timaeus222

Sounding really cool! Maybe narrow the piano stereo field, if you can, by a very small amount to make room for the guitar; I'm talkin' maybe 2~5%, so not much. I thought the piano wasn't too wide earlier, but I guess it was almost as wide as the guitar is now. That's about it! Looking forward to more!

Am I mistaken, or does the initial bass have a long release? It kinda makes the notes bleed together. Anyway, I need to point out some resonances in this mix for you to look into: - 0:54, 0:58, 4:04, 4:07, etc. from bitcrushing (a lot) - 2:09 and 4:33 from the sound with an envelope speeding up its LFO (slight) - 2:47 from the wobble sound (a little) - 4:15 from the arp (slight) 1:49 gets pretty muddy. It's hard to hear the piano over the bass. Scooping the mids will help bring out the piano a little bit more. 2:11 and other spots with vocals could have clearer vocals. I think the vocals are saying *something* Latin plus "Sephiroth" somewhere. I can't tell what, and I don't think I can, even with lyrics. I think the lead at 3:20 and 3:34 has some slightly late notes. 4:43 and 4:53 are really muddy, especially in the bass. Overall, it does have recognizable source usage. The production has room for improvement in the low bass and upper treble mixing. The arrangement, while an interesting concept, seems like it sticks to each mood for a long time in certain spots. For example, 1:49 - 4:13 has essentially the same atmosphere throughout, which can get grating. The lead sounds are pretty basic waveforms (square wave, for example), which could work against you. I can see how this started a joke remix. It'll take more polish, but this could be cool.

Just wanna check if I understand this. So if we're talking C Lydian, which is Lydian mode in G Major, the #11 is F#, which is basically forming a tritone and thus giving the Lydian mode since all modes of major scales are in intervals from within the original scale, and the #5, which overall creates 1-3-#5-7-9-#11, makes it augmented because 1-3 is a major third which forms an augmented major triad with #5, so it's Lydian-Augmented.

It's okay, I wasn't offended! =) "Trapped" still holds up pretty well today! You've definitely improved a bunch too, since then.

I get where you're coming from, but I'm referring entirely to an objective view of how "bad" something is (of mine, specifically). These days, when I look back at my old stuff, I really do just think "wow, I made THIS production decision? Holy cow, I'm glad I don't do THAT anymore! :lol:".

Knew the first part, didn't know the second part in the technical sense. Thanks.

It's real advice, believe it or not. Strange as it sounds, it makes sense to me. In the past I made some pretty bad stuff, and when I look back at it, I love some of the arrangements, but the sounds I chose only worked for the specific stereo field, particular velocities, EQ decisions, reverb design, the arrangement itself, etc. There are so many factors that go into writing a song that stuff back then is really hard to go back and fix, especially if "back then" is like 1+ years ago and your apparent learning speed is, say, "1.5-fold" in a year or so.

What? No, that's totally depressing. Don't just give up on a track outright. Save it for later, and if you go back to it later (like a month or more later) and you like where it was, might as well recycle it and flesh it out. You don't want a bunch of unfinished tracks lying around that you aren't even planning on doing anything with.

So you're saying whenever people say "Oh, I played the [insert letter here] [insert mode here] scale," they're really saying "I sharped the note in the [insert letter here] scale that corresponds to [insert mode here] mode"?

I really like that BW/colored comparison pic. The colored pic has some nice color contrast.

Thanks. Yeah, these days I have an idea of what sounds good, but not the intuition to do what sounds good from an analytical standpoint; rather, I straight-up improvise sometimes, and I either get something good from trial-and-error or I get a happy accident. Ecto's post helped a bit in that regard. I'd have to actually go through and create examples to internalize it, but yeah, it makes sense.

So, like ? Or something else?

Yeah, that was my assumption too; if II-V-I is referring to an actual chord progression, then I can more clearly see why it's a common chord progression.

1) If it starts on the 1, it could resolve towards a basic triad. Sure, that's fine. I think that a II-V-I chord is just a) more harshly dissonant for a particular feel (I-II-V sounds more pleasantly dissonant IMO, and I believe it works well in intimate songs with ethereal textures), or the timbre of the sound used to write chords typically sound less clashing, even on pleasantly clashing harmonies, on open chords. Overall, I think it's somewhat of a famous "base" chord that ends some jazz songs. 2) A II-V-I chord does actually resolve, but without actually trying this at home I couldn't tell you what it can resolve to. It may need one more note, then, to give a clearer direction. I think if it were to resolve, it could "resolve" into another dissonant chord of a similar nature, which could go on until you reach a chord that actually can resolve more cleanly.

I actually didn't say anything about an EDM kick of any kind. All I said was that the kick was hardly present. You can hear it, sure, but it's not exactly strong, IMO. Not much bass from the kick coming through on my side, and I love me some bass. Hearing the kick in laptop speakers just means particular frequencies in the kick that are audible in laptop speakers match up with the frequency distribution of the speakers such that you can hear them. You don't need excessive compression. Parallel compression could be enough. I'm not saying you should squash the dynamics, I'm saying I'd prefer you make it more punchy. You don't have to overdo it. Not my goal here. I know this is a nitpick, but a bunch of nitpicks could easily add up to a dissatisfied listener. Audience subjectivities are unpredictable IMO. I'm not trying to discourage you, or bash on you, or anything like that. Just aiming to help here. You don't even have to work towards fixing that kick on this track. You could even say you'll keep that in mind for future tracks, or something to that effect. Anything that conveys you as an open-minded, non-aggressive person.

Vocoding with bitcrushing or sample rate reduction, or just bitcrushing or sample rate reduction, or just vocoding. The first one is vocoding with some sample rate reduction, distortion, and loads of resonance, and the third one sounds like a little bit of bitcrushing on a voice spoken robotically in rhythm.

The only other thing that I would feel is a non-minor (not major, but not quite minor enough that it doesn't matter) issue is that the strings, while good, are: 1) a tiny bit muddled with the choir 2) have that quick rhythm for much of when they are playing, and they, for example, could have a more deliberate rhythm at 1:20 to the end. Perhaps change to triplets, or use longer, emphasized notes, and it'll signal the ending more clearly (pretending that the soundcloud waveform isn't there).

Man, what is with all these mixes that I've heard before but haven't commented on? I MEANT to say that this is downright badass. I love how you have a countermelody going the whole time with the source somewhat in the background, but it's all still present. The middle buildup was awesome, too.

Yeah, I kept thinking it was drier than my own, too. Guess it wasn't just me.

Another piece of advice is that I automate my EQ bands on full sections if I need to, in order to reduce mud and add fullness.

Great production, man. I like the downtempo vibe, because at the same time, it's got that heavy rock feel, creating a sort of emphatic drive contrasting with a melancholy situation. This reminds me of zircon's "Perpetual Motion".

Yep. A good melody may have emphases on certain notes to add a sort of groove sometimes.

Hm. Well, the sounds of course are great out of the box (I love the pipeharp mallets too, and the silver pocketwatch is great for tension), but for some reason this doesn't sound as loud as it can be. Try comparing to this, or this; they're definitely louder. zircon made a walkthrough of the second one . I think the biggest difference in the mastering is the choice of limiter. zircon uses a soft knee limiter, so that's one big reason it sounds as loud as it does; those don't react as quickly to compressing the sound as hard knee limiters do. i.e. they have a higher "tolerance". Another possible reason is that it's encouraged that you layer Juggernaut sounds together carefully and EQ carefully to get a full sound. Don't be afraid of changing the stereo image of the sounds, either, to create an expansiveness/3D feel to the stereo field.

Those are entirely different pianos; The first one is Esperado's sample because I couldn't isolate it from the stem, and the one in the next sections are my sample playing the exact same notes his was playing. Personally I'd consider that just a simple nitpick, and not exactly crucial to a Judge decision.