timaeus222

Okay, well, it's pretty clear you're using Slayer, BooBass, and maybe FPC. You're just starting out, it seems, so I'll just say it's not bad.

I'm confused as to why this is, as I'm perceiving it, supposed to be thrash metal or something? It seems peppy and upbeat to me. Anyways, I'm not really hearing any bass... at all. I just get the drums and guitar.

Well, conventionally, kicks don't get reverb in electronic music unless it's done really carefully. Otherwise you get lots of undesirable low end ambience.

Man, this is hype! Makes me really want to crack down and work on MY album!

Pretty neat stuff dude. The only thing that really bothers me is the bright lead and the rising stabs, but other than that, great production.

This gunna be a Waltz Waltz Revolution track, just you wait

I like the little bass line downwards at 0:23. Didn't notice that before. Cool new timpani rolls. I don't think they did too much to detract from the mix, but I'm a little concerned about 0:04 - 0:06. I have nothing against them, but they *are* adding some muddiness to the mix (I can still hear all the elements in the mix clearly enough, though, so this counts as a nitpick). I think you're using them as a source of power? If that's the case, beefing up the toms could accomplish the same thing, but it results in tighter sidechaining (I didn't even know !). Sidechaining is when instrument A hits and pushes the volume of instrument B down while A is playing. If you do this lightly, you can help your toms, snare, and kick come through more.

I may have been a lil jargon-y with my descriptions, so here's what I was actually thinking of with 1:11.

Aside from how it's still a little bit quiet (nitpick), this actually sounds great at the moment. Some things I'm noticing though: - Where are the cymbals? They seem to mostly be either a bit too quiet or not there. 1:51, for example, has a very quiet right-panned cymbal. I don't think this would be that much of a problem with the judges panel, but just something I thought I should bring up. - The lead guitar is oddly distant, and that's a little nitpick a judge would probably make. I don't know if that's fixable with what tools you have in Garageband, but if you can turn up the dry (non-reverbed) signal of the lead guitar, that would help it. Or, if you had external reverb, try raising the volume and lowering the wet (reverb-only) signal; same idea. - The bass guitar can be a little stronger, but it's not that necessary to do so. It could make a bigger impact if it's done, but as it is, it still sounds good *enough* for OCR in my opinion. This is probably a smaller nitpick than the lead guitar being distant. - 2:36 has some tremolo going on in the guitar, and I'm not sure how that will be received. Personally I find it a long time to use a tremolo effect to that extent of its mix level and it gets a bit grating, but it's just a nitpick. Although, I did try lowering the midrange of the tremolo guitars a bit at 1000~1600Hz, and it felt less grating, so maybe you could try that. - I'm finding that if the gain on the master was raised by 2~3dB without overcompression, it sounds like a good volume to me. This is what I was thinking of. The largest issue I'm seeing is in the arrangement. Something like passed, and although it does have a lot of repetition, the lead playing is extremely expressive and there were some cool solos incorporated. I'm assuming this started as a cover with some added variations, but I think there can be a tad more expression and/or variation if you really try. 1:07 - 2:14 has accompaniment that sounds pretty much exactly the same as the accompaniment at 0:23 - 1:07, while the addition or variation in the leads sound like sufficient variations, but I think 1:07 - 1:51 needs something more; maybe making the lead guitar more upfront rather than distant will make this seem less repetitive and you wouldn't have to do anything else. Right now, I think the production would be well-received among the judges either way, and it's up to you whether or not you want to make sure the production "passes with flying colors". There's a certain balance between good production and arrangement that gets people a pass, and I believe that with good production, this level of arrangement could get mostly YESes. Not strong YESes, but still YESes.

Esperado, if you need me, Skype (timaeus222) is the fastest way, but PM works too.

I do believe the question here is, "where do I start when it comes to writing and producing a full song?". My belief is that you would have a hard time establishing a solid, satisfying atmosphere when your instruments are used out of the already-mixed context. What I actually do is . I imagine how I want most of the atmosphere to sound, with general tonal qualities of more than 3 instruments figured out before saying, "hey, this has real potential". Then I sequence notes in by mouse, mostly, and do the velocity humanization as I write the notes. The key is to refine your workflow so that the hard stuff becomes second nature. That way you aren't freaking out when you want to do everything at once. I think, by your wording, you're trying to learn too quickly. i.e. You're trying to run before you can crawl. Slow down, take your time, and gradually find your niche. Then, try working on what you found hard before. Clearly you aren't brand new to mixing---you hear muddiness when that's present. It sounds like one of the many ways to overcome the problems you feel you have is to have a general idea of what sounds work together before you write, so that minimal mixing is needed. For that to work nicely, it also helps to get comfortable with making the connection between what you see in the FL Parametric EQ 2 and what you hear. If you can know how what you hear looks, it speeds up how quickly you EQ and how well, exactly, you can pinpoint the most fitting sound at any moment in time that, whether or not it sounds "perfect", fits snugly in terms of its internal EQ distribution (its harmonics; its pre-processed EQ) and lessens the hassle of needed external EQing. It at least works for zircon, and for me as well. I personally found that a huge hurdle, and getting past that should be a very helpful turning point in your composing/producing workflow. It's the case that bad stuff in often equals bad or okay stuff out, so start out with good stuff in and you could get good or great (or even awesome) stuff out. As for finding a "perfect" sound for a situation, that involves learning sound design to develop sound selection intuition, which you've probably thought about at least once already, considering you have at least one synth. If you have a hard time writing what you hear in your head, just go with the flow and fix it up if you think it's necessary/helpful, and recycle it if it's not working how you want it to at that moment in time.

Just wanted to mention that I agree with these points, and shall elaborate on these points. When you don't consciously hear something, it just means you don't hear it the first time through, usually. It isn't the most obvious instrument playing, nor is it obvious enough to the general/common/casual listener. Some examples are hi hats and misc. ear candy. There will most often be times where if hi hats are too loud, they could distract the listener from, say, the harmonies or the melody. The bass does form the base of each chord in a progression, though it is not always going to rhythmically correspond in the number of notes and/or their timing. For example, one bass note can cover 1 or MORE implied chords, depending on the intended elongation of the current base note (which isn't always the tonic), i.e. to maintain interest on long sustains. One of the hardest parts of arrangement is being able to hear what you want to hear in your head and writing it out as closely to what you heard as possible before it escapes your mind. A good exercise is to try creating a chord progression that corresponds to a melody with a corresponding bass line. There will be multiple possibilities, so there isn't one concrete answer.

Tbh, I don't have access to much. Gunstar Heroes Yu-Gi-Oh: Dungeon Dice Monsters Pokemon Black Pokemon Mystery Dungeon 1 MegaMan Battle Network 6 (Hard Mode patch and Timaeus patch---both of which I had created and worked on in the past few years) Mario 3D World? (I didn't see the title and it was new for me)

Moseph's got it down pat with those calculations, but I'd say ArtsAcoustic Reverb is my go-to reverb and it always will be. I've hardly ever needed to layer reverbs since I've used it so often that the ins and outs of it seem so intuitive and the most fitting tone is so feasibly accomplished with one instance, even for meticulous reverbing for orchestral like Moseph's done. Although, listening to the reverb example with my good headphones, it does sound a little overly wet like Moseph believes, and these headphones actually have a minimal reverb response.

I'm quite sure Pro Default does virtually nothing to distort the sound on non-drastic tempo shifts (1~40BPM). Resample, of course, does (hence, resample. ). Tonal may work at times, but not that often.

Just to be clear, it's hard to be "perfect" with EQ. It's enough for now to just know what edit to do to accomplish what you want to do, rather than what edits you want to do to overhaul the clarity on a track. Take it slowly and experiment with the easier topics. Perhaps the simplest EQing trick to start with is scooping the mids on backing instruments to let leads come through. Just don't overdo it. You can tell if the backing instruments sound "hollow".

Even though I'm not on my good headphones right now, I do hear that the atmosphere of this track remains exactly the same throughout. It isn't muddy, and it isn't clipping, but it is still pretty loud and the sounds seem a bit basic to me. The rhythm is almost like a hoedown, but anyways, it gets repetitive and it's sort of on autopilot. That about covers it.

But then we'd need 2 more stars >.>

I only had time to listen to this once on my good headphones (I'm vacationing), but I did wanna mention that you should go back over the mixing on this. There's significant muddiness that is covering up the source usage, where the rhythm guitars are a bit too loud in comparison to the lead guitar and there is low-mids clutter. I can barely hear the kick sometimes. As a result, I strongly believe you would get called out for loudness at this current state of the mixing. Also, you may receive nitpicks about the lofi pad synth at 0:49. A metal mixing resource

Pretty sure this is the source. I wouldn't say I'm as far on the repetitive side of the fence as MindWanderer is, but I'm still nearby. If it were really that repetitive, a lot of trance tracks wouldn't make it on OCR. I think what this needs is a sense of development and a clearer dynamic curve. Try developing the fuller parts more slowly over what is already there. For example, if you have section A and section B each of lengths 1 minute, where A is mezzo piano and B is forte, try making it so it sounds like section A and A', each 30 seconds, where A' is mezzo forte, and section B and B', each 30 seconds, where B is not quite forte but B' is forte. Draw it out so it seems like it's developing the whole entire time, but keep it based on the same length of time so that it doesn't feel that long. By those dynamics, I don't mean literally automating volumes to add swelling, but knowing what to add onto the complexity and what to take out. To be more specific with your remix, 0:00 - 0:24 sounds fine. 0:24 - 0:47 would need some refinement on the progression to seem less repetitive to more people. Maybe change the notes at 0:24 - 0:36 to sound more arpeggiated and pulsing, and bring a different instrument to the forefront at 0:36 - 0:47. Perhaps the piano could be louder there, and/or changed to something different because of what I want to say for 1:11. 1:11 sounds like it could be a breakdown section, so maybe you could simplify the bass sequencing (bass-like notes, less large jumps, but feel free to go Jaco a bit), change the rhythm of whatever lead you want to use to something that makes you feel more suspended (something ethereal, like just quarter notes or something), and/or perhaps change the saw arp in the background to a sine arp (something that is soft with few harmonics is easier to mix it in quietly)? Maybe you could highlight the melody from 0:13 - 0:46 in the source more prominently right after that section. Right now the instrumentation makes it sound "the same" as the rest of the track (even though it doesn't to me, it could to other people). It's not too long, but if you're going to keep this length, it would be worth it to work on that sense of progression. Maybe this will inspire you. I do want to see this finished, and if you want, I'd be willing to collaborate to either replace some sounds or polish the production. Your pads sound much better now though.

Oh yeah, I shared the wrong link. That's for if I'm logged in, so this should be it: https://app.box.com/s/ibj5yh5toh2yfc56f4aa However, signing up for box is not a bad idea.

Okay, right now there's a very slight overcompression, but it's nothing to really worry too much about, yet. What I would suggest is turning off the compressor for now, turning up the volume on your computer, and mixing like that until you're ready, and then turn down the volume on your computer and turn the compressor on again. That way, you're making mixing decisions that aren't influenced by the compressor flattening your dynamics. As far as mixing, as it turns out, the drums are too quiet, such as at 1:53. The kick isn't coming through there, for example, and the snare is barely audible. I know you don't want to hear this, but compression (on a drum bus---a "family" mixer track) is the most conventional way to strengthen the drums. Since at this point there aren't any glaring issues yet, I'd recommend you save a new project file starting from here, and experiment with compression on your own time. Here's a resource I find really useful. Also, the bass and guitar are clashing in the bass and low-mid frequencies, meaning 80~600Hz. You may find my metal mixing general approach helpful. And of course, there's a rendering glitch in the first few seconds. I'm sure you'd notice it if you compared.

That's cool, I didn't know that. I've always thought trackers were limited to chiptune sounds, like square/saw waves and noise generators and such in something like FamiTracker. Actually though, I saw this in the submission email that made me blanket it like that with the "tracker sounds" comment: I was actually hearing a lot of old-school chiptune sounds here, so that's why I thought it was either only Renoise or mostly Renoise.

The strings and brass are definitely sample libraries (they have that mic "air" quality, especially with the rich double bass), but even so, the treatment was good enough in the intro/outro, IMO. It added meat to the presentation, and was a great leadin at the beginning to the Big Beat treatment. Vig's right, it's a great snare! This actually does sound like Sonic to me, so even without extremely overt melodic references, it feels like Sonic. GREAT 10th New Year's Day ReMix!

I'm getting a chinese vibe here, kinda similar to Pokemon Black/White's Driftveil City. Just goes to show you how musically experienced Eino seems to be, even with tracker sounds!