Sounds great. I think it needs a breakdown section though, just to add a greater sense of dynamics.

Okay, so things *are* sounding better. Something that still kinda bothers me though is that the snare now sounds noise-wave-like. Could just be me, but I'd like it to have a different sample for the tail. Perhaps some transient shaping might help, where you'd increase the sustain of the sample manually. It depends on the sample, but then you don't have to pick a sample that already has a tail to get a tail. If you are short on samples you like with that kind of description, you get limited on your choices for layering. In general, I think the production sounds good now though. The arrangement, I think, feels kind of cookie-cutter. The buildups resemble 'traditional' EDM buildups. That isn't necessarily a bad thing, but I thought I'd let you know. The flow of the arrangement seems to just be: something -> buildup -> main -> buildup -> something -> breakdown -> buildup -> main -> buildup -> something. That's a lot of buildups. (3:05 is a copy+paste of 1:17.) Overall, the loudness of things stay kind of consistent, and the buildups don't really feel like they're crescendoing. It could be the low end. I feel like the dynamics of this stay relatively constant as a result. Nothing sticks out to me as a climax except for 1:58, sort of. These may give you inspiration: https://soundcloud.com/isworks/shreddage-2-nuclear-dubstep-by https://soundcloud.com/kruai/stars-like-fireflies/s-f6z7z

When I abandoned it, as you say, no, I didn't really hate it; I just literally forgot about it, then came back to it, seeing some good and some "eh", though a little more good than "eh", and that's why I chose *that* as my example of something I still don't feel that 'embarrassed' about these days. Although I *am* someone who takes the time to polish something up as much as it takes to satisfy my desires, I try not to go so far as to do something for hours only to not get anywhere; I do take breaks! However, I don't think I'll lose the satisfaction I get from getting something big done in my music, even if it involved meticulous processes. The journey through that reveals to me what skill was developed further from that experience (though I don't dwell on the skill in particular, but the elevation of my overall understanding of musical enjoyment), and there has yet to be a moment where I regretted trying that hard. I'm not super technical when it comes to writing music, or even formulaic, actually. These days I just write what pops into my mind. In other words, I go with the flow. ...And just for perspective, I don't actually make and use all brand new sounds for each song---that would be ridiculous. I do occasionally make and/or use a few that I haven't used before just to change up the atmosphere from my past works, though. Or, perhaps, there's just that one sound that exactly matches what I imagine, and I just really want to use it, but I'd never used it before, and it feels new to others. I think this is a good discussion, by the way.

Yeah, that's exactly what I'm saying. True. Others who aren't as particular as you in production will see more potential in arrangement and vice versa. However, there are some cases, at least for me, where I truly don't see potential in what was written. For example, I had a pretty bad MegaMan Zero 3 remix (which I'm not gonna share ) that was clipping, phase-y, not written with a real DAW but just an audio editor, and just plain awful, and I'm not afraid to admit that. All I learned from that was to start using DAWs. Sure. I had this neat arrangement of a Golden Sun track in which I still see potential for expansion due to the chord progression and the glitching effect 'scheme', but I strongly feel that I should just completely re-attempt it if I were to work off of the original arrangement and rearrange it, simply because the arrangement was specifically tailored to those particular samples, EQ, reverb, etc.

Hm. Could you elaborate on why, then? I'm not sure why you'd be opposed to a need for self-improvement centered around personal bias around your own music. I personally love having motivation to improve my own works, as long as it's not obsessive to the point where you take too long to finish something. Did you mean that if you're dismissing something that you strongly believe you were bad at in the past due to that sense of improvement, you're losing a chance of developing that further, and that that limits your creativity to the path you chose?

So you're saying that from personal bias and the insight you have into your own music, you see your own improvements more so than others have? If so, that's technically a good thing. However, "overexposure" to your own stuff distorting perception sounds like a bad thing the way you said it. Maybe it's just the wording, but I think it's great once you can tell that your old stuff was terrible, because we were all terrible when we wrote our very firsts. Then that just means you've gotten more objective, not only towards other people's writing, which is easier, but towards your own stuff, which is harder.

I'd say there's too much sub bass content relative to actual bass content. You really can't hear sub bass that well, so you need a real bass to hold down the fort. What's happening is that you have a sub bass sustaining under a rather thin wobble until 1:58. What I would suggest working towards is thickening the wobble and rolling off the subs a little bit to compensate for the louder 60~120Hz. At 1:58, the notes just sound kinda dissonant in a weird way. It feels like two different keys to me. The kick is pretty good, but maybe the snare could be less smacking/clap-like and more thwapping/tight/snappy. I think clap-like is fine though if it feels stronger. To me, the mastering feels too loud though. Not in the sense that it's literally too loud, but in that it's kinda overcompressed.

Yeah. i.e. the opposite of purposeful dedication. ^ However, ^ This 'effort' could drop over time as you improve, as then you'd be stagnating if you're writing at a consistent level even though you probably could have learned more in a year or two. It's like how Aristotle says it's your fault if you didn't improve your morals as you grew up. =P

Drum & Bass is generally higher than 160 BPM, so... Born From the Ashes ~ Apex 2014 Album ~ Me The End ~ Identity Sequence ~ zircon Chaos Nightmare ~ OC ReMix ~ PrototypeRaptor The Search for Ambrosia ~ OC ReMix / Deus Ex Album ~ zircon + Jillian Aversa Blast Beatdown ~ OC ReMix / DKC3 Album ~ zircon + tefnek

I'm assuming just the amount of purposeful dedication put into it. Even if you wrote something in an hour, if it's something that's relatively good in relation to how well you normally write, then it's usually a strong effort. If it was written in 2 weeks, and it's still relatively good in relation to how well you normally write, then it's about the same strong effort, just spread out throughout those two weeks, assuming the objective quality of those two songs are about the same. He's saying how he thinks it's not about the time spent, but the desire to make something sound as consistently good as your past works that usually take other lengths of time to write.

I do get what you mean. Sometimes I show my friends some OC ReMixes that I think are awesome, and they just say "Hey, this is pretty cool." and don't go any further than that. They actually pause the song sometimes before it's over when they just decide they want to change the song. They aren't really music composers, and they're into the music they hear on youtube, pandora, etc. AKA pop music. Pssh. Non-audiophiles.

That's fair, I think. I personally would make (and am making) an album where every single song is a "labor of love", as people say, and it can reach out to as big of an audience as possible. Clean, flowing arrangements, crisp production, and just maximum effort all across the board in both of those respects. I think filler songs are OK, but I also think that they shouldn't take a backseat in attention from the artist in making a good album; i.e. even if the song is, let's say, a 1 minute "intro" or "segue" or "bridge" or "interlude", it doesn't make much sense to slack off on it, throw on a bunch of pads, put in some drum loops (okay, pretty exaggerated here, but you get the point), and say "oh yeah, it's not even a major portion of the album, so if you don't want to listen to it, just skip ahead to the actual album". I think of albums as an immersion, so you can really experience the effort the artist put into the album to make a set of related songs that make sense together, could be enjoyable, could be memorable, and is something you might recommend to someone else or might pay more than the default price for. So what do you think? If you're writing an album, would you prefer to keep in a track that you don't feel entirely good about but you think still fits the theme? Do you want all the tracks to be the result of similar magnitude and depth of effort? I mean, I'd be happy if someone on Bandcamp picked a song they considered their favorite, but if one single song on an album never shows up as a favorite, then what about it? What happened? Did you need to just put more effort in your "not-favorited" songs to bring them "up to par" with the rest that everyone picked out, or was it just a relatively inaccessible genre/atmosphere/style, or something else? For example, I find it really weird that I'm the only one who picked Memory as my favorite song off of Identity Sequence. Seriously, if you look at the reviews it got, no one else picked it.

He has some OCR album stuff unreleased on the site *yet* (or forever, if we're talking MM25). =p

Maybe you wanna support the artist?

You said it yourself---the point of a single, to you, is to stand out. i.e. in the absence of a cohesive whole. The completion of something with cohesion is generally harder to achieve than the mere completion of something. Writing 5 singles IS easier than writing 5 songs for one album, because you can release any 5 songs that you consider good and call them 5 separate singles, but you can't just release 5 unrelated songs as an EP and still call that an EP with purpose. I agree though that making money on music itself---yeah, pretty hard. Glad to hear that you also think selling sound design patches and mixing/mastering is more practical for rakin' in the cash, 'cause that's pretty much my hobby right now on the side.

Except the explicit rule of Kickstarter is to NOT use money on personal benefits... It's donation to do something for fans, not donation to make yourself richer. I do find this one hilarious though. Apparently someone's done this before:

Additionally, you don't necessarily have to have a style that corresponds to particular genres. My style is complexity and glitch, and those can be applied to any genre if done in certain ways. If there's a feeling of "damn, there's a lot going on here, but it somehow works", then I might have made that. In that sense, I'm free to branch out into pretty much any genre, and a cohesive theme could simply be a medium (EX: Book soundtrack, film-score-style, etc.), location (EX: Mid East, Far East, etc.), etc.

I agree with the heart of this (not necessarily the straightforwardness of this). Do what you feel is worth doing with your music. If you like your music enough that you want to see who likes it enough to buy it, then make a plan, compile a practical album (preferably with a real theme), and see what happens. Obviously, if you don't know what will happen or you're just starting, it's best to distribute the album on a site that doesn't ask for a fee or other upfront payment(s), and Bandcamp is a great place to begin. While OverClocked Records is awesome, I'm sure, I do believe they still hold standards on what they put on there (?), what with djp and Larry working with zircon on it.

Hm. The E. Piano is substantially louder than the bass. 2:38 seems to lose some focus due to the looseness. Still a cool concept though. This should be turned into something more than just a "fake jam".

I generally try to see if I can just think of a substantial idea first before trying a remix of something. Then I usually start out just picking one sound and seeing if that inspires me to write more and add other sounds to it. So when you get to the point where you can put together a few instruments in your mind and have them play something, it'll be easier to check whether or not the idea will make sense during the actual writing. For the latest thing I started, I actually had an atmosphere in mind and picked out about 6 sounds before I started anything, and it ended up cohesive so far, so it depends on whether or not you have a style in mind that you want to imitate. Picking out a bunch of sounds first like this doesn't happen often for me.

That didgeridoo at 2:50 never gets old.