timaeus222   Members

Disclaimer: I don't claim to be an expert in what I do (for example, I mix bass very safely), but I do really like my results, and it would be fun to have others share (at least in part) in the happiness I get when I finish mixing something. Obviously we're all bound to our preferences, but I just want to throw in the offer. I am not looking for work, but rather, making it known that I am available if someone needs the extra help. (I meant to do this for a while now.) I'm available to lend you my services and/or free feedback for any original song, original remix, or game remix. If it's a private request, please PM me (such as a song from an original or ReMix album you haven't released yet, if that even applies), and if it's somewhere on the forum (like in the WIP area), please link it to me and I'll definitely be willing to help. Feedback will definitely be free, and services are most likely free depending on the difficulty of the request or the nature of the request (For legal reasons. i.e. if it's a game remix or "audition" remix, it's certainly free, and if it's an original song for a commercial album it would be nice to donate something, etc.). Donations in return would be much appreciated, 'cause college don't come cheap. This might be an option if you: Are new to mixing Know me already Want to get to know me better Would like some help or advice in general Want to get suggestions for interesting reads or tutorials (i.e. soundonsound, zircon, etc.) Depending on whether it's supposed to be a commercial or free track, we can settle on a reasonable price (unless you just want advice or feedback, in which case it's always free). Preferably, PM or email me if it is a commercial track (see the bottom of the page). In my opinion, my mixing strengths are: Selecting effective sounds/instruments that appeal to as many people as possible to a reasonable extent Sequencing a variety of instruments realistically to a reasonable extent (some more than others) Examples include santoor, piano, electric guitar/bass, mallet-based instruments, and so on (the point is variety) [*]Mixing midrange and treble to a reasonably clean extent [*]Clear stereo image and clean stereo separation [*]Tonal pleasantness (how pleasing or not-so-pleasing a sound could be perceived to some people's ears, in a general sense) [*]Detecting harsh rogue frequencies (like piercing resonances near 16000Hz, for example. Anything you yourself can't hear or don't notice enough to be bothered by) [*]Reverb selection and algorithmic creation (i.e. I sometimes create my own reverb patches from scratch if I have to) How can I help you? Literally mixing from dry material A polishing or a "final check" if you feel you need it Apply only reverb to dry material that you deem to need special reverb or reverb you believe you might like better De-cluttering a stereo image Replace instruments that you want to be more realistic in terms of bit rate, sample quality, articulations, phrasing, etc. Generic feedback/advice As for credibility, here is my music portfolio (though first-hand experience is more definitive). It has my soundcloud and some of my works that are sufficiently demonstrative of how I prefer to mix/compose. If you want to see my taste in music to decide for yourself whether you believe I'm a fit for you or not, you can actually visit my soundcloud and look at what I reposted, and you can get a general idea. If for any reason you decide to email me, please use my contact page. No one likes email spam (it's much harder to spam with the contact form ). Or, you know, you could email me. My email's on there too. Also, please use a real email address if you do want me to be able to reply (don't you just hate that MAILER-DAEMON notice?). No actual information is saved to any database. The form is just to keep things consistent. There should be a rather large confirmation message after you press Submit on the contact form (or if you typoed out).

Giving you a heads-up; I was gonna post something just like this at one point. Just letting you know that I'm not trying to copy you/steal your thunder.

Just curious, do you guys still do guest judging/opinions, or was that just a thing back when you guys were less experienced? =0 Something else is, what can we do for you to speed up the judging process? More source breakdowns? Submit only our best works? Write our own djp writeups? (only kidding on the last one)

What issue do you get? All of the ones I shared are .sf2, but do you have the full version of FL? Some people have had problems because of that.

They should be able to play; I use FL. Use the soundfont player, or sfz.

Yeah, I tend to do 100% too, but soundonsound said once that 90% typically sounds negligible on speakers, so I kept that in mind. Yeah, I was going to ask you about that (since it was called a "Manny"), but eh, I forgot.

Haaaaaaaappy Birthday!

There's nothing inherently wrong with them; just a few of them were extremely quiet in my opinion (some were peaking at -55dB for example), but all of them match their actual volume in the final track so it's fine.

Okay, here's my take on this! =D https://app.box.com/s/31tq2m0b63e8j4b48wdk Stuff I did: M/S and parallel compression on the drums, plus room reverb to replace the "Room" stem (I assume that's what it was for). Piano's got my own delay algorithm for a more analog-tape-like atmosphere (might be a bit subtle). Flute and Alto Sax got a little treble boost to emphasize the breath transients a bit. Silly me, I gave the Sax reverb fit for a Duduk. Glockenspiel and strings have the typical reverb for each, with delay on the glock. Acoustic Rhythm got the expected near-hard-panning treatment (L/R 90%). The Lead Acoustic Guitar has got my own delay algorithm again plus some ping pong delay for a more delicate atmosphere. The original bass was high passed so I could layer Spectrasonics Trilian's bass sound for the polished low end (plus add two neck slides). The original bass was still pretty awesome tonally, btw; just a bit obscured. All vocals got an auditorium sim reverb. Backing vocals were either panned or widened depending on their role (harmony vs. generic backing). I didn't reference the original remix for the positions. Automated mids scooping where it was needed to bring out the vocals and shifted things further to the front sometimes (like the toms or the acoustic neck slide). Automated volumes up and down as necessary.

Man, some of the stems are really quiet.

I might give it a Re-Mixing later. I'm probably going to try a new bass sound as a replacement, because I love using Trilian (it shouldn't be as hard to mix as in a metal song ). The Alto Sax, btw, sounded kind of like an EWQL Ra Duduk to me, from the playing style.

Have your good headphones for personal enjoyment/mixing/etc, and cheap headphones for traveling and other rough moving experiences.

I actually write in loads of styles, but I could narrow my style down to glitching and complexity elements (usually is dubsteppish). Yeah, I know, pretty descriptive, right? You know what, I'll just list a bunch of the styles I've tried before, just to give you guys a perspective of how hard it was to actually narrow this down: Metal (Gunstar Heroes, Plants Vs. Zombies DnB, Shadow the Hedgehog, Final Fantasy 6, Mega Man 9, Metroid Prime) Drum & Bass (Mega Man 9, Plants Vs. Zombies "medley", Mega Man 7 + Mega Man V (GB), MegaMan StarForce) Dubsteppish (Plants Vs. Zombies, Castlevania: Rondo of Blood, Gunstar Heroes, Mega Man 7 + Darkwing Duck, Metroid Prime) Orchestral/Cinematic (Donkey Kong 64, Flashback, Shadow the Hedgehog, Plants Vs. Zombies DnB) Dance (Yoshi Touch 'n Go, Mega Man 7 + Darkwing Duck, MegaMan Battle Network 1-6 [but not 3]) Atmospheric (Yoshi Touch 'n Go, currently-unreleased stuff) ...etc. But if you look at all of the ones I listed, it seems like 9 of them have glitching, loads of layers, and over-the-top automations, so... yeah. I'll pick... ... ... the currently-unreleased Gunstar Heroes ReMix (you'll see on September 9th!). I would have said the Darkwing Duck one, but funk isn't my thing; I just did that because I wanted to have some fun. I can say for sure that I do have a distinctive collection of sounds that sets me apart, though. Slowly but surely, I'm creating a very unique sound palette. I don't actually want to settle into any particular style though. Because that would be boring, right? Dynamic styles are where it's at.

IIRC, there's still space allocated on the card for files, so even if you delete the files, you do still need to reformat the card to remove the allocated memory.

I'd literally have one day (I have no access to my computer until Friday evening, and church occupies me until past 3 PM PST sometimes). Dunno what powerful stuff I can really do in that short time for three themes, one of which I haven't had time to experiment with. I'd much rather go on Week 8 or 9, to be honest, so I'd have time to make something worthwhile. I have something done right now, but it's not a full arrangement and it only incorporates Junk Man so far. I really want to finish that. Orion says he just "won't have time", so I don't know about him, and Cosmic says he "can go in the second or third week".

The rhythm issue is gone on the bongos. Nice bass tone so far, even if you didn't do live yet. If you can imitate that bass tone for the live recording, that would be great. It kind of reminds me of the Jaco fretless bass. The violin at 2:59 is pretty fake-sounding, and I think you know that. The sequencing gives it a weird retrigger-like envelope effect on each note. Otherwise it sounds great. At least, on my bad headphones.

Even though I don't have my good headphones with me right now, I can hear the lead at 0:34 is still sticking out too much to some extent. Is there any reverb on it? If you put some, please make sure the low cut is only as low as the bottom of the frequency range of the synth's notes. i.e. if the lowest note it plays reaches 300Hz, put the low cut near but not over 300Hz. If the synth doesn't ever play at a frequency range near the low cut, that low end ambience isn't always necessary. I can't say it's concrete advice, but it's generally the case. That might not be the sole reason for the lead sticking out, though. Maybe the E. Piano is too quiet. Again, can't really tell because I'm using different equipment atm (skullcandy earplugs). You'll want to go back over your instrument balance since you switched to soft knee for this track. It'll throw things off a bit, as your mixing decisions made earlier were influenced by the hard knee limiting and your avoiding overcompression. I also think 3:38 sounded like an ending followed by a reiteration of the intro that ultimately didn't introduce anything new except for the drum rhythm, some glitching, and some new lead notes (until 4:21~4:32).

Here's a semi-official source breakdown from what I could hear: Source Breakdown: 0:09 - 0:23 = Source 0:25 - 0:41 = Source 0:43 - 0:49 = Source 0:52 - 1:00 = Source 1:02 - 1:11 = Too liberal* 1:21 - 1:27 = Source 1:29 - 1:38 = Too liberal* 1:50 - 1:59 = Too liberal* 2:17 - 2:33 = Source 2:36 - 2:45 = Too liberal* 3:10 - 3:19 = Too liberal* 3:21 - 3:39 = Source 3:53 - 4:00 = Source 14+16+6+8+6+16+18+17 = 101 seconds 101/252 = 40.08% < 50% * = Parts that seem to be source usage but are too liberal IMO and it doesn't quite sound like it connects back to the source. You can add 45 seconds to source usage if you look into that, which would bring you above the 50% guideline (126 seconds) towards 57.94%.

I'm not sure what you wanted me to get from the video. I really just got "boost the crap out of things and take out what you don't want." I'll keep those two sections in mind, 1:44 and 2:23. Maybe I'll do some sort of glitching on the background FX? I usually just do that instinctively.

Okay, bad news here. I can't go this week, and neither can Orion nor Cosmic.

As stated in the OP, I actually used Spectrasonic Trilian's "Hardcore Thick Bass" multi, so it's going to be different and heavier. More low-end refined out of the box, as well. I don't have a high pass on the guitars to a significant extent. I think the crossover frequency I put was around 40 or 30Hz or something, simply to save headroom, nothing more than that. I do some meticulous notching, but almost never scoop significantly other than in the mids (which I fixed, IMO, as I did notice at one point that I over-scooped there). Some spots that I notched might have been in the low-mids, but I can't check right now. If I did that, it was to let the bass grit come through. I'm putting the most emphasis on refined bass, actually, but probably a bit more metal than drum & bass. I do have a Reese on hand, but I'm not sure if I can really fit that in while keeping in a good portion of the guitar chugging grit. I might give that a shot later when I'm actually home, but I doubt it can come through cleanly separated. Other info: I'm only using a bass guitar while I'm using a rhythm guitar. Otherwise it's a "synth" bass (a synthetic physical model-esque vintage bass) that may sound like one, but isn't one.

I don't have my good headphones on right now, but I can comment on sound selection and arrangement flow, etc. At 0:31 (and 1:36), the resonant WN sweep is pretty loud compared to the lead and bass. I can technically distinguish all three at once, but the lead seems a bit buried, while the bass is at the "right" volume relative to the drums, IMO. The lead timbre also seems a bit basic. Sounds like a simple square lead, to me. See if you can add more personality to it. Modwheel heavy vibrato, a mild LFO on an LP filter, etc. Tighter sequencing might help as well if you try the modwheel heavy vibrato (i.e. stopping the sound completely after some of the vibrato moments). Basically, treat the lead like you would an organic instrument in terms of phrasing, like you did at 1:03. And something you could try is an ambient hit and dropping the drums at 2:52 and doing a snare roll or tom roll to lead into the last note.

1. Yeah, I do that sometimes if I end up using loops where I decide to keep the kick sound or some other similar situation. I'm sure you're talking about a sample on a mixer track sidechained with something else, but not routed to the master. 2. I'm assuming you mean the bass guitar, as the gritty vintage-filter bass (such as in the breakdown section) sounds more powerful and crisp to me. I can't really think of a type of bass that could fit, nor do I think I actually have enough headroom (though I might), so do you have an example of what you were imagining? 3. You let the bass occupy below 60Hz and not the kick? Hm... So is having a kick with a kinda long tail a good idea on a DnB track? I think I had a kick plus a short and tamed 808 sub kick layer. I'm also guessing the scoop you're talking about is one that involves lowering the mids until but not past the moment when the timbre sounds hollow. Also, @Argle, Kristina and I do have Stutter Edit, but I didn't use it here. It's actually LoFi Plus (and occasionally dBlue Glitch) doing the bitcrushing, but I could do something with automation I suppose to emulate "that one" Stutter Edit effect. It's just an automated sample rate reduction combined with an automated resonance reduction (thin bandwidth of a band token combined with a high band token gain creates a resonance) and an automated high pass sweep.

Aw yeah! Neat detail work on this, loving it! I love the bitcrushed sweeps, wobbles, and vocaloid material. And what's wrong with perfectionism, bro?

My mistake. Sorry about that, and I edited my previous post.