timaeus222

I like the design itself of fulginitivo, but damn, there are 8 youtube embeds on the main page. xD Again, dunno how that'll fly on mobile. Soooo many people have iPhones now, so optimizing for mobile got pretty important. The jQuery "slideshow" was great though. Wiberg's site is simplistic, but it works well for many types of browsers and very well for mobile because of that. Now, mobile-friendly websites don't *have* to be as simplistic as this, but it does help to have the landing page to have either a) as little memory-heavy content to load as possible, or as much of the memory-heavy content loading in the background as possible and the important content loading first (since computers read and process coding from top to bottom, putting the largest linked stylesheets, scripts, etc. at the bottom is pretty effective, and putting images within CSS helps them to load before the page loads fully). Vayron definitely has a very modern look. There are lots of little details like the dotted vertical bar on the right and the thin font that add to its sleek look, and my favorite here. Rockbarnvoices is also great. My only gripe is that the navigation's jQuery fading is laggy on the Home and the Showreels pages, even on this Mac OSX at my university's library. Seems like a lot of content to load on those two pages. So... my top pick of those four would definitely be Vayron, but Rockbarn is a close second.

Ah, okay, I got the source and remix name mixed up. Generally, a tightly processed electronic kick would have some compression with a fast attack, medium release, and maybe some extra gain. If you can, you could try parallel compression. All that means is you process part the signal and leave the other part dry; that way, one signal can be very compressed, and when mixed with the other, it balances out to "just enough". This can be done by creating a compression send, then routing a certain percentage to the master and the remaining percentage to the send. 40~55% wet mix is pretty typical, but feel free to try experimenting within 40~80% if that sounds better to you. Layering the kick itself is more or less a matter of taste, but generally, it should feel grounded, snappy, and "glued". Something kind of like this, perhaps.

No, I hear it too.

Hm, there's some clipping from the kick drum starting at 0:20 and the cymbals afterwards. It makes this sound louder than it actually is. Most evident at 0:59. This sounds somewhat like this in mood and genre.

There's a lot going on at once at 0:38 - 1:24, without a more careful volume hierarchy to allow each instrument to be relegated clearly to a specific part. You have a trebly saw arp, an octave-playing square-ish arp, that chippy sound you called the "ticking" sound, the bass's partwriting at 0:53, and a lead by the time you reach 1:10. Lots of trebly material fighting for attention. While this is more of a rhythm-centric piece than most, there still needs to be one or two instruments that capture the focus of the listener so that the general listener can follow what's going on. You'll need to pick and choose some parts you want to come through more and simplify those parts while slightly lowering the volume of the arpeggiated parts. A bunch of arpeggiated parts at the same time really demands a lot of attention when all of them are nearly the same volume. That aside, the kick could be stronger; it's somewhat of a generic dance kick at the moment, and while that isn't a bad idea in general, the execution is a little less strong than the sound design of the other elements. A kick like that one could work more in psytrance perhaps, but that wasn't your goal 'cause you don't have any 303's. Also, seeing the track name, I'm surprised there isn't a lot of noticeable cross-panning automation.

I'll be honest, I like the JMC example most, though it's the most generic looking (it looks like something pulled from a googleable "good website design" template and modified). Still looks good though. I didn't really like Brady Hales' design simply because it's flash, and mobile devices hate flash. In fact, iOS's have been switching over from emphasis on Flash to HTML5 for a bit over a year now. Brad Ziffer's main body container is pretty bright against the dark background, but I liked the graphics. Steve Blum's site is just... bad. It's old, outdated-looking, and it looks like one of those sites where the domain expired and you're led to a particular page after that. There's also a lot of animated material that would be sooooo slow on mobile. Your current website has a background that conflicts with the text (which is plain ol' Times New Roman in the body), and the text has nothing to help it sit in page nicely (like reverb letting an instrument sit in a mix). The background image is also 4 MB, which is gigantic for mobile devices to load. ~200KB max is a good guideline. Generally the website looks OK, but optimization for fast-loading is pretty important too, IMO.

I don't even know if Hollow came up with a name.

Happy Birthday!

Hm. I didn't get much time to do stuff, so basically all that happened is that I mastered Hollow's track and did some volume humanization, and... that's all. Ah well.

No Likes is much less degrading than a bunch of (1-6)/10 ratings. Depends on your standards, but I consider a 50% failing. Either a track is liked a little, some, or a lot, but since you don't know the extent of the "Like" by itself, you feel obligated to explain it. djp already talked about his preference for Likes without Dislikes, and I have been and still am very much agreeing that Likes is a good choice. The major issue with numerical ratings is pretty clear. If people only give numerical ratings, it may give them an excuse to not give a review, because let's face it: many people are lazy when given the opportunity unless it's a topic they're passionate about. You implied that yourself, right here: We don't know exactly what people are thinking or doing while they're listening to something, so for all we know, listeners could just give their numerical rating and go to sleep right afterwards without giving a review, thinking a number is enough of a "review". A numerical rating is a sparse opinion by itself, and not extremely helpful towards the improvement of the OCR community's musical skill. We want to know why something sounds good or bad, not that it simply sounds good or bad (that's the whole point of judging threads and mod reviews; to give the why). We want to keep improving and dishing out wonderful music for everyone to hear. Regardless of whether numerical ratings are optional or required, if they're there, then they'll still be there for some of the lazy to pick and some of the passionate to pick less. Out of all the people you know, what percentage is passionate enough about music to compose it? What percentage are they with respect to the entire world? Pretty small, hence it's a thing to pay musicians to write music. Saying you "Like" something is just like saying "This is cool to a certain extent because...", and thus it makes sense to provide a "because". Sometimes the "because" is "Just because", and sometimes it's a real reason. Regardless, "Likes" imply an ultimate reason, hidden to either the artist or the listener himself/herself (or both), while numerical ratings are concrete, concise, sparse opinions with some sort of reason to match the number. Human reason may or may not suggest that the number itself is self-sufficient. Likes are less hierarchical, and less impactful to any extremes.

I can't believe no one but me said "center of mass" in the entire list of answers.

A 1-10 rating would be either entirely degrading, partially degrading, partially good, or entirely good, but what you're implying is a rating by itself without a review. We like reviews. I did a speech about a year ago on music appreciation. Pretty much the whole class I spoke to said they don't quite know why they like their music, and they're all pretty casual. Thus, a casual listener generally goes off what they "simply like", so you know, "casual" listener --> into music just because "they like it", and then that equals no review. Why rate with numbers if you probably won't review? Just because YouTube did numerical ratings before doesn't mean we're totally 100% all for it. Hence, this deliberation.

Nice FM bass! I didn't think it was too loud except wherever it was meant to be the focus (e.g. no lead sound playing). That can easily be fixed with velocities (I presume it has that velocity sensitivity). Generally, the mixing is pretty good, but as the saying goes, everyone has room for improvement. One step up from here, I'd say, is either getting the part of the EQ having to do with the keypresses of the E. Piano to come through (low-mids warmth, and if it's of the tines, upper mids sparkle), layering on a warmer E. Piano sound, or both; then notching the FM bass at the same frequencies would accommodate that. The non-drums are pretty consistent with their general loudness across the board, and while the snare could be stronger with parallel compression and/or transient shaping, it's the kick that is coming through less than enough to match the loudness of everything else. See if boosting near 4000Hz adds that click you need to get it to pierce through the mix, perhaps also increasing the gain on any compression it has, and bringing slightly downwards any sort of threshold/ceiling you have on the sidechaining I'm presuming you have on the kick (and maybe snare) to the bass to let the kick and snare come through a little more. Small thing, but the lead at 0:41 on the slight left sounds a bit tinny, and maybe some slight thickening of the timbre might give it more body (e.g. detuning). It sounds more tinny and a bit shrill on the higher notes, especially at 1:01. The guitar lead at 1:32 could be brought a little bit more upfront, as it's the only lead there. I thought its performance could have had more emotion, but it's solid enough as it is. 2:13 is entirely a personal thing, but maybe the ping pong delay you already had on the reverse cymbal could be louder just for that part, for a more ambient effect (simply automating the delay's echo volume could do it). Great arrangement. I love the effective syncopations and the general jazz fusion / synthpop vibe. As it is right now, it's probably going to get YESed with some very minor reservations. The arrangement carries it far, and I believe touching up on some of the above points would bring it to either a very enthusiastic YES or a DP!

I would have said "WELL THEN YOU'D BETTER FIX HIM!" but that's already done.

Ignore the degrading posts 'cause they're joke posts or realist posts. Usually judging takes 6~9 months to be seen and judged if the track is really good, and it can take a year to 2 years if the track is very borderline and/or if the queue is already very packed. These days we have two new judges who are very enthusiastic (let's pretend that they are ), so maybe the timeframe is about a week shorter.

What if a slight, bright outer glow was added to accentuate them against the dark background?

I noticed the trailing forward slash error fix and the new front page header icons! Didn't notice the twice as many mixposts displayed on the front page until just now, but that's awesome! <3

If we -were- to do a separate forum for Finished vs. non-Finished, it would be interesting if the tracks marked Finished were automatically moved over to the Finished forum as soon as they were marked Finished and your browser was redirected there. Then if you change the track to be something that isn't Finished, then it can go the other way, back to the WIP forum. That way it wouldn't be redundant to have them as separate forums. But yeah, that would be more work.

Yeah, this is a great improvement! Sweet arrangement too! ;D

Well, the "Stop stirring up drama" sounds imperative in a joking way.

http://textmechanic.com/Reverse-Text-Generator.html ;D

I think Argle is saying pretty much exactly what he means. When the arrangement is sparse, he's saying that not only are the textures sparse, but the coherence, flow, and simplicity of the parts as well. The key change at 1:28 didn't have a transition to lead into it. Yes, the previous note was the same note as the first note in the new key, but that doesn't make it natural to shift into the new key. There are particular ways to change keys that work well, and it's up to you to learn what ways there are, how they can work in your own mix, and how you can implement them cleanly. If you really listen hard, you can hear that this is a rather straightforward interpretation of this source tune (no offense of course). It uses the same 20 notes (the new keys within the same source are still the same 20 notes, shifted into the new key, in my interpretation of pitches) with an interpretation that can be polished more in general. This is not jordan's fault though, because this is a difficult source to re-interpret. This is hard because the source itself is already sparse in its notes and repetitive nature, so remixers have to really add their own original content in a cohesive, creative way to elevate it well. With a source like this, feel free to change the tempo and use some notes from the new tempo (just don't, I dunno, slow it down 400% and use 4 notes from that, unless they're very distinguishable notes, so that it's not too liberal). Here is a fantastic example of a source tune and that are recognizable as related but have substantial interpretation of source. Yeah, I can't find the source tune anywhere on youtube, but see if you can notice that the same notes are being re-purposed at different tempos and in different genre segments in the same remix. The notes from the source are everywhere, but almost 100% the same notes the whole time.

˙ooʇ ƃuoɹʍ ʇı ƃuıop ǝɹ,noʎ

What if we had Likes only visible by the artist of the remix, and not visible by other remixers or visitors? Then the artist could get private feedback, but it wouldn't have any impact on what remixes appear to be most liked out of all the ones on the site or give hints to visitors on what remixes were more liked than others. Then visitors would be less inclined to view specific remixes just because they have high ratings (since they wouldn't see the ratings!). e.g. public can like a mix, likes display privately to remixer as "feedback", they don't display publicly in databases or listings, and mix popularities are determined by actually choosing to listen to some random remix that you think you'd like --> all remixes essentially displayed neutrally.

I call it "when you don't know how to start because you aren't comfortable writing with the flow and don't know if what you'll write will be good to you or not", rather than "I've been trying and nothing I make is sounding good right now" or "I'm still trying with what I have here and it's not working". Going with the flow is... pretty hard, actually. If you don't think about it and just write what comes to mind, eventually it'll come naturally to bust out an arrangement without turning back. Wouldn't that be a milestone achievement. Sometimes I have to listen to some songs before my compo week and use those for inspiration. Once you can identify the origins of many sounds (the "how-to-synthesize-this" process), the hard part is differentiating between the original inspiration and the inspired track in as much of an extent as possible. ...Then again, you may just have this random burst of inspiration and the blend of two or more tracks just works. But try not to depend on that, because that's more or less random.