timaeus222

Tender Lovin' Care and Musical Instrument Digital Interface Control Change.

That guy 10char Here are my reviews btw. Lights Out SuperiorX: Nice, you had a similar idea as me on the wah EP. I was gonna do a wah clavi, but I went with an EP eventually. I'm missing some of the tines frequencies, though, since you went for 100% mix rather than a 50-50 signal split. Mixing is generally good. Bass is a little muddy, and sometimes treble is ever so slightly too much. Integration of sources was pretty smooth. Nice slap bass and soft arp. Smooth atmosphere. From Dark to Light Sir_NutS: Nice, this is what I wanted to do at first, if I had a mic lol. Michael Jackson and Daft Punk influence, it seems. Ever so slightly too much reverb, not a big deal. No major EQ issues. Smooth mix. My only other nitpicks are probably that the vocals could have used some vibrato from the vocoding modulator to go the extra mile, and the vocoded tone is lacking a good amount of clarity (which, believe it or not, can possibly be better). Chilled Duck KgZ: May be just me, but I don't like it when leads sound like they're sidechained. Production is pretty smooth, though there is still room for improvement as there isn't much content above 16kHz aside from the middle section's lead. Preferentially, some leads could be improved tonally and frequency-wise, but I'm not bothered by anything else, other than the title. This isn't chilled. It's like, Party Duck. You know, if there was a Party Man. Spicy Icy ectogemia: Yeah, pretty funky, but to me more in the Blues Brothers sense than the Joshua Morse sense because of the brass section. Instrumentation was pretty cool, though some transitions were a tiny bit iffy, such as 1:17. For example, a way you could have connected the section at 1:17 and the section that came before it was doing a neck slide on the bass combined with a reverse and regular cymbal. Sometimes the organ note variations at the 1:17 section were written for the sake of variation rather than progressiveness (the result of just replacing old notes with speedier notes), so at times it didn't really flow. It seems you have a harmon mute there, which was EQed pretty well, actually. Other brass sequencing was pretty solid, and sources were used nicely. I liked your fretless bass, too. The Sky Demon Phonetic Hero: Brave effort. Staccato strings fell behind the tempo a bit. You didn't keep with the cinematic theme so much though, which was to your benefit ultimately. Some leads were a little buried, and attention was sometimes drawn away from the leads by the rapid drums for me. Chiptune section was just a bit too quiet in comparison to the other sections, but not a big deal. I tend to be bothered by sync leads sometimes, so don't mind that I didn't like its usage here. Groundpowuh therex: The only full chiptune track here. I'd say the notes are great. The only thing I'd suggest is a fuller atmosphere. Sometimes it feels bare, even for chiptune. If you want to use few instruments at times, I'd suggest you compensate with frequency distribution or reverb. Still a pretty well done arrangement. Ragebot Massacre Ghetto Lee Lewis: Sounds like you have a woofer on-hand. Reverb is a bit much on the low mids, and the saw leads are pretty grating sometimes, especially the supersaw-type of leads. Mixing gets pretty loud at 0:46. Some sounds are pretty cool. 1:46 is pretty neat, though the rising arp on the left was a bit rigid. Pretty heavy stuff, almost too heavy, but I'm sure you'll notice it. Burning Disaster Esperado: Pretty good effort. A little quiet, but still pretty cool. Transitions between sources are iffy. Oh hey, some CSD was gated and glitched. The instrumentation worked pretty well together too, good job. Dr. Wilyarty Stage 1 Hakstock: Oh yeah, really balls to the wall here. Noticeable overcompression. Good news is that I can hear the leads. Some instruments and sometimes the drums are buried by the reverb. Some leads could get more attention to detail, just preferentially. The Postman Always Rings Twice Parah Salin': Transitions were pretty iffy, but interesting use of sound effects to do so. Bass tone does not suit the notes it plays. Brass falls behind the tempo a little sometimes. Grime Mr. L: Slight timing issues in the EP, chill atmosphere. Tiny bit bare. Seems to doodle a bit sometimes, but pretty cool entry. I could kind of spot Moliarty's Tower, but it may be a bit too liberal in interpreting that source. Forceful Typhoon Tower Sterling Ortiz: Timings were off a lot, especially between the static bass and the leads. Lots of reverb decreases the clarity. Somewhat random source insertion. Good effort. A Fowl Knight Trism: Really loud frequency-wise and generally reverb-less, but giving you the benefit of the doubt. Nice arpeggios, and great energy. I think you paid a lot of attention to minor details rather well. Ending was strange though. Awkward silence, and then really loud and dry lead. Some stereo imaging is pretty cool, but because of the frequency overboosts, it isn't as cool as it could have been, but the gesture was there, so good job.

Good remake. Objectively it could use more TLC on articulations and MIDI CC for the fake orchestral instruments, but it's just a remake, so it doesn't matter too much.

Like before, 2:46 was a good spot to end on. The rest is another repeat, of 1:07 this time. Nice smooth jazz.

Errrr that is stretching (thankfully only one part of) the page. You might want to consider shrinking it or linking it. Yep. Hard to believe, but sometimes I find (or make) synthesized E. Pianos, for example, that are more fitting to (or even better for) particular remixes of mine than an E. Piano library I have for Kontakt. Another example... a synthesized electric sitar I had created one day fit into my Yu-Gi-Oh ReMix better than EWQL Ra's electric sitar, after I tried substituting in both to compare. I remember zircon talking on KVR in 2007 about EWQL Ra's sitar not being all that great before working on Sitar Nation, but the fact is that it was sampled, and samples are *usually* better than synthesized versions. =)

No, I'm not comparing myself to him. Though he is one of the best producers in this competition, he isn't the best producer in this competition. I'm not going to say who it is, however, he still has room for improvement in production and arrangement, as does everyone. I bolded what my points earlier had expressed. +100 Give them more than 30 seconds. Give them the whole song. I know it's a competition, but if you listen to one great song fully and one almost great song partially, the almost great song will tend to seem "almost good" or "decent". Be fair. That is all.

"you gave his ambiguity the benefit of the doubt." is what I got. The rest is my additional comments. Information in this case means a story, or auditory information, like arrangement content, ambience, head-bang or not, dance or not, etc.

What I'm getting from this is that you gave his ambiguity the benefit of the doubt. While 30 seconds is long to the listener, 30 seconds is not that long to the producer. To be able to fit engaging content in 30 seconds might actually be pretty difficult for some people, and if I were to take KgZ literally, it would be the case that he means the first 30 seconds (which apparently seems to be very close to what he said). I wouldn't just listen to 30 seconds and quit if I'm not interested in the first 30 seconds. What if the intro makes use of long, well-selected pads that convey 30 seconds' worth of information in 50? I would take Gario's approach and skip around a little first if I ever was somewhat skeptical about the intro. Then if I notice something really cool, I'd go back to see how it connects. Regardless, I still listen to the whole track in the end, and I give everyone a fair listen if their track is listenable---listenable being not ear-splittingly painful the whole entire time.

Minor production issues aside, I'm really diggin' this. This is an extremely smart arrangement with some smooth harmonic modulation.

I don't know how 0:50 got messy again. It was fine before, and now the snare is indeed buried again. Did you add more bass or sub bass content? I'd agree that ultimately, the arrangement when deconstructed has cool parts on its own, but when combined as it is right now, it doesn't sound like a cohesive piece.

Good start. The hard thing about this source is the lack of a memorable melody. Try to start off with a conservative arrangement, then vary it up as you go.

Yeah, he's a faggot for being an awesome OCR judge and moderator. Woohoo. Don't get butthurt because someone was being straightforward with you, and people will treat you better.

That I'd whole-heartedly agree with. It's not as much of a grey area as it seems. Opinion and subjectivity are grey areas, while technical comments and objectivity are grey areas. Opinion is purely based on personal preference. Objectivity focuses on technical aspects, like production, arrangement complexity, and arrangement flow. Subjectivity focuses on personal opinion that is slightly based on objective analysis, like arrangement flow, drum programming, and sound selection. As you could see, arrangement flow was something that was inside the grey area of objectivity and subjectivity, but I personally haven't run into very many of those situations.

Maybe it's the vague wording, but putting the producer at fault indefinitely, as it seems, is, in fact, very narrow-minded. I feel like blaming them all the time is just disrespect. If they put hard work into something, the least we could do is commend their effort and reward them by listening to their song further than just 30 seconds before making a solid judgment. If we hadn't done that all this time, few people would feel motivation to get good. It's not the producer's non-incriminating fault that people don't like their music as opinion; it's only their non-incriminating fault if people truly don't like their music objectively---from a technical standpoint. We don't control opinion to a good enough extent very often at all. "Fault" is just a terrible word without saying if it means "a reason" or "your problem". /offtopic

Maybe they should be, but the love for their own music might make them a bit oblivious to outside negative feedback, not to mention it's better to write what you love rather than what people love and to let them like what they want to like. If you don't like what you wrote, where do you get motivation to keep going? Also, five bucks = exaggeration of 2 cents.

The production for me wasn't as tight. I'm not getting as heavy of a sound as you seemed to want to portray. I know this is a sample library, but it's still heavier. Maybe it's because they're riffing on a low A string, but it's still the case that the bass is really refined. If you listen to that and then go back to this, it's much less heavy in your remix. I know sample libraries were made to be perfect, but sometimes live can sound better than sample libraries. Decent production, but it does have room for improvement. Your drums appear to be lacking some treble above 16kHz, the kick is not coming through very well, and neither are the toms. 1:38 is extremely muddy. I can barely hear a kick there, which shows me that you're using a hard knee limiter in digital software, meaning you have the resources to get this fixing going! The piano at 1:50 would be called out for sure on its mechanical velocities and timing, and maybe even on its sample quality if this were to be submitted. As far as I'm concerned, 3:00 is your ending. The rest is nothing more than a repeat, and you wouldn't lose much content as 3:00 is a pretty good length anyways.

I'm not against your view necessarily, but the phrase "full control" might not be entirely accurate, and I just want you to be aware of that. You, specifically, may have full control, maybe, but not everyone does. If the producer doesn't have the skill or knowledge to make anything other than the annoying type of dubstep wobbles (back to that example), and they don't know where to look to improve because it's outside their realm of knowledge (which is the case with many people, in the sense of searching skills), they don't have "full control" of how the patch sounds as a result. Any producer who loves what they do may or may not be completely "aware of the consequences that people might perceive" differently. That's my five bucks. /pun

Just wanted to shed some light on this: There are times when people can't express why they like or dislike something. I did a speech in my speech class in April or so (redundancy is redundant) about music appreciation and I started with a survey comprising of these questions: Who likes music because... 1. It's catchy 2. It's cool 3. You just like it, and you don't have a clue why All of those questions were answered with a hand raise from at least three people. That's why it's so hard to get people to like details that are interesting to the composer or producer. Here's a crude example: Dubstep wobbles. The difference between a good one and a bad one is the amount of resonance and the choice of whether or not to include a large amount of wild pitch bends (you get what I mean). Some people would just say "okay, moving on" if there's excessive resonance. Others would say "Hey, this isn't that bad. Not sure why, but eh, I'll keep listening for a bit" if there isn't. The important thing is that they can't express why. So then if that were the deciding factor of a liked or disliked song, it really would be the audience's non-incriminating fault, because ultimately the producer didn't have a problem with publishing it like that. I've never liked Skrillex and I never will, but it's not because I'm against dubstep, it's because I'm against his style of dubstep.

Yes, but the issue here is that you said the producer or composer is "always, always, always" at fault, even if people hate a great song subjectively because of the genre (that's what I said in my last post, and you said "Yeah. Completely."). In this case, it would be the people's "fault" (though it should not ever be said in such an incriminating way) for being biased against the genre in the first place, because the composer did a great job conveying that genre, and purely on opinion, that's what the people thought. That's how a few dubstep producers feel when they get an OC ReMix passed, for example.

Aside from very minor nitpicks on sound selection (some leads), really well done on this. I almost thought you were going to go Battle Network 3 at 1:58, but it wasn't in the source list.

So then, if the buildup is ultimately awesome objectively in an OC ReMix and the judges fawn over it, but is in a genre hated by many people subjectively, it is then the producer or composer's fault that the people hate the song? Something's wrong...

Absolutely. If you really want to show this compo some love, give the entries a fair chance and listen to them in full! Then I guess your standards are too high for OCR then, because I find zircon, for example, to be a complete and utter genius, and he still does 1 minute buildups sometimes, like in . It could be boring for some people, as it gets DnB at 0:51, but is ambient with rich bass in the intro, still with very interesting sounds. It's not about wanting to listen to them again, in this particular compo. It's about finding enough highlights in the remixer's effort in arrangement, production, and enjoyability to make you want to vote for them. It feels to me like your standards are outside the realm of this compo (whether higher or lower it doesn't matter).

It's not immediately obvious (sine waves are sneaky), but mine did. And at the 32 second mark a more obvious cameo of my Robot Master theme comes. If that's your criteria---production primarily, and if everyone were to use the same criteria, then no amateur would ever get voted for, no matter how amazing their arrangement is. Is that what you want? A completely badass arrangement undermined by production to lose to a downright terrible arrangement highlighted by good production and sound design?

Okay, now that I never realized I could do.

That's true, but with automation you can also evolve the timbre over time, rather than having a rigid tone the whole time. Automation helps a lot with progression, and it's independent of the synth phase/position. I believe you're talking about Multi-Stage Envelope Generators, which are still just a form of shrunken automation.