timaeus222

This is a bit harder to hear for some people, but is a bit lossy (on purpose) before 0:22, and then when 0:22 comes, HOLY SHIT IT'S AWESOME. The production is 2013-quality.

I was gonna say the production sounds a bit lossy... then HOLY SHIT @ 0:22. Blew me away. xD

This is somewhat related to "what is the first 'good' song you wrote?", but not exactly like it. The first time I liked my own music because of production quality rather than because I wrote it was when I collaborated with Chimpazilla on a Yoshi ReMix. That, however, wasn't the turning point for a shift towards thinking that I had finally gotten "good" at production (that was the biggest arrangement progress for me, actually). The turning point for my largest improvement in production quality was when I had acquired around half a year's worth of independent sound design experience. I was, crudely put, dinking around on Zebra2 for half a year before I really understood what I was doing on it. When I understood (after tons of experimenting and NOT reading the manual for some reason ) what each knob really did and what I should expect when I turn specific knobs and touch stuff on the synth, that's when I could tell my music was finally "good", or not "bad". I could finally start evaluating production based on sound design, and not just mixing, EQ, etc. Essentially, sound design was the major step into improving my own objective sound quality. What was the reason/cause for the turning point of your own music composition, production, or playing skills from "meh" to "hey, this is actually pretty good"? OR If you don't consider yourself "good" in your own opinion, what have you tried to improve your abilities?

Well, it seems like the OP knew what I was referring to. avaris was talking about cutting the low end of the reverb signal, i.e. cutting the low end of the reverb wet mix (not the sound's dry signal). Raising the low cut in the reverb plugin does the exact same thing if there is such a knob on your particular reverb plugin, and there has been on every reverb plugin I've encountered at least. So then Argle, you're one exception amongst others.

Funny thing is, I think my arrangement quality curve was a shallow U, and my best was my first entry followed by my last, then my second, then my third. xD I did improve my bass mixing throughout though, IMO.

OH, you submitted it before we came? lol.

Nah, I'm just saying that the primary "orders of magnitude" that separate the production quality of one song to another are what production quality crits are referring to. i.e. 2013 production quality is better than 2006 production quality when looking at the exact same person. I say 2006 because one time, Liontamer said 2007 was his baseline standard for production quality. Tightness/snappiness isn't really what I always "like" per se, it's what I feel might bring this particular remix to "the next level" (though I don't really want to call it a "level"). For example, zircon's Across the Ocean (which I've linked ad nauseum I suppose) doesn't have super snappy snares, but I'm not saying "Ugh, this snare needs to be less clappy and more noise gated" because it fits as it is, IMO. For this remix in particular, in this particular context (i.e. dubstep), the snare timbre that I'd personally say is optimal out of experience is tight/snappy, but I'm emphasizing that objective part of my non-biased opinion the most. In other words, I'm not biased towards making it "better" so that I'll like it necessarily (though I would), but actually better in the sense of being closer to comparable standards that I have heard in regards to well-made dubstep. Currently, my non-biased opinion is that the snare quality is slightly lower than the comparable standard and that snappiness would bring it closer, but if it were already close to that comparable standard, then yes, it would be biased opinion.

Just a small note, avaris is talking about raising the low cut of the reverb plugin, not literally EQing out the low end on an EQ plugin. You want to have as little low end muddiness as possible, not remove the low frequencies altogether. If you did, that would make the instrument much less powerful. However, if you raise the low cut too much, the sense of space is lessened. Try to get a good balance.

YEAH! Awesome blend of chinese melodic content with modern trance and half-time dubsteppish moments (and JAPANESE TAIKOS, GEEZ MAN WHAT WERE YOU THINKING ). Not much nits I can pick here.

I was gonna say, this sounded 90s. Then I looked up the game and it was a '95 game. Great job capturing the era of the original, and I love the distorted reso-pulse bass and 3o3/other arps. Kinda reminds me of Jazz Jackrabbit's soundtrack.

Production quality is opinion, yes, but I also think it's specifically opinion that is non-biased as possible. I feel like production nitpicks are the biased opinions that are held back.

Yeah, the music box seems fine to me too except for very very minor resonance, but it's not a big deal to me at least. The only things I would be concerned about would be the sub bass being merely a sustained sine wave (i.e. static), the source possibly getting lost behind the wubs (I can feel it harmonically but not hear it extremely well), and the drums not being super tight adding to a list of nitpicks (possibly including the tightness of the staccato strings) that might or might not lead to a NO(resub). So yeah, sub it and we'll see what happens.

Now, I don't mean for this to be demeaning or anything, but there are objective "levels" of how good a production is compared to another production. Something can be better than something else entirely objectively, while "taste" is just an observation along the way. It's very hard to ignore your own tastes and just talk about something from an objective standpoint, but that's what could help you in the future. Setting aside opinion and focusing on sound design, mixing, and so on, and then going back to opinion separately later will help people to appreciate a song for its production and separately decide whether or not they like it based on subjectivity or taste. Someone can love a song based on taste alone (good arrangement and/or sounds you do prefer subjectively but that could be high OR low quality objectively), but the production could be horrible (unclear, muddy, washy, etc.). Someone else could not-love a song based on taste (bad arrangement and/or sounds you don't prefer subjectively but that could be high OR low quality objectively), but the production could be amazing (clear, distinct, airy, etc.). So really, you can make a good amount of people "happy" production-wise for sure, but preference-wise, it's a bit harder. Essentially, there are some sounds that will be well-received by many people, and some that are a bit further away from universally positive reception. "Mixing style" essentially refers to both production choices and production quality, which are not the same thing. What *I* was actually talking about with the drums, for example, was production quality. All I said was try to make it snappier/tighter, but I left Solkrieg the decision of how he could choose to go about it if he so desires. That's production choice, the result of following production quality advice.

Source tune melodic content. Seems straightforward. The wobbles are too loud, or another way to say it is, they have too much mids and are clashing with the leads and fighting for attention. Sub bass isn't "most preferred" in dubstep; it's merely a source of low-end power, and there are other ways of achieving that more "effectively", if that makes sense to you. It's like what I was expecting that you used based on what I heard: a basic low sine wave. It's sustained and doesn't necessarily reflect the movement of the wobble tone, which is expected to be more low end heavy on the lower-cutoff moments since the premise of a dubstep wobble is a resonant LP filter LFO, which means there will be a boost at all swept frequencies, including the lower boundary of the LFO range. There are better ways to get good sub bass presence without using a sustained sine wave, such as FM synthesis, boosted lower harmonics, and comb filters. Also, there are many other ways to fill in empty space: countermelodies, thicker sounds, reverb, wider delay, panning, etc. Excess sub bass is more of... something to shave off slightly via a high pass near 20~28Hz to save headroom, IMO (unless you're just very happy in your sub bass mixing experience). If you have good sound design in the low end, the bass is going to seep through the high pass enough anyways. Example 1: https://soundcloud.com/zircon-1/across-the-ocean --- Doesn't explicitly use separate sustained sub bass, but is still very heavy, loud (in a good way), and polished. Example 2: https://soundcloud.com/zircon-1/augment --- Same situation, but there's a dubstep section for you to examine and stronger drum programming than in the other example. Just to be clear, my point isn't to have you try to recreate some of these wobbles (though it's a good exercise and a great way to collect a stash of wobbles); it's to help you locate where some aspects of your production and sound design have *some* room for improvement to the extent of your abilities and motivation. Although this isn't orchestral, they should still sound "not obviously fake", so they can "carry their own weight" with the articulations used. Free libraries can sound good if processed well and sequenced within their limits. Likewise, realistic sample libraries don't give you the ticket to realistic orchestral sequencing; that's your role to fill with practice, keyswitches, and MIDI CC. It's not as important in this situation, but that detail is not unimportant. I was hearing it being a little rhythmically off, and the phrasing was not humanized (velocity response grounded by intuition) enough in my opinion. Though remember that I said it might be a judge's nitpick, and it probably won't be a major factor in their decision since there are bigger nitpicks to make.Also, @Aaron, saying the articulations on the strings aren't realistic is more like saying the piano in a DnB song is too stiffly sequenced, where pianos don't necessarily have to be extremely humanized rhythmically, as I recall Flexstyle said once before. It's easy to say that the snare in a dubstep song doesn't have to be acoustic or realistic, since realistic drums in a dubstep song don't apply. Dubstep is electronic, as we all know, so the concept of realism is outside the window (i.e. false analogy). More focus is on strength, tightness, and prevalence of drums, and if we're talking about wobbles, the sound design.

Well, I'd say the "snare" (really a clap and a dance snare layered) could be better (snappier and tighter). It's getting buried under the wobbles, and the kick is also buried. Sub bass is reasonably OK, but it's very raw and honestly just filling empty space in my opinion. The strings are unrealistic in the articulations, especially the staccato strings. While the dubstep wobbles are playing, you can't really hear the source well enough. I think this is probably going to get a resub for arrangement issues, with nitpicks on drum programming and strings articulations.

I'll add on to this and say that try to use internal EQ modules if you can, since they have a "keytracking/keyfollow" effect. External EQ is static and only applies to particular still ranges, not specific harmonics. In other words, it's more consistent/effective.

Loving this, and also loving the fact that I actually saw a real double rainbow today where I live. haha.

What, the clicking? It's barely audible, but I'm not sure why it's there. Some issue with the samples themselves maybe.

I'd totally be interested in churning up something wicked for this. Also, offering drum programming, critical mixing/mastering, and face-melting guitars/bass.

The inaccurate recording is because of your processor speed. The slower it is, the more lag there is between the notes recorded and the moment you play them. Soundcloud is a good place for uploading music. People at Newgrounds tend to be more subjective in their critiques, even though there are a few people who actually write objectively. Just share at OCR, and there will be more useful critiques, in my opinion.

Well, the sounds in general are high quality, but the articulations used haven't yet gotten the attention to detail they need to sound realistic. The choir sounds pretty fake in the attack envelope and note connections until 0:30 where it's less exposed, though even after 0:30 I can still hear those attack and note connection issues. The strings as well, as they definitely need the keyswitching and MIDI CC you have available (I assume you're familiar with those?). The mastering is OK, though it could be tighter in the low end by tightening up the sequencing on the double bass.

Hey, thanks man! Radio airplays are always welcome.

I'll try to finish most of my homework before then, sure. Home all weekend by mahself. Ah, right, I do recall Deia giving me feedback in the olden days when I submitted a GBA music (hex) modding result. xD

Finished writing a source breakdown. https://soundcloud.com/timaeus222/wcrg-2013-round-10