timaeus222

Haha, I have a pretty good excuse for not improving the strings further: FL crashed at least 20 times due to being dangerously close to the 32-bit 4 GB limit, and that may be an understatement. It was to the point where I was cautious about when precisely to save so that I wouldn't have to open the project file again to see that 64-bit bridged Kontakt unloaded itself. That, and the literal 5-day time limit from start to finish. Anyways, you'll still be hearing more stuff from me technically---just not uber-recent stuff. Lots of it is album work (e.g. Shonen Jump, Goemon, Assassin's Creed, SNATCHER, etc), so there'll be bits and remnants of me scattered about in the later years.

FYI, there is both "sfz" and "sforzando". They are different soundfont players, so you should try searching for "sfz" (even though it should be shorthand for the word sforzando) to see if that works better.

Gotta emphasize this.

Yep, this is exactly what I tell the people who ask me to master their ReMix: Take out any instruments you don't need, i.e. those that contribute nothing but mud to the soundscape. Reduce excess reverb until you can't hear a difference (as some headphones have more reverb response than others). In addition to that, I also carefully pick my sound resources so that I have access to the cleanest sounds right out of the box (Omnisphere and Impact Soundworks are great examples). That's why these days, I barely EQ---the most I do are some basic extreme high/low passes, some cuts here and there on the accompaniment to free up the midrange for leads, some small cuts in the low-mids to clean up frequency overlap that is bound to happen so that the bass can punch through, etc. In short, the people whose music sounds good didn't just use some sort of magic EQ tool; cleanly recorded samples take you a long way, and EQ doesn't have to play a major role.

@Chernabogue Kinda curious what you think!

Thanks! The drums are just from the original instrumental. Someone made an instrumental of this already.

You made it sound like a boss battle in the beginning... A new, more aggressive side of Will!

Take this advice with a grain of salt, as I am using a mono speaker due to not having the proper listening equipment with me right now. But I can say these things: I can actually hear what the lead is supposed to be, but it's only because I know what the melody is supposed to be. The key to writing particularly atmospheric drum & bass is control over your reverb. Try lowering the wet mix in the reverb a bit on your lead and surrounding arps, and raising the low cut within the reverb plugin for both as well (to above 200 Hz). That should clean up some of the mud caused by reverberating low frequencies. I agree with APZX that the drums don't have enough impact. The kick lacks some low end punch, but the snare is not that bad (tonally I think it works). You could probably add some waveshaping on the kick to help that, and boost the snare near 240 Hz to increase its punch. I've written a track similar in style, perhaps, and it may help you to reference it for mixing the kick drum and snare. When I first listened to this, I did feel the treble was too present; even though the speaker I'm using is not for mixing at all, my ears always tighten whenever there is too much treble. And I know this is long, but if you get 2-3 hours of free time, it would really help you to watch this, in order to improve your production in general:

@HoboKa Not sure if you ever got a MIDI keyboard yet, but if not, that'd be something to look forward to.

I knew this was familiar... Glad to see this on the site! As always, your chord progressions are great!

I actually rather like the build you made for the intro up to 1:39. The arp was kept consistent while the textural fullness around it was creating the variation---you really make the most of that arp sequence. The transition at 2:24 was also particularly welcome and well-placed, IMO. Great way to raise the energy and differentiate between the earlier part where your lead guitar was more exposed. The solo thus came at an appropriate time. The melody itself was handled pretty conservatively, but I think the subtler arrangement choices (e.g. the drum fills in the intro, the tempo slowdown after the intro, the shifts in dynamics, etc) made up the difference. Well done!

Well, for what it's worth, none of my music is 100% live or is 100% recorded instruments. Tends to be 95-100% sampled, sometimes including electric guitar and lead violin, usually including piano. It's great if you can record live instruments (in a good room environment; dry acoustics, full sound), but it's not a strict requirement to write good music or get music onto OCR. In fact, it might actually hinder you somewhat if you can't mix well enough to save a poor recording, but once you get that handled, it's always a nice addition to sampled material, if not part of a 100% recorded ReMix. So usually, live instruments = plus, but not required per se. As for what MindWanderer said, yeah, lead violin and electric guitar are two of the most difficult instruments to sequence, needing at least a theoretical understanding of how to play them, so if you can simply record those, go for it.

I think this is the most expression I've heard from Will's guitar. By that I mean, more than just sick wankery, but also, some restrained, exposed, laid back soft strums. In other words... it's neck-ed.

Thanks man, I appreciate it! Yeah, guitars have a pretty full frequency spectrum, and in general, cutting some of the midrange makes them sit more cleanly in the mix. The main atonal percussions I used were: jangling coins that I just recorded myself with a Samson Meteor mic (thanks, @Chimpazilla!), with some room reverb. tablas and snaps from Platinum Percussion (~$30 I think), with some glitching via dBlue Glitch (stutter + reverses) Heavocity Damage "Armageddon" drums, with a high end boost, some parallel compression via The Glue, and auditorium-esque reverb. The bell percussions were either the main ones, which I made myself in Zebra2 (the FM Variations soundbank :-D), or they were supplementary ones from Crypto Cipher Tarangs (extra layers) or Impact Soundworks' Resonance: Emotional Mallets.

Kinda what Jorito said about critical listening, but here's my take on a list of relevant tips/tricks in order to critically listen: For an overall perspective on structure, try turning off your screen and playing a song (or close your eyes), so that you can't physically see where you are in a song that you are listening to (especially if it's on soundcloud, which has a waveform display). I sometimes suggest this to people who may be struggling to write less repetitive structures, so that they can work on knowing when to create a shift in the dynamics or sound design. Try importing a song into your DAW, then using an EQ plugin to filter out frequencies that are distracting you from a particular instrument you want to analyze. That may help you hear the actual notes, if the instrument is hard to hear at first. Try recreating a small part of a song (or even an entire song?), in composition and the sounds themselves. That should train your ear to pick out parts, from both the compositional perspective and the sound design perspective. It'll also help you learn new techniques that should hopefully improve your compositional skills. For example, I learned how to sequence a cello by listening to this song, and recreating (and also modernizing) it as this in the process. It also made me realize how complex strings layering can be. (Besides that, I had tried that the year previous to then, and I quit trying. When I tried again a year later, that's what I made, which is how I knew my ears were seriously improved.) Mark down particular spots in a song where transitions occur, to work on transitions. Then, try to pick out each instrument and see how it helps make the transition work. More of what I said on this can be found here (which you've seen). If you don't have a MIDI keyboard, get one (for general non-virtuosic piano use, 37 - 49 semi-weighted keys with modwheel and pitchwheel is probably fine)! It's where many ideas get borne accidentally (or at least, mine). If you do, try thinking of the feel of a chord in your head, and try playing the chord just by knowing how it feels in your head. This is a way to train your ear to think of chords that work together in a progression, just by having a vague idea of how you want the harmonies to feel along the way (are they contemplative? Ominous? Silly?). Listen to new music every now and then. If you just listen to the same influences, you probably won't know what other inspiring stuff is out there. I like hearing inspiring sound demos like the stuff from http://soundcloud.com/isworks (particularly the Ventus Tin Flute, Turkish Oud, Stroh Violin, and other unusual or World instruments). For instance, this track inspired me to write this ReMix in 3 weeks or so.

Sounds like a soft sine pad with chorus, maybe some FM. The first chord is A# D F G, an A#6 chord. It's then shifted to a C6 and a G#6 afterwards. In terms of the sound design... I made something kinda like it with a sine wave with a little bit of the first overtone, detuned with eleven voices, and added some chorus and plenty of reverb. There's also a breathy FM layer on top, so I used a default Ah choir from Omnisphere as a substitute. There's a little bit of motion, so I just put some mild slow vibrato, but adding some slight tremolo via an external plugin may be better. It would be even closer if you put an FM oscillator in there, using the sine oscillator as the modulator. For the ADSR envelope, a slow attack of course, but also a long release. https://app.box.com/s/mcrlv5v5z55rjgwyol31zd16ecw6uquk

The people above me gave you great pointers. I just have a few things to add or reiterate, and I'll use this mix of mine as an example of both compositional and textural transitions. If you already know what the sound design in section B is going to be like, in transitioning from A to B, you could use some tonal instruments from B as a lead-in component. I've been trying to do this all the time now, and you can see it many times here. EX: 0:58 - 1:00, 1:13 - 1:15, 2:36 - 2:37, etc. Something as simple as a reverse can connect the dynamics (or at least, contribute to it). Experiment with reversing things like cymbals, white noise hits, fingerbells, and so on. I don't think I've had a good mix where I haven't done this... but this usually needs other accompanying techniques. EX: 0:28 - 0:30, 1:29 - 1:31, etc. Pretty much everywhere in this mix! You can explicitly write a part that introduces the rhythmic contrast that you'll write in the next section. EX: 1:55 - 1:59 Drums should always be considered as a signaling tool, particularly if you go from a section with no drums to heavy drums or vice versa. EX: 2:25 - 2:26, 2:37 - 2:38 Try to match up the frequency spectra of the two sections. This is kinda difficult to pull off, and is not necessarily the first thing you think of, but sometimes you're not sure why it's not quite working, and there's just a small disconnect in the frequency spectrum that works out when it's all matched up. EX: 1:29 - 1:30, 1:57 - 1:59 (1:29 in particular has something interesting; the drone is swapped out for a sustained bass with almost no attack. They have similar frequency spectra, which can make it feel like nothing actually changed in the bass... and that's what I actually wanted!)

No problem! Yeah, a bigger keyboard would help a lot. I have a 37-key keyboard, which is good enough for me, but if I had room I would have gotten a 49-key. It's nice to have room to play open chords and to play with two hands, and my keyboard has been a great resource for coming up with ideas.

Kinda makes me think of the music you'd hear if you were breaking out of prison at night silently.

I'm not sure there is an easy way to do it without Adobe After Effects, but this is maybe something you can try.

Hey man, here are some of my main thoughts on this: The main squelchy synth doesn't really change its pattern much. It keeps the same rhythm throughout for the most part until, for instance, 1:44. It could have more variation in its rhythm (and consequently what's going on around it can as well). The delayed lead that came in at 0:17 is a little pitchy at 0:32. It's as if you slightly moved the pitch wheel and too slowly, which makes the sound appear as if it were itself "nauseous". (Minor details like that are pretty important in the big picture if they happen several times.) The lead sequence at 1:08 - 1:25 was a bit noodly/rambly/random in melodic contour. I liked the break at 1:44, but the rising distorted lead (which is too piercing in the upper treble; try a mild low pass) overstayed its welcome for me since it mostly sustains and wiggles a bit. I thought it was going to be a riser to go somewhere, but instead it just led to a complete stop... that starts up again after too long of a silent gap, IMO. Your vocals are pretty good though.

I used Adobe After Effects, which has an audio spectrum feature that takes input from an audio layer.

Been a gamer on YouTube since 2007. Used to make a lot of Mega Man and Pokemon videos. I still kinda make videos, but fairly busy these days. http://youtube.com/timaeus22222 I also have a music channel, where I put most of my music tutorials and ReMixes: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCw3U4J536m3g2e4UhmSBPYQ

This reminds me of Yu-Gi-Oh: Duel Generations music; uplifting, with a healthy dose of pump-you-up... except... times two. I like the "interactive" panning on the guitar lead early on (though I think it sits a bit weirdly narrow in the mix). The glitching on the lead guitar also didn't slide under my coolness radar. Maybe the kick drum was missing some presence in the upper registers, but overall I think the acoustic non-kick drums and electronic drums meshed pretty well.

Listening back to this, I just noticed this is spectator-perspective... I think your later mixes were mainly performer-perspective.