timaeus222   Members

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.

As an elaboration to my question, do bass/treble knobs on headphone amps increase the threshold for the frequency input or simply give a shelving or peaking boost? In other words, does it allow me to hear more, or does it make what I hear stronger?

Seriously, you speak like Polonius. Look up the reference, laugh, and enjoy the hilarity of my comparison. But honestly, it's just an attempt to cover up what you really want to say. I can see that you're in denial. I'd rather not say it that way, but it's too apparent not to. BUT BUT BUT... you said... [/sarcasm] Is that not arrogant---what you said? Telling me that I'm "completely mistaken" in everything I said? Creating a forced dichotomy that I can "only" do this and that? Tell me, seriously. The people who "didn't pay any mind to the high-pitch sounds" couldn't hear it. I can, and so I mentioned it. You know the reference I'm talking about when I say "that one high pitched ringtone". Just think about it. So it's my fault that I was born with my ears disliking the abrasiveness of piercing sounds? That's what it sounds like you're writing. I find it a blessing that I can hear it, because I was able to point it out for you to look into, yet you refuse to even consider looking into it. I never said you had to fix it. I just wanted you to check it out. What I don't like about this mix is objective because I'm not basing my opinion on it. Technical advice is not subjective, and my advice, as Gario said, was indeed on the technical side. I wouldn't say you're a dick, in those words or even in that context, phrasing, or implication, so you don't have to mention it in that way.My criticism is "fundamentally special compared to [others'] own personal judgement", as you say, because... it's not. That's just your assumption. I merely said what I observed, like I said before. I'm a very observant person. I mean it when I say the sub bass hinders the clarity of the mix on my audio system (which I deem to not be incredibly suck-tasticular---yes, that's now an unofficial word) in my house on my desk. Clarity is nothing more than the harmonic or tonal distinctness in the song, and that's clearly a problem in my opinion. The clarity being a bad thing is my opinion, but the existence of the hindrance is a true technical mention from what I've observed. There's no reason for me to "blatantly pidgeon-hole" your reasoning, when I'm simply pointing out the problematic logic in your reasoning. All I'm doing is emphasizing what's already there. ...Yup.You don't have a clue how well other people hear from their perspective because you're not them. How can you know what they hear if you're not them? You don't physically have their ears, you don't physically have their level of hearing, and you might not even own their specific brand of headphones. What they say isn't necessarily accurate to the point where you can affirm with absolute certainty that this track or your other tracks are indefinitely, unequivocally perfect. I have zero passionate feelings against this remix, and I'm merely aiming to get you to be more open-minded. Just imagine if Robert Irvine was standing in front of you, saying to you the words you wrote out to me. Would you be pissed? Yeah, probably. But you can see his anger, and you can tell he wants to help you. Now imagine how you sound on the internet, where facial expressions are nonexistent.

Pretty cool soundscape! Sounds chillout to me. Some things I noticed: The pad coming in at 0:04 seems to have come in rather quickly. Can you try fading it in a little bit more gradually? The piano at 0:19 sounds a little bit thin in the timbre, and the velocities could be fine-tuned a bit more to make it sound more realistic, considering how many of the other timbres you have are organic. Sweet vintage bass, btw. The drums fit well, and I think the timbres are polished enough for the most part. The 0:32 pseudo-wobble with the vintage filter is really neat (almost like that of a Yamaha CS-80), and I wish you inserted more of that type of ear-candy. It would make this even more intriguing. At 0:40, although I like the bass sound quite a bit, it's either too upfront (i.e. too loud) or the mids are too boosted. Judging from the timbre and how well it fits in other parts of the mix, I think it's on the loud side just here, in terms of velocities. The little resonant lead at 0:48 is pretty cool too; it's just a little too resonant right now, and hurts my ears a bit. I would hope there's a resonance knob on your synth that you can turn down for that particular sound (pretty much every synth has that knob). The piano at 0:50 is less exposed than it was at 0:19 and 1:17, so even if you didn't do anything with it there, I wouldn't complain, as the mechanical velocities and apparent tone are not so obvious there. Lastly, this should be longer. Why? Because it's awesome.

Whaaaat. I didn't say anything yet? Okay then... This is awesome. I don't know most of these sources at all (you know, aside from Song of Storms and such), but it sounds like a cohesive song to me, so great job! =D

Honestly... +1

Press the Edit button and go into Advanced. Basically, my feedback hinges on cohesiveness and OCR's standards. Last I recall, you intend to get feedback on this, so... yeah. Medleys can really be done in any way you want, but the standards here emphasize that simply going from one song to the next without careful integration leaves room for improvement. They flow well in your mind, but sometimes when you listen to something for too long, you get something called "ear fatigue". Other people who share similar beliefs as the OCR judges would also mention the transitions. I wouldn't say they're "half-assed", but that's just because I want to be nice with my wording. I can say, though, that they can be polished some more, from an objective standpoint, so it's not immediately obvious that it's a shift to the next song. That's true, however there are mixes in existence out there that use very many sources in a cohesive way. How is that possible? Dunno, but check this out, it uses 11. It's great that you want to hear solutions, but without really knowing the behind-the-scenes of how you approached your mix, it's pretty difficult to give specific advice. We're trying our best! There are loads of approaches to particular aspects of production, just as there are many different solutions to many particular math problems. We can give you possible solutions though.

I'll pretend you were aiming to be funny. On a technical sidenote, Roland TR-808 percussion is used in hip hop music (and electro music), and I could hear you used an 808 snare (just check the filename). It doesn't automatically mean hip hop, but it's one aspect that makes up that genre.

I wasn't attempting anything. You are making a big deal for no reason. I'm halfway across the world. Are you really going to argue with me forever just because I said you had too much low end ambience on your hip hop remix?

Because it truly was made in a way that hindered my listening experience. No one truly likes everything, but I still try. I don't like muddy sub bass, and any producer who can hear it would notice it. High resonance is not something that people would perceive as cool. Would you like it if I played a high pitch squeal in your ear for 10 seconds? I wouldn't, and I don't think you would appreciate that either. Hence, it's not a pleasant after-effect to have in your mix, and therefore, I had suggested you to find the thin frequency remnant that is the cause for it. The way you wrote that, it just appears arrogant to me, no matter how much benefit of the doubt I give you. I was hoping to have a civil discussion with you, but I would like you to tone down the abrasiveness first. Also, I do realize what atonality is, and I like it when it's done tastefully, as it was in your case in certain sections of this remix; just not all of it indubitably. I surmise that you've been sharing your music with people whose musical abilities are a mystery to you, so giving them such high praise when it comes to evaluating your music is risky. If you're sorry it hurts my ears, then it would have been a nice gesture to look into the resonance, but you are insisting that it isn't a big deal. If I hear it every time, it's a big deal to me. If I heard it in the morning and not in the evening, then I wouldn't have said anything. The girls you had listen to this probably had headphones that don't have a frequency range that reaches above 12000Hz. Headphones below the price of $40 or so often can't. The resonance I hear is near 16000Hz. My judgment was indeed non-biased, objective, and honest because I didn't say "You suck, I don't like this", "These notes are terrible", "This song is terrible", or anything close to that. No, I just said comments such as "This quality I hear in this mix hinders the clarity and makes it hard for me to truly enjoy the harmonic or tonal texture in this" and "This frequency range is overboosted, hurting my ears, so try looking into that".Yeah, you are missing something. The sub bass is clouding the clarity of the mix, but you seem to be looking past that as if it were not even there, when in fact it's pretty evidently there. You're asking a lot for me to listen to an 8 minute song, tolerate the sub bass and high resonances, and sift through it for source usage. Look at this, for example. This illustrates how I would feel trying to find source in this. The presence of the sub bass---the fact that it's there---obscures the important elements in the mix, and makes it difficult for me to give actual feedback, so that's the only thing I can really say right now. I was listening at the exact same volume I always listen at for anything I give feedback about. Don't overassume or believe I'm being mean. That said, you remind me of Polonius from Hamlet, who is rather funny. Dat Olde English.

There's no stalking involved here. I'm simply the same person as the person who commented on your soundcloud. Don't assume the absurd conclusion is immediately the right conclusion. Clearly, you had left trolling comments on my soundcloud, and so I deleted them because they weren't true. Then I checked your mix out of curiosity and you deleted my comment, which I posted intentionally to help you. You're making a big deal out of nothing.

It's constructive if it's objectively helpful, and it was. You just seem to be a bit close-minded, and your last post does exhibit some immaturity. You said, and I quote for extra emphasis, "obviously your just upset that you added too much reverb on one of your crappy mix. Dont even try to "troll" me on here now. you seem upset that you cant comment on my soundcloud anymore so you had to waste time in your life to log on overclock fourms just to "respond"." I'm not upset at all. You deleted my comment on soundcloud, so I left another one here on OCR, one that you can't delete and just forget about because you're mad. It's an objective observation that is rather important to look into. What you posted on soundcloud was indeed trolling. You said stuff such as "Your mix is crap. FAIL." and "Too much mud. FAIL." a total of 5 times, when in fact, the first example here was out of your own retaliation, and the second one was in a mocking wording in reference to how I said this mix was muddy due to low end ambience. It's clear you were mad, but you obviously didn't need to be. I have no issue with "not being able to comment on your soundcloud anymore". Your attitude doesn't make me want to.

It's funny that you picked Gario for that statement. I would have said "pull a zircon and do it in 8 hours!". =D

I'm sorry to say I can't agree to that, because I truly am being non-biased in my constructive criticisms. Regardless of what genre this is, I don't dislike it merely because it is this genre. I don't mind the style in the least. It's the muddy sub bass, the high resonance in the sub bass, and the hindered clarity in the mix because of that. If I can't hear a song's notes clearly, it doesn't allow me to truly enjoy it. The music that made it in the industry with muddiness in the low end puzzles me sometimes, but in the end it wasn't about the music. It was about how the artist networked well. Some people can't hear or tolerate the high pitches. It's normal, but everyone is different. Your threshold seems to be higher. I'm sure you're aware of that one high pitched ringtone. It's like that. This time, it's not a slip in EQ, but an overlook on the extra thin harmonics that appear. I understand how and why you did the LFO-rate-changing wobbles and such, but the audio frequency at which the resonances appear is grating, and there is nothing subjective about that. If it hurts my ears, it hurts my ears. Don't worry, I can handle being mature. It's not an issue you have to worry about. We can have a good discussion any day, and all that will happen is that we learn more.

1. If you look at some of the things I said, most things I said are simply what I observe, and I'm a very observant person. The resonance, for example, is there, but not super obvious. 2. I do have a good amount of experience in the topic of reverb, and I wouldn't mind giving you a hand on that. 3. I've produced music that I can objectively say is actually good. I've pinpointed the moment things turned around for me to be February 2013, and I haven't changed my mind about that date. This is the remix that made me say so. 4. You can trust me when I say the people of OCR are sincere and honest, as well as straightforward and precise when necessary. 99.99% of the time, we say helpful or constructive things in the WIP forum. 5. I keep my comments objective about 80% of the time, and I usually edit out purely subjective comments. I don't love retro music to the ends of the earth, nor do I dislike it. It's fun, but it's not my favorite type of music. I generally like ambient, dubstep, chiptune, big beat, chillout, classical, funk, jazz, and a whole bunch of other stuff. Retro can sound cool, but again, it's not my favorite. However, I do still like it a lot, and really bring music in general to the next level. I'm actually not particularly biased towards or against any genres of music in any spiteful way. I try to find something good about everything I listen to, and I did in your case too. I didn't enjoy this a lot in the objective way, which hindered my enjoying this in the subjective way. There were indeed parts that I didn't like, but there were certainly parts I did like. It's fine if you like what you do, but it's not a guarantee that others will like it, whether it's the notes you chose or the current state of the mixing. The atmosphere that I complimented definitely had potential, and perhaps one of the only things holding it back were the low cut on the reverb and time you can take, for the fun of it, to craft and polish the timbre of the pad even more and make it more evolving. I slightly turned away from this because of the muddiness in the low end, but it wasn't a huge deal. The delay on the snare was 90% objective because it isn't often I hear delay on a snare; it's uncommon because it's not entirely practical. Yes, there's delay in real life in the form of echoes and room ambience, but that amount was too much. It made it hard to hear the other possibly interesting material in the remix. Other than that, the sub bass really was obscuring the melody for me, and it made it difficult for me to listen to this remix in general. Anything with loads of sub bass to this level is hard to listen to, whether it's well-written musically or not. I mean it when I say there's mud that hinders the clarity of the mix. Clarity is very important. Mud wasn't an issue for the people you mentioned, perhaps because they honestly couldn't hear it, or they are confused as to how to describe it. In a completely non-offensive way, some people are musically experienced, and some have yet to reach that point. Try not to take that as arrogant, because I'm not trying to be.

Oddly enough, it came out pretty much exactly how I intended, minus the apparent octave (I couldn't figure out why playing lower notes didn't do anything new); it was supposed to sound like a "YAH" bass, which it did; it's probably just a bit exaggerated from what you had heard in other contexts, but the vowel-like characteristic is there. Just for perspective, here's the same "YAH" 'bass' with the resonance automated. It shifts from a very thin pulse wave to the "YAH", then back to a thin pulse wave. It's a very weird transformation that I really didn't expect. As before, I cut down the treble with a shelving EQ so your ears are protected. The generic wobble is caused by modulation in cutoff, actually, but in this special case, with FM synthesis, the frequency can be modulated to create a different vowel-like sound. The bitcrushing combined with FM synthesis creates that first sound. The FM depth modulation basically visually compresses the sound. i.e. it modifies the frequency, hence "Frequency Modulation". That creates the vowel modulation aspect. The waveshaping adds a bit of distortion to the sound, and gets it a bit closer to an oscillator sync timbre, in a sense, if you play it in the right octave. Then the bitcrushing (decimation in particular) visually makes the waveform sharper (and grittier tone-wise), and makes that "YAH" sound more apparent. In fact, without the bitcrushing, it sounds like this, which is much more plain. Lots of synth work is mainly experimentation, from what I've tried and seen. I haven't found any videos covering "middle ground", but I've found to be a great resource to take in and re-apply to your own synth. If I understand correctly, Howard Scarr is the one who is doing these tutorials (not Urs Heckmann)---and he does label where he's at and what he's intending to do, so that might help some more.

I started when I was 16. Of course, my music kinda sucked until I had about 1 year and 10 months of experience. By then I had archived a bunch of my old terrible songs, and from that point on I put loads of attention to detail on my future songs and remixes, and I'm pretty happy with where I'm at right now. I didn't really compose outside of DAW work, but I did have 8+ years of piano experience prior to composing, which helped, and I'm 18 now.

I hate to disappoint you, but the mere fact that you say it's "The True Remix" and that you "began [your] journey to justify this [source] after working endlessly on your I-told-you-so-project" doesn't automatically make it the best remix for this song. Just something to think about. Some honest thoughts: 1:04 has a weird thin resonance from the sub bass that is ear-piercing. Perhaps it's near 16000Hz or so. Additionally, it would help if you high passed the sub bass at around 25Hz. You don't really need anything below that anyways, so it'll help save headroom, not to mention the sub-30Hz frequencies are really grating in excessive sustained usage. 2:08 had interesting drum timbres, but I personally think the snare could do without the entirely audible delay. I could imagine it without the delay, and it would still be at the same level of objective quality. It would also accent some of the LFOs and glitching you did a bit later. Nice atmosphere at 2:42. Be careful on the low end there. It seems like there's some low end ambience from a reverb on the low pads. The fading at 3:32 doesn't really contribute to the overall arrangement flow, however. 4:00 sounds like the end, and then an entirely new part fades in, and it doesn't connect. Overall, I'm not really hearing much source very clearly (or the melody) because the sub bass is cluttering things up quite a bit. Keep working on it, as it's got room for improvement.