timaeus222

Google Drive is acceptable but not preferred. Soundcloud, Box, or Tindeck are what people tend to share with nowadays. People prefer to listen rather than download and then listen. The major issues here are some muddiness with the reverb in the pad and the harsh resonances in the percussion. There are piercing resonances in the percussion at 0:27, 0:29, 0:31, 0:34, 0:36, 0:38, 0:40, 0:42, 1:08, 1:10, 1:12, 1:15, 1:33, 1:35, 1:37, 1:39, 1:41, 1:43, 1:45, 1:47, 2:06, 2:08, 2:10, 2:12, 2:14, 2:16, 2:18, ...yeah, you get the idea. It's a prevalent thing. I don't know if it's the sample itself or somehow you boosted a thin portion of the frequencies, but I cringe every time those play. Even though it's a bit buried by its reverb, I like the phaser arpeggio. Overall, the arrangement feels repetitive, the drums sound on autopilot, and there is, in my opinion, an abrupt ending. Lastly, there's a little rendering glitch in the first milliseconds. This is a start, and you are in fact building an accessible atmosphere. You're on the right track, just tweak the EQ to tame the resonances, and get more of a feel for repetition and variation.

It kinda depends on both our personal definitions of loudness, but how I define loudness is perceived volume, while you seem to define it as fullness. While we're both in the right sense, loudness depends on both a full mix and a controlled mix. You can have a mixdown that is too full, and when that happens I consider it crowded and overly loud. Having it just full enough is the pinnacle of loudness, in my view of it. A mix that is both full and controlled is what maximizes the perceived loudness (to the extent of the listener's audio gear, that is). Reducing the treble is about simply toning it down just enough to make it not harsh. Muddying the mix though, by the OCR definition, is not related to having too little treble, but it's actually related to having too much bass and any sort of obstruction of clarity. Having too little treble, while a subtle distinction, actually is what I'd refer to as a "low encoding" or a "lofi experience". The treble allows for that fullness (resulting from a high encoding, a good sample interpolation gives a good reproduction of as much of the frequency spectrum as possible), but too much (independent of encoding) and the mix gets overly bright, piercing, and/or harsh. In a sense, you can have a lofi AND muddy mixdown, but a lofi mixdown isn't always muddy.

Hm, just skimmed through the arrangement this time, and the dynamics stay relatively flat. It'd be nice to get some sort of change-up that alters the pacing. Careful on the reverb. At 0:55, the snare reverb is pretty heavy on the low end ambience. Raising the low cut some more might help make it less muddy. At 1:10, something has a harsh resonance. Not sure what, but it's bell-like. At 2:02, the lead sounds like a fake guitar to me. If that's the case, it's a bit harsh and static, since it sounds like all sustains. It feels drier than it actually is because of that. The mixing also gets the loudest and most cluttered at 2:28. Overall, it seems like an improvement from before, but the mixing is really loud on the track as a whole. Gotta tame those resonances and tone down the extreme treble with some shelving or a shallow low pass.

Chill out. I said it's "like" the foundation of dot dot dot. I didn't say it "just was".

This is a really nice piano concerto; it's fine to have a piano leading within a string quartet, which is what this sort of sounds like. The low end isn't bad at all. It's not extremely defined, but it's there. With regards to the piano, it's just up to meticulous EQing to get it just right, and in that respect, it can be hard. 1:54 and 1:58 sound like you wanted a powerful hit. Something like this @ 1:36 and 1:50 might inspire you to keep working on that. The violins are treated pretty well, but they can be improved even more. Overlapping their notes and automating their volumes to add humanistic swells would help make the dynamics more smooth throughout.

This is a good start. Looking at the arrangement, there are some issues with dynamics and sequencing. The first 1:38 in this is ambient, and even 30 seconds is long, so the pacing gets plodding by the time only a third of this portion is done. It's arguably repetitive, with very minor additions to add variation. Also, 1:36 is an abrupt transition; a dropoff followed by a fade-in is almost like fading out an unfinished song, to me. Up until 2:31, the pacing remains essentially the same. The drums at 2:31 do help to raise the energy a bit, but the drum processing holds this back from leaving a heavy impression on the listener. The kick is barely present, while the snare sounds thin (lacking body and meat to the timbre). The toms aren't bad, but they have room for improvement with regards to their volume. These drums sound mostly unprocessed, other than perhaps room reverb and possibly *some* compression. The rhythmic element at 3:02 is robotic; the velocities are all nearly the same, and it doesn't sound real. At 3:19, I'm not sure I get why you had the piano suddenly come in at the right. It isn't balanced by much else on the left. It's like this: you have a stereo image that is normal, and then something offsets the right speaker forward. The piano also adds a fair bit of mud to the mixing. 3:49, IMO, is an abrupt key change for no explicit reason; why is that something you wanted to do? What did it contribute to the piece? That said, the piano seems pretty good with regards to the humanization. Some parts seemed robotic (such as 4:17), but the reverb covers that up a bit. It would help the realism to overlap the MIDI notes. Something at 4:33 doesn't click harmonically though. Overall, this arrangement has potential. The things I'm most concerned about are the dynamic curve, the arrangement pacing, the drum processing, piano processing, and the transitions. That's what I'd focus on. The production gets it done, though borderline.

I totally get where you're coming from. In fact, probably my main influence is jazz---that is, if shifting from classical to jazz in piano lessons counts. Jazz is like the foundation for complex chords. Absolutely; at some point, everyone gets ideas that they don't write down in time, and it's ultimately down to whether or not you figured out that idea while you were at your computer or, say, a college chemistry laboratory (that literally happened to me twice before). This article I once read was really helpful to improving my workflow. Points I, IV, and V were especially helpful to me, while II and III, I'm sure, will be helpful at some point.

Oh, really? Cool! If you need any help on that, feel free to ask! Proud lover of FL right here.

No, but getting at the essence of Paul McCartney is feasible. Or maybe it's because I've been reading Plato's The Republic. Seriously though, anyone who learns objectivity in music can be musically talented, even if they don't actually know music theory. For example, I'm not knowledgeable enough at music theory to analyze chords or melodic contour and whatnot, but I get when a chord sounds cool, or when an arrangement that depends a lot on harmonic complexity sounds awesome. When I finally started branching from that notion and developing a process to write chord progressions intuitively for my own contexts, that's when that appreciation for harmonies came.

Hey Tera, great work on that Perfection soundtrack with Omni-Psyence. The synth pad in the beginning, though it's partially my preference, is static to the point where it gets a tiny little bit grating. At this point it comes down to the sound design aspect to improve on the objective quality. The timbre of the pad is fine by itself, but when combined with the percolating arp, it's a semi-harsh timbre in comparison to the arp, and it doesn't seem to match IMO. The only other issue I hear is that when the piano plays with the cinematic drums, the track has a sparse texture. Something to fill it in, like a big pad, would really help. I'm personally not bothered by the ping-pong delay.

It wasn't ignored. The mixing quality just happens to be high enough that it should be evaluated, for which you'd have to wait more than 2 months. It is NOT a 2 month guarantee, it is a 2 month minimum guarantee. The reality is, it's 2 months to a year or so before acceptance, and even then you'll have to wait until your scheduled day comes up, and djpretzel prefers to keep that scheduled day a secret so people don't try to add to his workload in inopportune spots. Interpretation is an integral part of OC ReMixes. This sounds like a straight cover with some sort of super long solo. While remixes are good to go with enough personalization, ultimately with covers this is much more emphasized and important. A simple cover with a lot of personalization may make it, borderline. Although this has some personalization, this is basically a looped rhythm section with soloing throughout. The bass mixing is muddy to the extent that it's not very possible to hear what's going on in the bass sometimes, such as 0:53 - 1:19 and 1:32 - 2:12. That muddiness lasts for 56/174 seconds, which is 32.2% of the track. Mixing clarity is a big part that contributes to enjoying a song. 1:33 - 2:54 is basically a solo, and guitar solos are supposed to be special events for showing off. 81/174 seconds is 46.6% of the track used for a solo, which, in my opinion, gets repetitive and doesn't show meaningful expansion of the source; instead it pushes the source usage to the back and puts focus on the lead guitar player, who is not exactly of the essence of Tetris. It gets to the point where we consider whether or not buried source + solo = too liberal. Other nitpicks would include the fade-out ending, the thinness of the guitar tone, the cluttered stereo image, and the subjectively scattershot arrangement. These issues about the muddiness and clunky arrangement are pretty significant, and would be enough for a rejection. It's not as if I'm trying to discourage you or anything, but it's important to get that OCR staff have lives of their own. They don't evaluate thousands of mixes in a month, and they don't have a tiny backlog that they get lazy on. Patience is pretty important in getting a submission on OCR, and open-mindedness is especially important to help you improve and get to the point where it becomes easy to predict whether or not one of your own remixes has a good/great chance of being YESed.

The only things I actually use my Korg microkey 37-key for is modwheel and pitchwheel. Otherwise I tweak a knob on a synth a bit, untweak it, and go to Tools > Last Tweaked > Create Automation Clip, and if that's able to be automated then I go with it. I find automation clips to be a more convenient way to write MIDI CC edits than event edits sometimes, and at other times, faster.

It helps a bunch though

Keep on rockin'!

1:28 and 1:39, for example.

In my case, I actually used a sample library / synthesizer combo (Trilian) without mic balance, but yep, in a case like that, one of the ideal/convenient situations, that's a good approach to thickening up the bass.

Sounds great! I liked when you gradually transitioned from the straight rhythm into the swing rhythm. The only thing I'd say is to check the bell treble. Sounds a bit overly bright or resonant to me.

Actually, I did purposefully mention that I used EQing that was particular to these specific samples, along with the implied notion that your mileage may vary. Groove Bias is definitely not optimal for metal, but it was a good challenge to make it fit. In my opinion though, the original's kick could have been more prominent. I will say though that the original's snare is better, not because of the mixing by itself, but because of the sample AND its mixing. I didn't want to add distortion to the bass since that would scale all of its harmonics, and add miscellaneous bass frequencies to filter out again; more hassle IMO. The bass I used had too much treble and a tiny bit too much bass picking frequencies to begin with, so I filtered that out. Again, dependent on the sample, so what I do here is just example-based, but the important thing is that I explained why, and the why is what you can apply to your own samples.

Yeah, something like that could work. It could make room for the piano, but at the same time still be more audible. However, while simply doubling a mono signal and hard panning both is double tracking, some people may not call it "true" double tracking. "True" double tracking involves two different recordings that are each unique in their takes and their timbres (round robins), and in that sense it's more dynamic than simply doubling a mono track and hard-panning that.

Man, those chords you pull off keep amazing me. You've really got a knack for improv. I'm definitely hearing the source on top, and it's really gelling nicely with the chords you have. The octave shift on the melody at 0:34 is subtle but quite effective. I also really like the syncopation at 1:10! The source usage stays throughout and the source itself is cycled through more than once, but you keep maintaining interest, which is such an important thing to do. The guitar seems to be a bit quiet, to me. It comes in at 1:20, but something you may want to try is to lead into it, and perhaps think of a panning method that makes it more present; it's just my preference, but maybe just panning it widely could really create a full stereo image. The piano's great, and the bass is quite good (a little bit quiet, but still pretty good); the guitar's the weakest link here, IMO. If anything, the arrangement is what really carries this. I know the source usage is enough for this to not get rejected based on that, so I believe the main thing to work on is the production. Overall, if you can make the guitar gel more nicely in the stereo field and bump up the volume on the bass just a bit, this will be quite a strong candidate!

That is exactly what I do sometimes. I get a simple melody in my head in some form, and I improvise while walking around in my room, and when it sounds coolest, I'll sing it again and write that out, tweaking it some more in the MIDI. I come up with the bottom notes of each chords in the implied progression by singing a bass line to the melody, and then from there it gets much easier to create the chord progression. It's already outlined, and it just takes some trial-and-error, even if you don't know music theory, like me.

Ah, okay, like if you said one envelope for the main filter and one envelope for, say, oscillator sync or something. Makes sense! Could be meticulous, but makes sense!

There *are* production issues, but if I were to have any say I this I would give this a YES (borderline). The arrangement carries this, even with the mechanical piano, while the production is good *enough*. Harmonies were great, improvisational melodies were great!

NIIIIIIIICE Hope you have a nice DEIA!