timaeus222

I can say with confidence that my Grado SR-60i's ($80) are not going to fall apart anytime soon; I've had them for at least 6 months now and they look the same. And yes, headphones can't get sufficient bass necessarily, but you can get the best bass possible from them, IMO, if you use the Beyerdynamic DT-880's ($300~400). I don't have them, but I know they're awesome and I'd like to get them someday.

What is this?! xD I think you had fun with this.

This is lacking low end power below 65Hz, but the dubstep wobbles are okay at their octave IMO. The wobbles just need to be a tad louder (in mostly volume rather than EQ, from what I can hear) in the end if you end up making other parts louder, as the track overall, from what I see in my spectral analyzer, is not as loud volume-wise as it can be. The phasered bass by itself doesn't quite pull off the apparent aggressive nature of this track due to its lacking low end. Here's a bass sound that I believe could really nail the intro, for example. Listen on speakers and subwoofers to really hear and/or feel the sub-65Hz frequencies. Try to create something similar to that in aggressiveness if you think you need it, or ask me to collab or something. The drums also lack power and some truly over-the-top tight compression from what I can hear. Here's an example of a completely jacked-up version of the intro (in a good way). I only did stuff to the main bass and the kick/snare though. The off-sync glitching on the bass kind of confuses me a bit, so you might want to look into that and revise it a little to see if you can do some more rhythmically flowing gating and retrigger. I didn't know what you did with that rhythmically, so I just did something that was close. I think the wobbles fit fine as they are, but they wind up leaving me wanting them to be thicker than they are now. Preferably, they could have more waveshaping and distortion for a grittier tone, and slightly less resonance for less of a thin "wah" sound and more of a darker "wuh" sound. It doesn't have to be complicated necessarily; just a bit thicker would be nice. Aside from that, like Argle pointed out, some of the leads are a bit buried sometimes under the bass instruments (which doesn't really have much bass frequency content like I said above). The leads need to be louder in volume, could be less thick (thinner than a supersaw, thicker than a sine wave) to help them fit into the soundscape more easily, and some mids would preferentially need to be scooped mildly to bring out the leads. Scooping the mids might leave a person less prone to boosting the leads too much (if frequencies were freed up for something to come through, you don't have to raise the volume so much of what you want to come through). As for the lead tones, I'm gonna show you two synth leads that I think would fit somewhere in the mix. I'll timestamp where I think each one might fit best, and that might give you ideas, timbre-wise. 80's Acid House Bass as Lead (Loads of internal Waveshaping and Distortion on a resonant pulse wave, LFO on the cutoff) ~ Could work at 0:13 Detuned Sync Square Lead (Detune a square lead and put on some mild oscillator sync) ~ Could work at 0:34

The only real downside that I found was that the really low bass (20~80Hz) is basically mildly high passed, but you don't really notice it until you're in a situation where you have to mix bass rigorously. I'd say the ATH-M50's have better bass but slightly worse treble than the Grados from the frequency graphs.

You still have plenty of time to update the file before the judges see it. I think the 0:07 sawtooth lead could have less treble. Not too much, just maybe around 0.4~0.8dB less. At 1:48, the low pizzicato could be more bright. Other than that it sounds good.

You know what, I'm gonna dig up my supposedly finished Yu-Gi-Oh remix and give another pass-through on the bass mixing.

I'd actually say that humming ideas is just brewing ideas. You have the compositional idea in your head, but it's not a composition yet.

Submission Standards Last I recall, a medley consists of many songs. Medleys can be mashups too, but in that particular Zelda case it was a cohesive medley. However, it was not a traditional mash-up, as it was not two or more songs playing at the same time the whole entire time, but a song that introduces brief cameos of many songs. From the same site: If you plan to submit to OCR, then that's what I would suggest you do if you want to go through with this medley, as the traditional medley is too predictable, IMO.Also, your track is private.

Yeah, I can definitely make that.

The Grado SR-60i is actually really good. I find it to have really clear midrange, excellent treble (maybe 90% of the way towards sufficient), and defined bass. You still need subwoofers though to cover the whole spectrum.

Let's have another listening party---one I can't miss.

Well, this is essentially MegaMan X Metal.

Alright, let's check out some eclectic stuff. Sweeeeet orchestral intro. Intense reverses. Glitching wobbles? =OOO Hm... Maybe at 2:02, some pads would fill things out until 3:00. The part afterwards is sooooo awesome. Aaaaaand shift to smooth jazz. xD This is a pretty hilarious remix. I liked it. =D

Production-wise, it would be ready. Arrangement-wise, it falls into the description Gario had given you because the bell lead which represents the source usage the most is a little too far back spatially to be immediately audible due to its volume and possibly its reverb, and the long fade would, to a good portion of listeners, be "a disruption of the pacing". You can say people "don't get it", but that's how they, and the judges, would most likely perceive the fade. Perhaps the source is just difficult to arrange in this particular style. If you want some inspiration for remixing a source that is very minimalistic, here's an example of a remix of a 6 second source. , lol.

Yup, I just used Kirby because its face illustrates my passion for music.

Yep, ambience can still be the existence of pad-like sounds or simply a calm atmosphere. I just find the presence of evolving pads or otherwise dynamically changing atmospheric elements an improvement from a mere atmosphere by itself created by one sound with a colossal reverb. The realism of sounds, though, is another story. We both understand that the concept of hearing realism depends on the listener's experience with and the usage of the instrument in question. If a violin were to be sequenced as a lead violin sound, for example, upfront in a mix with tasteful "airiness" (to emulate a real recording of a violin in a treated room), proper reverb (to make it fit spatially into the context of the mix), delay (to further emulate the perceived room), saturation (to optionally emulate analog tape recordings' "sparkle and sheen"), etc., then it needs all those humanistic nuances with such methods as volume automation (to create a sort of humanized volume swelling), keyswitches for articulations (nobody plays just sustains on a violin), natural velocities (no human plays violins flatly, even if they aren't good), and feasible phrasing (even a professional can't play scales at 240+ BPM). In your case, I couldn't tell it was a violin because of the effects you used, so it didn't matter whether it sounded real or fake. However, I personally think it just sounded good or fitting in general, rather than realistic, as it didn't seem to be your intention to make it realistic.

That's fine, I just figured I should bring that up. This isn't as nitpicky as my other suggestions, as when one of the most obvious connections to the source is somewhat in the background. Most music I hear has the lead element more upfront than this, and while that may seem subjective, it's merely for the aspect of consistency. I've been participating in a remixing competition at OCR for about 5 weeks now, and at one point, length was brought up. Three or so people said "30 seconds is a long time". It sounds arbitrary, but I agree with it in the general case. Sitting for 30 seconds listening to a song could be the equivalent of sitting through an entire commercial. 1 minute is perhaps like half an infomercial. Now, you have more perspective with length. Precisely, that's how I feel. When I mentioned the bell lead, I figured since it was the only melodic element in the piece, it should be a little more upfront, but if you want to leave it in the background like that, it's okay. Not a big deal. Ambiences are fun. Like (most evident in the intro), or this (referring to 2:02), so I love ambiences as you can see. Isn't a song capable of portraying a story as well as being a song? 'o' A story is usually progressive, so if your song reflected that, it would be even more applicable to the tracing of a story. Plus, I did say "I don't have a problem with [the repetition of the drum rhythms]."Also, I edited my previous post earlier, but since you didn't see it, I moved it here: I've decided to synthesize a little example on thin bands of resonance. This is an FM sub bass centered at 64Hz that automates up in frequency until an awkward resonance appears at exactly 15000Hz. Then, it reaches a point where the frequency is so high that it just sounds like digital noise. Afterwards it's automated back down to a sub bass. This is most similar to what I was referring to earlier. I just thought I'd get you familiar on the topic so you're more aware of it in the future.

Ah, thank you for the straightforward answer. I use zircon's "Colossus" track from "Identity Sequence" as a reference track for bass and bLiNd's "Go Ninja, Go" OC ReMix as a reference track for treble. I turn up the bass/treble knobs until my ears don't hear a difference, and then I turn it back down to exactly where I started hearing the difference. I trust those two people the most for exceptional frequency balance. =) I understand what you said, and I'm glad you said it that way. It's exactly what I wanted to know, too (and how I was hoping it would be explained, actually).

*coughIhearbitcrushingcough* I can kinda hear your (slightly bitcrushed?) kick, but try to make it louder with compression techniques, as it seems to be a little bit pushed back due to the current amount of treble on the bass. With The Glue, of course. Same with the toms, minus the part about the treble on the bass. The lead at 1:59 is rather thin and buried behind the backup. At that point I would suggest an extremely powerful lead. Yeah.

I didn't say you as a person weren't open-minded; I said the words you wrote portrayed you as closed-minded, until that one moment where you had, in my opinion, the most open-minded wording of all the times you posted here. There, at 1:04 in particular, the high resonance is fixed to a sufficient extent. Your wording is technically correct, but what I had read resembled the grammatical habits in the era when Old English was common. For example, some words you used were: hitherto, jest, etc. The style of your writing was somewhat Shakespearean or Mary Shelley-esque, to me, and that kind of wording is described as "flowery language". Gario was asking you to be concise at one point, and this is what he was referring to. It's not too complex for me to understand, but it's a bit of a hassle to reinterpret your wording into modern English and to rewrite your sentences in our heads.As for my critiques that I can give, now that the muddiness is lessened: A 1 minute introduction would normally be too long without too much action, but in the case of this track, since it's 8.5 minutes long, it ends up being a reasonable length. However, in order to hook the listener right away, it would only help you if you add what's called "ear candy". In other words, you could do some sort of automation, whether it's acting as an envelope on a filter, or it's adjusting the mix level on a distortion plugin, or something else of your choice. What I hear in the intro consists of a phaser effect on... something quiet. I'm not going to try to describe it exactly, but you understand when I say phaser. It's simply oscillating until 0:35 with little movement in the timbre, so perhaps you could automate the LFO rate (it might also be called the Sweep Frequency) like you did on the "drum wobble" later on. Anything to make it less static would help enhance interest. You could also make the dry signal of the intro louder, as I could barely tell it was there the first time through (probably because of ambient noise). It sounds vaguely orchestral. I like the scattered bitcrushed panning SFX and the glitched panning drums. At 0:57, I can kind of hear the ambient bell lead, but if you could raise the volume some more, then, assuming that's what Gario was referring to when he noticed source usage, it would be more evident. Right now, it sounds like it's buried under everything else, or just getting lost spatially. The breakdown section might or might not have been adjusted, but either way it seems to sound better than before. At 3:25, by way of personal taste I skipped to 4:05 because it's a long fade into silence with mostly sustained notes from the drone (official term for a low bassy pad sound which has nothing to do with boredom). 5:14 is where the bass mixing gets risky. You bring in a low drone there to play along with the sub bass, but as long as you high pass the drone above where the sub bass ends in frequency, then it should be fine. I can still vaguely hear the ambient bell lead, but only slightly. I think if you bring it up in volume and not velocities, it should be better everywhere, assuming your velocities are consistent. Resonances at 6:30 are reasonable as they are an intentional part of the audible area in a sound. At this point, about 7 minutes through, the drums do seem to be repetitive, regardless of the fact that you did a good amount of glitching on them to add variation. If you go back through and add some progressive variation on it, it will lessen the repetition. I didn't have a problem with them, but it should help such that less people will have a problem with it.

The motto here is "ocremix.org is dedicated to the appreciation and promotion of video game music as an art form." If you want to "truly remix this source", as you say, pretend this source is the best source in the world, and then treat it that way; you'll create an even better remix than if you were to have little respect for the source. I'm not saying you don't have respect for Earthbound, but I'm suggesting you should have respect for the source you use. Oh trust me, I know open-mindedness when I see it. Otherwise I wouldn't have said it just then. It was a compliment, nothing wrong with that. The comment I quoted was, let's say, 98% open-mindedness because you had the sentences "I am not fixing anything else. Being muddy doesn't hurt anyone.". That's good enough for me. It turns out that you use, presumably, the same sub bass instrument throughout, so if it happens to be the case the sub bass has differently sequenced velocities, or is different in some way in the second half, then that's fine. The second half would then be different. You did use the word "better", technically; Here it is, for kicks: Besides, it's not about the word you used, it's about the wording of your statements as a whole. The way you word your sentences comes across less humble than you intended. Remember that we can't detect your vocal intonation, your facial expression, or your vocal inflections from our computer. If you refine your wording, it will do lots of good for you.

Thanks. Btw, this is some writing that I'd love to see more of---open-mindedness! And my second thanks for changing your mind about the muddiness. As it turns out, I'm not the only one who mentioned it. =) Also, Clem is awesome; he wrote one of my favorite OC ReMixes: "Eternal Descent". You ought to check it out sometime, it's so fun to listen to that. Even though composing by ear is hard, people here compose at all sorts of skills and abilities. Many compose by ear here, including me. Some are better than you, some aren't, but I'm sure you recognize that by now. Please assume that we know what we observe, and if we're mistaken, please try to say it in a nice way, thanks.

Unless I'm mistaken, it seems you adjusted the intro, which actually turned out sounding even better! You've improved a good amount since I last saw you doing Groovy Matoya. The tremolo picking was pretty nice. The key change where the time marker reaches the left edge of the a in "Download" was rather abrupt. Do you think you could try something to lead into that? Perhaps some sort of tuplet-rhythm scale or some connecting strummed chords on the Balalaika? When the time marker reaches the left edge of the d in "Download", the high note played there sounds fake to my ears; it starts to sound more like a soundfont with 2~4 notes sampled per octave, and then repitched. However, at that pitch, it sounds like it's above the range of the Balalaika. It almost sounds like a bell at that point, but it's not a big deal. The arrangement seems to be less repetitive this time around. I don't know if you added variation in the playing style (chords vs. arpeggios, etc.), but it worked, in my opinion. The following key change is less abrupt. The rest of the arrangement is done pretty well, so great job!

Really? Come on, just act like a normal person, please. It's not too much to ask you to speak in a modern, mature way, is it? You asked me to be mature, and I've yet to veer from a mature composure. Concise wording is a great way to express yourself. That way you don't have to use tl;dr: =) That said, here are the things I did like about this remix: - The LFO-rate-changing wobbles are a nice contribution, though I already said that. - The pads you had in the breakdown section were good. They were sufficient for that purpose. However, objectively, it is the case that the low cut on your reverb on your pad is too low, and it creates slightly too much muddiness that preferentially should be lessened. - Miscellaneous glitching effects that I'd rather not time-stamp because they're in many places, and I'm assuming you know what I'm talking about since you wrote this remix. Nitpicks: - The resonance at 1:04 does indeed bother me, and whether or not it bothers other people, I hear it. It's near 16000Hz, and it would please one more person if you looked into it. - The sub bass might be too loud, and it might not be. Do still look into it and then decide later. - The long fade, like I and Gario have said in some wording, disrupt the pacing and would make it difficult for it to pass the OCR judge panel if you were to submit. If you don't plan to submit this, then you can do whatever you want with the arrangement. It does not mean, though, that what I did not mention is out of the question for examination. Please look into your track as if you weren't you (i.e. in an objective way), and see if there's anything you should fix, because everyone has room for improvement. You even said so yourself that there were certain music artists and groups that were better than you, so it's not a bad thing that I am suggesting that you just take a look.

C'mon dude, Gario's comment made me smile, because it was straightforward and precise. Just look into the feedback.