timaeus222

Well, it's at about -23 dB RMS right now, compared to around a (likely) normal -18~-14 dB RMS for chiptunes. In other words, the volume is about 30% lower than normal. Chiptunes tend to have parts that play a large role in maintaining the harmonies anyway, so there's less of an issue with volume here than if this was some other fuller genre.

I'll admit, at first I thought the intro had Brandon saying "Gorillas". The metal production fell a little flat for me, but ultimately it's still pretty good.

I actually meant a digital download separately, but my bad, they do. I have no idea why I didn't see that earlier. xD

I dunno, but the Transient Master component in Guitar Rig 5 saved me the $100 of actually buying it separately. (Side note: I also find it kind of strange that NI doesn't give instruction manuals to their plugins separately/for free. I mean, they're instruction manuals to commercial items. What would they lose? It's not the actual product. )

It's more hyped up than "OMGSOEASYTOUSETOMAKEGOODMUSIC". It's really not only about what you have, but how well you can use it. Getting the whole thing at once is just like buying a whole bunch of gizmos that each come with long instruction manuals. You have to learn it all, or you won't get your money's worth. Kontakt with external libraries of your choosing is a great deal that's much more suited to the person and actually reflects your likes.

Sweet synthpop, man! I liked this when I first heard it, but now I can appreciate it even more.

This is f**kin' fantastic. 'nuff said.

I rather like the playful percussion. Great job man.

AHA! ...wait, what? I'll take it! I couldn't resist working on it some more, by the way, so I sent an update.

At 0:30, it sounds nice, but there's some sort of bassiness below the sidechained saw bass that's obscuring it. The lead's alright; kind of staple for trance, it seems. It would have been nice if you had some sort of lead-in to 1:10. Perhaps a descending arpeggio would foretell that ambient impact, but that may just be me. 1:13 sounded like an opportunity to create an expansive soundscape, so personally, it felt kind of... incomplete, I suppose. Maybe some sort of ambient bells would contribute to the texture. The key change at 1:28 is also still abrupt; it's fine to have one, but it would then need to be foretold somehow in the melodic writing and previous harmonies. 1:50 has a harsh dissonance between the tonic of the key (e.g. C in C Major, etc.) and the bell lead. Overall, the dynamics are kind of flat, then drop for the breakdown, then terrace up to flat again. You meant 2:11 to be louder than the previous section, but it sounds like the same volume, except muddier. This flatness to the dynamics is due to the limiter being pushed pretty hard and the mix being muddy in the bass. Try high passing everything that's not the main bass or the kick until the timbre is unfavorable, then stop moving the high pass right before that frequency. I also feel like the lead at 2:26 and on is "not taking a break". It's just playing this super long, somewhat machine-gun arpeggio until the end where it stops playing notes. You're getting better. In my opinion, repetition is fine if it's used for familiarity and to make people feel like they're listening to the same song the whole time, but repetition to fill in when you don't want to write new parts is... just repetition. At some point, see if you can come up with a remix of something in a new (additional) genre, and see where that takes you.

I see halc's been having some fun with granular delay and FM. Really cool soundscape. Stevo, dat guitar. <3

OC ReMix isn't necessarily against chiptunes, but against specifically basic, unrefined chiptunes. If it's detailed enough, then it's good enough. Case in point: halc, PROTO·DOME, etc. The arrangement sounds simple, chiptunes aside, even sparse sometimes, relative to chiptune textures. e.g. 1:50-1:53. If you get to using a DAW, it'll allow for more expressive chiptunes through modulations and automations.

Well yeah, but it's just an example. I picked one that I could explain clearly.

I'll sign up as a star. To those who don't know me, I use FL Studio 11, I write generally everything except reggae, tango, hoedown, and other obscure genres. I am open to genres I haven't done before. Examples of my work can be found in the Free ReMixes (previews) section of my website from my signature.

Personal use, yes. However, it does not mean you actually bought the music, and especially not the rights to the music. That still belongs to the original composer, at the very least. You can, however, operate within similar limits to those of regularly licensed music such as the "official" artists, e.g. Madeon, Daft Punk, Infected Mushroom, etc. If you can't do it with officially licensed music, you probably can't do it with ripped game music.

I'd assume concepts such as loops, conditionals, arrays (possibly), lists (maybe), strings (maybe), stacks (maybe not), pointers (possibly), queues (probably not), etc. Obviously you wouldn't need to actually know how to write code for them, or even interpret code that you see, but having a general idea of how they work may help. For example, it may be useful for communication, if, say, your programmer discusses something like this: -------- Background information: || Imagine you look into the game data of a simple GBA game like MegaMan Battle Network 6. At the right memory offset (an address indivisible by 8 decimal), you can basically find this array (kind of like a group/grid organized by dynamic or static length and width) of pointers (like signs that point along a street) that each point to a bunch of offsets where data is stored for the contents of the song---notes (pitch would logically be the number itself, but in whatever decimal format is practical; octal, hexadecimal, binary, etc.), rhythm (marked by gaps labeled through certain unused characters perhaps, like 00 or FF), etc. Typically in 16-bit games, songs have headers that are a small array of offsets that each point to a "MIDI part" (e.g. an instrument), which is data that describes a particular instrument's properties and the notes that it plays. The rest of the data right afterwards is typically what these header offsets point to, involving loops, jumps, a "panoramic extraction" of an instrument out of a collection of instruments, the octave it plays on, the panning, the volume, the notes themselves, etc. || The programmer then says, "I still need a song that fits within 20000 bytes exactly because it's lying in between a song in the RAM area that ends at 0x031254 and another song that starts at 0x051254. It's going to dynamically load at the beginning, and then go all the way through and loop back to a point after a header that classifies the song and points to its MIDI parts that each contain an instrument playing MIDI notes. 20000 bytes is the equivalent of 2 minutes (not really, but for simplicity's sake, I'm going to say that), so can you write a song that is exactly 120 seconds long that can loop back to exactly 20 bytes after the start point (which is how long the header is)?" -------- Well, by that logic, you'd need the song to loop at exactly 0.12 seconds into the song (maybe to prevent clicks to accommodate for the crudeness of the programming language used, or something like that perhaps), but you'd have to understand what bytes are, what looping asks a program to do, etc. A little bit of a weird example, but who knows, it might actually happen. Then you'd at least not be confused, and you'd probably follow what they say.

Yeahhhh, this is pretty loud. The snare could have used some transient shaping to be on par with the kick, which was lacking some lows. The drum sequencing was pretty bombastic sometimes but it works alright in this context. Other than that, nice and heavy stuff.

Well, it's not like it's "wrong" to do it. It just didn't fit the context, in my opinion---it felt out of place. In this track at 2:20, I think it was done in a way that added some cool contrast, without distracting the listener from anything else (listen all the way through though, so you can get why it works).

Or, you know, the heavens tear apart and God's spirit descends into djp (who won't die a premature death). Mark reference

Uh, what's happening in this? At 0:15 - 0:30, there's muddiness in between the bass and the pad's reverb, and I really don't "get" the LFO panning at 0:30 (why is that there?). Right now the issues are: - muddy mix with bass and the pad's low end ambience - too much reverb overall. Try turning that down until you can hear more clarity. - buried kick and clappy/basic/flimsy snare. You could add some light distortion to strengthen them and a little compression to make them tighter and more standout. - squashed dynamics on the master. Turn down the volume on everything. :S - unusual arrangement choices. e.g. key change at 1:28 for some reason (consider---what does that contribute to the structure? How can you lead into it?) Overall there's really a lot of things going on at once without the clarity to go along with it. Try soloing a pair of instruments and EQing that pair, then doing it again with another pair, and then EQing so the two pairs are clear when playing at the same time. You'd still be EQing in context, but it's easier when you break it down into components.

Yeah, this sounds like an underdeveloped idea. I can see where you want to go with this, but it's not fully realized yet. The piano has some delay effects, but not much low end impact because the sample quality is relatively low or the sequencing doesn't span a wide range of octaves. Also, the first main part with a melody past the piano needs a kick drum to keep the track grounded. It feels sparse without an audible kick.

I should clarify that the "it" is the rest of the song, not the bass. e.g. you don't carve EQ out of the bass to make it stronger. This, I believe, is on the right track, but I also want to elaborate on the ideas a bit here. Panning is good, but just panning left and right for spatial clarity is not entirely practical; the purpose of panning is to place instruments in a logical spot in the stereo field, so panning for clarity alone may not be realistic or practical unless you do think about why it makes sense for a particular instrument to be placed in a certain way. e.g. Why is an electric rhythm guitar hard-panned? To not only make room for the other instruments, but also to make way for a more layered (double/quad-tracked) complexity to the guitar tone that adds depth and energy that couldn't be done with a single mono recording.

I don't even have After Effects, but... Did you try removing the second keyframe (unless there are only two on the pink?) and making the curve with only two points, or do you need three to make a pathway of that precision of curvature?

I found that ^ in Season 2 Episode 4. Does this all still apply? Here, it says:

+1 for effort +2 for proper caps +5000 for GUTS -9000 for taking 10 minutes.