timaeus222

Haven't been here in a while. But here's what I've been working on on and off while in grad school! On one of my other mixposts (Dungeonmans), djpretzel had remarked that Shantae needed some love. I mean... the only mix on the site right now is by the composer himself. That's cool and all, but he needs some company. I checked out the soundtrack to Pirate's Curse, and came across "Scuttle Town"; immediately, I got a mideast glitch hop vibe from it that would be ridiculously fun to build off of, at least for the main groove. Peeking around a bit further, "We Love Burning Town" was more than enough material to work with, bursting with a playful vibe that I couldn't resist (which for some reason is associated with burning a town... playfully?). I started this in January of 2016 (before I started grad school), stitching together Indian Ragas samples from Crypto Cipher to see what would happen. Slowly but surely, a glitch hop backbone came together, held up firmly by Serum and Zebra2, and I managed to finish through the breakdown section by the end of summer, featuring ISW's Bravura and Turkish Oud. I was kinda stuck on what to do next, so I put it to the side while I prepped to go to WSU. The first semester passed by, in which time I was TAing general chemistry, and toughing my way through quantum chemistry and thermodynamics (A- in both, oh yeah!). When I got to winter break, I immediately got the idea for a buildup back to the main drop, and finished the first three minutes so far, but I had to set it aside again for my second semester. I already knew by now that I was going to finish the track eventually... and here I am, not willing to put it off any longer, finishing it up in May of 2017 after one year of grad school! Never has finishing a ReMix been so hard!

Nailed the vibe! Loving the frenetic nature of the arrangement; the one thing I wish is that the drums at the drops were heavier. Cool harmonies though!

Yeah, well... it's good that you can load VSTs into FL. But we know you can. So can we... So, how about going to something like https://www.kvraudio.com/q.php and searching for free VSTs (by name, developer, etc) and discovering what you actually like? Your original "question" was really, "tell me what VSTs are out there!", but now it's sounding more like, "tell me what VSTs I like!". You should know your tastes better than other people do, so how about you give that shot, eh? Here's an example search for a free, released VST software EQ plugin effect for Windows sorted by user rating, with results displayed in a table.

Congrats on the first Suikoden II mix on the site since 2001! Great job on the vocals, Joy, and I also loved the solo violin from Trev. The guitar from Joe was also certainly worth the reach-out. Good on Jorito for putting together this collab!

Most if not all free VSTs work in FL... and if you don't believe me, why don't you try them out? They ARE free, right?

For non-piano work, I think you'll manage with 49 or 61 keys. I have 37 and I haven't needed more for my music, but for working out intricate parts, 49 may be the minimum I would recommend for semi-limited space.

I have a small controller, so it's just on my pull-out desk.

You have got to be kidding me. *throws hands in the air*

DAMN SON, where'd you get THIS album?

Hey, I remember this. Glad to see this make it on the site! I will say that the drum rhythms are a tad loose, but other than that, quite authentic and my dad would especially love this.

I agree, Serum's presets are mostly generic; I've always just designed things from scratch on it instead of using its presets. But as a synth purely for sound design purposes... I think it's great for bass. I've almost never tried to forcefully make something that isn't a bass on Serum, though, but that's just because I use Zebra2 so much. In the end, I do find Serum inspiring, but two things are that (i) it takes a while to scroll through wavetables to find what I want to hear for the waveform, and (ii) it really does seem geared towards bass (particularly the sub feature).

I sure hope so. It's directly mentioned in the submission guidelines.... If you read the remainder, you can infer that a ReMix with minimal distortion, clipping, etc. are generally acceptable. There are many ocremixes with great dynamics. Several examples... Orchestral: Atmospheric (shameless plug for mine!) Acoustic: Cinematic: Drum & Bass: That covers many different genres of varying dynamics, each with considerably different mastering considerations. As long as your track reaches normal volumes, and the dynamic range is not really drastic (that your volume has to be adjusted mid-song) or really minimal or pushed (that distortion, clipping, overcompression, etc occurs), it's probably acceptable.

Maybe the swells on the automation were a little too pronounced (0:34 - 0:37, 0:39 - 0:40, 0:42 - 0:44, etc), but that's a small nit to pick. The dynamic range is well-executed, and much mileage was achieved for the samples. Although I can tell these are samples, this easily sounds like an official arrangement. Will there be an Overture #2? I for one don't mind the medleytits. Instant-download for me. P.S.: This sounds like it could be overlaid in a Pokemon movie.

The background strings and foreground violin were fairly detached, but besides the artificial nature of the strings orchestration, I like the soundscape that was accomplished, and the intended semblance of a dream-like state was a solid success.

Yeah, that's definitely much better. Particularly compare at 3:26 between v3 and v4, and you should hear a difference in the reverb tail; in v3 it's pumping from being too loud against the limiter, and in v4, it's just trailing off like normal. Now that the overcompression is lessened, the master track volume (on the master track mixer slider) can be brought back up (by about 3 dB).

This is still overcompressed. What it sounds like is that you simply lowered the master volume and left the overcompression there. What you should do is lower the volume of each individual instrument --- there isn't a shortcut to this. The piano is suffering from the overcompression, so its transients aren't heard.

To be honest, I can't hear the difference between 0.6.6 and 0.65. I think it's less overcompressed, but it more or less sounds the same on these temp headhones I'm borrowing. But 0.5 going to 0.6.6 is a huge improvement in clarity and fullness.

Hm, I'm now hearing some overcompression coming in after you had raised the volume. How about instead, you try lowering the volume back to how it was, and then use master track parallel compression to raise the volume? (parallel just means half the signal goes to the compressor and half doesn't.) That way, the limiter doesn't overly compress the mixdown, and you have more control over how that works out. I think it's the part that incorporates the orchestra + choir that feels more overcompressed than the pure metal parts. Alternatively, I could just mix it myself, if you want.

Nope, there's not too much bass. Besides that, just a few things: It seems to me like the lead guitars might be sharply low-passed at around 7000 Hz? Or maybe it's just how it was recorded. If it wasn't due to the recording, you may be able to ease up on that low pass to brighten up the leads. This is noticable at 3:18, for example, when the leads are exposed. The whole mix never reaches below 50 Hz; not sure if it's because you high passed it yourself or if it's due to the recording(s). The hawk at 3:19, for what it's worth, didn't really sound like a hawk to me... it sounded like an EDM sweep because it was so resonant at 4800 Hz; may want to tone down the EQ at that frequency maybe 2-4 dB so that it's not so jarring, at least to me. I think if you cut the transition sound at 4:43 at 30 Hz by about 2 dB, you can bear to raise the volume of the entire ReMix by about 3 dB (at which point I think it's at a loudness that more closely matches other modern metal tracks). At 5:38 - 5:57, there seems to be a bit of clipping. Do you have a limiter on the master track? I love the composition though. What I said above was just mixing advice, not huge issues (though I would still try to raise the volume of the mix by about 3 dB if possible, and I would check the clipping). I think what you may get dinged most on is actually the non-metal portion, where you have the strings, choir, and brass exposed. For example, the brass noticeably has a very similar volume envelope on each note, which can be varied by your own CC11 (or at least, volume) automation. The choir also feels a bit flat in terms of dynamics in this section, and can be more "phrased", if you know what I mean.

Nice, I like the double-time feel of this. I would prefer that the bass part be more interesting before 0:43; the octave jumps are rather simple. The vibraphone feels like a soundfont (particularly with the phase resets and sample skips on the fast runs at 2:22 - 2:55). It just feels kinda thin and dry and could use more reverb to fit in the mix; there's also a sample glitch at 2:06 on the vibraphone. I would definitely try to find a better vibraphone VST. I also think that this has gotten rather long. The drum patterns start to feel same-y by the 3-minute mark, so the dynamics just all blend together a little too well, and I just get lost in determining where the piece is actually going. i.e. it feels repetitive in the sense that I can't tell when the dynamics are changing and the arrangement just feels directionless/meandering. The raw composition though is excellent. I think the main issue is really in the vibraphone sample, and the dynamics could use more variation to provide more obvious contrasts. You may want to shorten the arrangement as well, to focus it more into a proper direction.

The FluidR3 soundfont has a great sleigh bell sound. Add some reverb on it and it's great for atmospheric tracks. It also contains my favorite harp (I use it more than the one in EWQL Symphonic Orchestra...).

I would actually recommend the SR-60i rather than the SR-80e, as it's even flatter: http://graphs.headphone.com/index.php?graphID[0]=393&graphID[1]=353&graphID[2]=&graphID[3]=&scale=30&graphType=0&buttonSelection=Update+Graph but yes, Grados is great for sub-$100 headphones. The SR-60i was kinda itchy for about a month, but after I broke it in, it worked great.

The dissonant, proggy progressions really take the cake... and bake it until it's golden brown. I don't even know if that makes sense but let's go with it.

It's incredible how much interpretation DDRKirby could squeeze out of the iconic mario motif. Gonna be an OCR classic, I know it!

Not sure how that happened with you, but I have a temp Windows 10 laptop and it runs plenty of VSTs just fine. TruePianos, Zebra2, Serum, Kontakt Player, etc.