timaeus222   Members

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

Incredible cinematic work!

This is my approach if I really want to be complex and I'm getting stuck. I actually listen to the source, and think of a mood I like or want to evoke. I then try to mentally improvise a rhythmic variation on the melody to match a groove that fits the mood I'm thinking of. Usually, drums and a lot of backing float around in my head while the melody is being improvised. I improvise a bassline out loud to follow an implied chord progression once I write out the percussion and the melody. That bassline forms my chord progression, and I fill that out to create that section of the remix. It tends to work out rather well since I don't follow the original chord progression and my jazz choir background helps me with formulating basslines that actually work. I also really like Flexstyle's Variation genre idea (genre as in Rondo, Aria, Fugue, Minuet, etc. Yes, Variation goes way back into the 1600s~1730s lol). It's genius if you really know how to do it well. Like . Focus on the "Devil's Lab" source and notice how many different rhythmic and textural variations there are. Incredible. And there was more coming that faded out. To think it started out pretty conservatively (the FM bassline was a recreation of the original bass sound, and the percussion was emulating the original's percussion). In a sense, almost like a Fugue (variations of one theme in many different textural ways). <3

Okay, well then djp isn't either. Right back at ya.

I thought this "how I can start remixing a song" topic was really interesting, brought up at 0:55:00 in OCR Talkbalk #3. I posted about my approach here.

Yeah, that's my first mixpost. Now to just wait for it to go up. Also, it just so happens that Larry seems to be one of the people who determine whether something DPs or not, and djp does the writeups. I know that because the email was signed by Larry, and I think he also posted once before in a random mixpost that the ReMixes are more accurately written on the ReMix review page as "evaluated by Liontamer". Larry usually is pretty detailed in his votes, so maybe he's lightened up his own bar after having gone through 9+ years of judging. Basically the difference I was hoping to convey was the EQing and reverb rather than the sound selection as sounds are more subjective, but oh well, opinions will vary. I guess the objective difference between the two tracks is smaller to other people than I thought.

Well, you see, since a good majority of those lead synths were ones I made, it means objectively I like how they sound in the context of this ReMix. I agree that by themselves with the EQ they have externally they might sound a little bit thin, but in context they allow other frequencies such as the C64 arp and the dry signal of the E. Piano to peek through. I personally believe this was my second toughest mixing experience, next to the final round's mixing difficulty, so I of course spent a long time fixing it up until I was satisfied with leaving it as it is now. Because of that, I did in fact run into the observation that some mids were clashing a bit, so I took that into account and scooped the mids on the bass only during that Electro House section, and that should be enough, but we'll see. Honestly, I think this mixing job was better than what I did for "Cloudhopping", a collaboration with Chimpazilla, and apparently "Cloudhopping" was good enough for a DP, so maybe the bar is lower than you think and what I used to think (before I got the email, thinking the mix was going to go through to the judges panel instead of DPing).

You sure man? I'm very satisfied with the production on it, and I already subbed it to OCR. I've honestly got no complaints of my own on it, and I was jiving in my room when I finished it.

Just attention to detail man, and good headphones. And I looked at his profile for the Ableton Live info

This isn't bad at all. I'm not the type of person who dislikes Electro House, though the production could be better. The bass at 0:32 and on is pretty good, but pretty static at the same time on those longer sustains. It would be much better if there was some sort of movement in the timbre, such as with a little band notch LFO or something else creative. Rozo is right in that this isn't that loud. This is louder. I also do hear the overcompression at 2:36, so I'm confirming that too.

HoboKa, He's using Ableton Live. At this tempo, I'd call this downtempo. Anyways, the bass is pretty basic. It's not creating any mud by itself as it's practically the only low end instrument, but it's not distinct enough to really be a solid bass sound. The majority of its tone is below 80Hz, so it's not exactly phat. Layer it if you can with some sort of thicker bass with more bite to its tone, and it would sound more satisfying, at least to me. Some leads are definitely too reverby, such as 1:15 and 1:36. It's fine that they're distant if this is intended to sound like ambient downtempo, but the notes need to be more distinct either way. The main muddiness issue comes into play from the reverb on the E. Piano. The low cut is too low, so there is unnecessary low end ambience clashing a bit with the bass. 2:29 though is where the most mud actually comes in; when the pad is there, the low mids really do have lots of muddiness.

Wait a minute, is that a reference to the anime? Because that's what happens in Season 0. Oh, and I'm happy with the current mixing on my track.

As far as I'm concerned, the government is already shut down, and I'm blaming it on Darke. *runs*