timaeus222

Both is good.

And I've posted the stems now! http://ocremix.org/forums/showthread.php?p=950337#post950337

Okay, by request, I've rendered essentially unprocessed (no EQ, almost no reverb/delay, no compression, no distortion, no stereo imaging [except generic panning], and no sidechaining yet) stems of this remix for you guys to mix yourself! I think this one is quite doable (i.e. the range of "pleasant" mixing possibilities is much broader than before) by many people, and of course, anyone is welcome. Note that these are the general issues that will be most likely noticed in these stems overall, so if you don't notice anything off, here are some things to start with! - Muddiness in the bass and low mids - Dryness of instruments cause some to sound stiff and others to just stick out - Stereo image is muddy or not optimal - Weak instruments (i.e. not mixed "loudly" yet) - Volume balancing is off - Lots of stuff needs to be EQed properly The stems are WAVs and there is one "FINAL MIX" MP3 and one "UNMIXED" MP3 for points of comparison. I'm hoping this will raise the dedication to production overall for many people! It's "supposed" to be fun when you get close to finishing the mixing, not "OMG is it fixed yet or what?". https://app.box.com/s/h364r4ym4r0qojxlm98c - WAV Stems https://soundcloud.com/timaeus222/ffcc2013-crystalgradient-penelovsedward - The ReMix

The bells playing in the beginning are fine in that their timbre isn't so grating to me. However, their sequencing is very mechanical in the velocities and the rigidity. I'm not exactly sold on the drums, either. The clap-like snare doesn't seem to fit. Maybe something that is a little shorter on the release might fit in better. Up until 0:35, things sound alright. Not "wow", but still alright. 0:35 sounds very dry with the upfront hand drums. It almost sounds like you meant to not put reverb there just so you wouldn't get too much muddiness from the bassy hits. Just raise the low cut on the reverb if you don't want reverb to affect the low end. The flute there also sounds like it's falling behind and is definitely sounding detached. 0:52 sounds pretty full, but there's too much going on right there for it to be solid enough. I'm hearing a lead, a bass, a buried choir, a very buried resonant arp, and maybe a string instrument harmonization. Needs some bass mixing fixes there. Can't really give specifics though since I don't know what you really have playing. I didn't find 1:21 jarring, so that's fine. Cool atonal hits at 1:22. When the guitar comes in at 1:55, it sounds high passed, before the automation at 1:58 for the drop. I didn't find that drop all that heavy though. 2:12 sounded so muddy that I didn't really feel a "wham". That may be a somewhat minor thing, but it's up there in importance, especially since it's over 10 seconds in the track. It's enough time to anticipate something big, but it isn't big. 2:45 is pretty muddy as well. 2:48 adds bells with a lot of delay, while the bass is very mechanical and lack-luster. It's exposed enough to be a substantial issue. I think it's the loudest thing after 2:48. The major issues for me would be the mechanical sequencing of the intro bells, the dryness of the hand drums at 0:35, the mechanical and detached-sounding flute sequencing, the drop at 2:12, the mechanical bass sequencing at 2:48, and especially, the muddiness essentially throughout. The arrangement sounds good. If the production and sequencing were touched up, I think this can pass. Keep working on it!

Okay, I've listened to the source. It's pretty simply built, based on two or three simple (triad) chords, so it should be easy to recognize if it isn't too liberal. Here's a crude source breakdown I could figure out, ignoring the production for now: 0:00 - 0:24 - too liberal 0:24 - 3:35 - okay for ~90% of the time You should be in the clear with source usage, IMO. Never heard a gamelan remix before. Let's see... Not really feeling the dissonance at 0:48. Sounds like an unpleasant clashing to me (try playing a C-D-D# triad. It sounds like that kind of clash). Maybe one note is off? Maybe certain notes can be quieter? Same at 1:07, 1:26, 1:46, 2:10, 2:14, 2:38, 2:57, and 3:19. 0:38 sounded fine, so I didn't question that. One important thing I've learned is that even the worst harmony can be made to sound not unpleasant when played with the proper dynamics. I didn't hear as much of the clash there even though it was a similar one because some of the major components of the clash were quiet enough to not matter. 2:24 and 2:28 are fine, as they can stand alone with that dissonance and be comparable to a tubular bell. Also, 3:27 doesn't really end, to me; it's a chord that sounds like it's foreshadowing more arrangement rather than an ending, even with the ritardando. I'm not really convinced the timpani in the intro is humanized yet. 0:15 sounds like one sample used to sequence a roll, which sounds choppy. It needs more round robins to not sound so fake. It's dominant enough in the intro that it's more than a little nitpick. 1:30 is something I'm leaning towards being the largest issue. The horn is quite loud there compared to the atonal percussion in the background, and somewhat dry, not to mention it was the one instrument that stood out the most amongst the atonal mallet instruments. Also, the notes cut off, somewhat, in between each one, making me think it's either stiffly played or just not yet realistically sequenced---probably the latter. You may need to adjust the release on the lower bells used at 2:14. It's bleeding the notes together in the low mids and muddying things up a lot. However, it doesn't coincide with very many notes at all, so I don't think that it's anything more than a nitpick. The highest bells throughout (kind of a metallic sound, like the highest note at 3:07) could have some EQ tweaks in the treble to tame the impact resonances and brightness. Lastly, the arrangement is a little plodding. The general feel of the arrangement is not changing all that much throughout. It remains calm the entire time, without very many dropoffs or change-ups. 0:33 - 0:53 is repeated at 3:02 - 3:22 (albeit with a ritardando), and 1:03 - 1:20 is repeated at 2:33 - 2:50. That takes out 37 seconds of arrangement since it's mostly a straight repeat, basically giving you a 3:02 remix, minus the 24 second liberal intro, giving: 2:38 / 3:02 --> 158 / 182 = 87% source, maximum. I'd say a probable minimum is ~90% of that, based on how liberal it sounds to me, which gives you about 78% source, so that's all fine and dandy. Overall, I'd say the major issues on my plate would be with the realism of the horn, the mechanical sequencing of the timpani, the somewhat repetitive nature of this arrangement, and maybe the various negatively dissonant chords I noticed throughout (in 8 spots). When fixing this up, try imagining someone playing this, and perhaps it might help you decide what to do with the stereo image and make this sound more "live", if that's what you wanted. I'm not hearing excess reverb here, but it may be significantly beneficial to adjust the panning too. Also, some note variations couldn't hurt. This is pretty close! Keep working on it.

I'll be making it to dis.

I think that 12~16 tracks per disc is fine. An average of 4~5 minutes per song gives 48~80 minutes (4*12 or 5*16).

Sure, I could do that sometime tonight, I think. I just finished my last final just now. I'm gonna miss O-Chem. ;(

Congrats, Dave! Take good care of her and keep up the good work on OCR!

True; I do keep that in mind, but even then, that's how many I've gotten up to, which details the complexity that happens sometimes. Generally I get around 10~20 layers of pattern rows for just instruments, but 20~40 pattern rows of automations to accommodate for the instrument choices at certain sections (humanization, dynamics, compensation EQ, etc.). The automations are what really take up most of my project file space, so it's not like I'm giving examples where people are doing things inefficiently.

I think the most I've used was 65 pattern rows and 40-something mixer tracks. zircon's used 70~99 pattern rows and 80-something mixer tracks on Identity Sequence tracks.

...Those are common? To people who have learned jazz formally, maybe, but not me. I just go by ear, and I've gotten this before (listen closely to what chords I'm using. Nearly 80% of the song is jazz chords), so formally learning it isn't the only way, IMO. Some people don't learn by the books as easily as simply learning by ear, so my suggestion is that you can alternatively just try learning by ear if books don't work with you. Just play something on a MIDI keyboard (or listen to a jazz song), assuming you have one, and when you hear a chord you like, try figuring out what notes are in that chord and how they're arranged (intervals from each other, up or down). Even a check as simple as "how many half steps higher is this note from the one just below this?" can help you envision chords in your mind more easily--based on common interval differences that become passive knowledge--once you get used to the process. i.e. "This note is two half steps above this one, but is five half steps below this one, so it may resolve where the lowest note goes down a half step since two half steps by themselves will clash." If you try learning chords by ear for long enough, eventually you'll be able to write the sound of specific chord progressions (or the actual chords, if you are well-pitched and you have the first note) in your head and then write it out by ear. You may even gain the ability to predict a bass line, like I do (acapella) to random songs I've never heard before. Makes me want to go back to high school just to take jazz choir again, 'cause that's the main reason for why I could do that with bass lines.

It takes a long time to make a soundfont. What I have done before is use Viena (not Vienna) and compile a (very large) set of WAV files by importing them and mapping them to keys. It may take a person 8~24 hours total to make a basic soundfont of one-sample-per-note single-velocity-response WAV files (unless they use a cool Python program [like for the jRhodes], which I actually have no idea how to do), and it took me about a week to make one with one-sample-per-note triple-velocity-response WAV files. It's really tedious, just saying.

Okay, as of this update, I'm okay with 0:14, tbh. Yes, it has room for improvement, but no, I don't have a problem with it anymore. The intro got quieter, and if you just bump it up about 4~6dB, that should be very close to just right. The kick and snare might be sounding a tiny bit stronger at 0:18, but I'm not sure if you touched on those. My little nitpicks on the drums still stand, but that aside, this honestly sounds subbable. It just depends on how picky the judges are with the drum programming and the piano timbre and sequencing. If it were me, I'd give it a borderline pass based on the sample quality, so it'd actually probably pass.

Clicks/hums, line noise, the fret buzzing you get from recording your guitars on a hot day (like you said), sibilances (vocals), bass voids (when you don't have bass traps), etc. God made organic instruments to gel together, ya know?

Yeah, it's certainly true that you get those recording-environment-based issues, and I get where you're coming from; what my opinion entails though is the assumption that everything organic is free of strange audio artifacts and you're just ready to start mixing (or picking electronic sounds). One thing to think about though is that all metal has guitars, so all metal can be difficult to mix in terms of the bass, so at the very least you can make that generalization about the mixing in metal tracks. Also, recording live instrumentation means you don't have to sequence anything realistically---you just played it! That just depends on how well you play, not how well you know how to use a sample library (which, depending on the library versus the instrument, can make a difference) or how well you understand an instrument to "play" what you can't play. For example, I didn't play a single guitar on my Gunstar Heroes ReMix, but it passed on the realism, with Larry as the DP evaluator there.

Wut So then zircon is... wrong? Seriously though, IMO, his reasoning there is pretty sound when you use templates for any consistent organic genre (orchestral, for example). He explains very clearly why I'm so picky with electronic remixes here.

I'd like to point out that 0:14 doesn't sound as jarring when I tried listening with some store-brand (aka cheap) earbuds, so to me, it's not extremely jarring overall and mostly caused by the mixing. On a scale of 1 to 10, 10 being the most, it's probably a 1~2.

I hear ya. Electronic genres have so much more in production than the more organic genres, as you have to do the sound design/picking/tweaking, and there's much more EQing since organic instruments are made to work well together with little EQ fixes.

I think I have time to vote now. lol @ avaris doing dubstep hip hop. xD Okay, general feedback: Tuberz --- The production is actually kinda quiet, especially at 2:10 (overcompression. Hard knee limiter?). You may hear how 4:08 is louder than the section before it. The sounds work in general. Great uplifting atmosphere! Really fun and engaging arrangement. avaris --- The mixing is pretty loud! The clap is pretty quiet. Putting aside my general distaste for 808 percussion and siren-style wubs, the production can objectively be tighter. The bass isn't as "grounded" as it can be, the drops aren't super impactful, and either the lead is too loud or the backing instruments are too quiet because of the overcompression. Cool arrangement. Still, as your attempt at this genre for the first time, it sounds much better than most people could have managed (though this type of hip hop production may have been popularized quite a bit). Great job! Okay, I've got my vote picked.

Mine sounds like a cold chilly forest. You could probably listen to it and fall asleep... in a good way.

I need to make more use of dat mic. I can always do granular synthesis on stuff!

http://soundonsound.com is your friend too. Lots of cool production articles there.

FYI, 6 of those 10 mixes were finished early as part of the judging test batch.

I think I said I wasn't gonna have time to make something for this album. Well... I had something way back from June that I finished yesterday, and it fits the snow theme.