timaeus222

This ReMix was loads of fun, and I really enjoyed working on it with AngelCityOutlaw. This is a crazy effort, and I do believe ACO's guitar and arrangement contributions really tied this together very well. You just can't get that heaviness to the palm mute chugs with a sample library. This will be submitted soon after receiving a Mod Review, and this particular SoundCloud version won't be updated, so the final version would be on OCR. ReMix: http://soundcloud.com/timaeus222/lets-upset-a-troid Source: Looking for feedback on sub bass and high treble in particular, if possible. Source Breakdown: 0:00.00 - 0:04.40 = Original 0:04.40 - 0:22.00 = Source (0:00.50 - 0:12.98) 0:22.00 - 0:39.56 = Source Variation (0:12.98 - 0:30.04) 0:39.56 - 1:14.68 = Source (0:30.04 - 0:55.58) [in bassline, with a little variation on that as it progresses] 1:14.68 - 1:26.39 = Source (1:39.24 - 2:12.26) 1:26.39 - 2:13.21 = Source (2:12.26 - 2:29.49) 2:13.21 - 2:24.92 = Original 2:24.92 - 2:33.71 = Source (0:30.04 - 0:55.58) 2:33.71 - 2:36.64 = Original 2:36.64 - 2:52.73 = Source (0:30.04 - 0:55.58) 2:52.73 - 3:27.84 = Source (0:12.98 - 0:30.04) 3:27.84 - End = Source (0:00.50 - 0:12.98) 213.03 / 232.07 = 91.8% source, at most, minus maybe 20~40% for variation and obscurities. I'm being veeeeery flexible.

For some reason, this is lacking in treble quite a bit, so it sounds pretty narrow to me. The intro strings could have more harmonies going on, or at least some low end power with a note one octave down. The strings that lead at 0:32 tend to fall behind, so maybe you can stitch together notes from different articulation banks? The piano's phrasing is a bit strange, as well. Every chunk of four chords sounds mechanical, and I'd suggest the second and third chords to be just singular notes. 1:02 flute has the problem of mechanical articulations too. If only you had legato on it. 1:18 harp should be EQ'd out some more. There's a lot of residual low mids that clutter the mix, and you can see that the song got a whole lot louder when the harp came in, if you look at the waveform, but I can really only hear the harp playing. More open chords on the strings afterwards would help a lot too. The articulations are somewhat passable, but the harmonies make them sound thin and are the main problem. 2:04 cello in the right speaker is unusually loud compared to the staccato strings on the left speaker. Feels pretty dry, too. This does sound a lot better though.

Rush Riders of the Sky! Orion, Cosmic Sounds, me. Refers to Rush, the transforming robotic dog.

Pretty fun track there! You know, if you're looking for someone to master your tracks, I'd be up for it someday.

Okay, this might seem pretty hard to distinguish at first, but since it's easier to distinguish if the worse thing in a series comes last, I put the humanized one first and the stiff one second. Naturally, I played the humanized one, and the stiff one has exactly perfect rhythm and flat velocities. https://www.box.com/s/vg1qxcnbc1wx6vpdmrm4

Some of the plucked strings are rhythmically off, and the piano chord notes being scrunched together make them sound muddy. A tad too much reverb, but nice effort overall.

If you want, I can give you a before-and-after example of mechanical piano versus more humanized piano.

Nice atmosphere on Crypt and Mausoleum. You might be able to tell by now that the piano is mechanical. Might take a bit long to build up and progress. There's some weird boominess in The Happy Circle that shows up at 0:12 and then doesn't come back. Otherwise, aside from preferentially getting the velocities fixed and adding adequate reverb, it sounds good. The 3/4 RPG Melody has some sub bass issues mainly at 0:17 and on. It's cluttering up the soundscape. As before, the piano velocities and timing are mechanical.

People have said Cubase and ProTools work well with MIDI. I would say FL also works pretty well with MIDI. Interesting benefits: - Ghost channels help you to see notes from piano rolls belonging to other instruments as you write. Enable with Alt+V. Great for textural harmonies. - Horizontally stretch/compress a selection of notes proportionally (right Shift). Useful if you want to clone a pattern and adjust to a different time signature or tempo or something. - Can easily do meticulous MIDI event edits and sequencing because of window resize and keyboard shortcuts (Alt+Click drag for smooth event edits, and Alt+Shift+Click drag for non-quantized notes).

Orion is "Member C" in Cosmic Sounds's and my team. For a team name, how about... The Knight Stalkers (Knight Man)? After a quick google search it appears to also be the name of a scenario paintball team.

Well, I have an idea of the technical approach to this. I don't know if your synths can arrange modules serially, but this is what I was doing: Start with a detuned saw wave (try 10+ voices) on an oscillator. Adjust envelope for attack and release as necessary. Put in an FM oscillator in serial, and do maybe 80% volume on the FM osc. If you have a stereo width knob, make it completely wide. After both of those, add a low pass filter in serial and adjust the cutoff. I'd say around 78% of the way between 20Hz and 20kHz, so about 14~16kHz is where you should stop it. Add some stereo ping pong delay and some reverb with some tweaks. That's the pad layer. The top layer sounds like a bell-like sound with a reverse effect mixed in at about 50~70%, lots of delay with a very unique characteristic (as in, specific to particular plugins, possibly), and (of course) reverb. I think NastyDLA MKII can do a pretty accurate delay for this ("modulated panorama" preset). Not sure on the top layer synthesis. I don't think it's actually a bell though, and I think the major component of it is the plugin used for the effects. It's probably a plucky sound with some complex harmonic variation on the sine wave (you might actually need to draw your own wavetable, or just find one that is close in tone. Alternatively I think you could layer sine waves of different wavelengths, but that's too much work), using slightly slower attack than a normal pluck (maybe 5%), with its dry mix lowered to de-emphasize the attack, and the wet mix at around 90%. Example

Thanks for the comments, guys! I had a lot of fun with Shreddage II as a lead.

I just finished this recently for a friend's request. Took me about 9 days with breaks. First time I used pick scrapes and neck slides for something other than leadins. Haven't done anything Rock in a while. Basically my first orchestral implementation too. ReMix: http://soundcloud.com/timaeus222/air-strike Source: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hkar2nHOsK8 Shreddage II, X, and Bass really owned this. ISW is da bess. =D

I sang Bohemian Rhapsody twice for performances before... this is sooooo Queen. Especially the guitar lead at 5:03. 6:03 was ASFDASFDASGAGHFSDG. This deserves over 9000 everything.

Has this happened with any other albums, and are you sure you're searching in the right folder (or are you just searching on "Computer" to be safe?)?

Sounds a little like Shreddage 1? Maybe I'm mistaken. The somewhat random pauses to add in a little lead arpeggio disturb the pacing a little, and I think it would be better to leave the rhythm guitar still playing while that happens. That said, the whole song is pretty short, so this probably isn't super serious. However, this would definitely benefit from a good quality compressor on the drums and some sort of saturation plugin on the guitars. The bass is not very audible to me. Usually the bass provides a distinct contribution to the tone, but I'm not hearing that in this. The mixing isn't super great, but the ideas are there, and on an arrangement level it's pretty enjoyable.

Well, I'm saying that if all you do is hip hop, let's say that the audience you aim to appeal to doesn't like generic hip hop very much. If that's the case, then you need more than that. Try to expand your repertoire, so you can appeal to a larger audience. If you limit yourself to one style only, you're limiting your creativity and your "reach". If you look at some of the remixes on OCR, try to classify them in one genre. For the most part, people just can't. I'm not saying a hip hop track can't be creative, but what you've done so far with this track in particular is not (offense not intended), mainly because the "meat" of the song (the non-percussive areas) was made by someone else. If this was entirely sequenced by you though, then that would have gotten me past the "please give more effort!" line. This is an example of a creative hip hop track. It's still hip hop, but it infuses some RnB flavor to add to the textural content, and there is original non-percussive instrumental re-composition. That said, maybe mixing with Adobe Audition is not the most efficient way to go. I have that, but I never actually do mixing with it because that's not its most useful feature. I just use it for finalizing, such as for smooth fade-outs, normalizing, etc. The downside to using Audition is that it isn't made for actual composition; it's mainly a final mixing program for recorded material.

Sounds like a beach house song. Instrumentation makes sense; it's just the instrument quality that is a bit on the weak side. The claps in the intro are a bit mechanical in terms of velocities, and could also benefit from some wide panning (stereo delay with really short delay times). 0:06 toms feel backwards. Naturally, toms are panned from right to left for tom rolls. 0:07 lead is nice, but it needs some phrasing on the velocities, as well as some expression modulation (vibrato). 0:22 could benefit from a soft cymbal to connect the two sections. I notice the calliopes are widely panned, so you know how to do it, I think. At 0:37, the two leads are fighting for attention. Try panning them further apart from each other for more clarity. 0:53 adding in that guitar clutters things up some more. Maybe that panning will alleviate that guitar's position in the center. Drums at 1:07 are a bit mechanical. Try adjusting the velocities a bit more while imagining a real person playing it. 1:20 snare roll is the most evidently mechanical, for instance. Any section with those claps, like at 1:53, feel slightly mechanical on the second clap on every pair of claps. Guiro is a tad dry. Fun atmosphere though, and pretty decent production.

Nice, the brass did sound pretty familiar, so I was almost going to ask if it was EWQL.

I think it might be as simple as a modification of "A Fistful Of Dollars".

I did consider that; however, my intention was to give a few crits, not get it ready for OCR. Sampling is, nicely put, "not using your own work". If you want to write a remix, it's better to re-compose, rather than taking someone else's work and improvising over it. Hence the copyright issues in the past with sampling. That said, my point is, make it interesting and make something that you do actually believe a lot of people will like. A lot of people will tell you to do what you like to do, but if that continues to lead you nowhere, that's a problem. Basically, being completely formulaic all the time isn't always a good thing. Be creative and do something outside the box. I heard some ukelele dubstep today. I was a bit skeptical of it, but it wasn't all that bad, and it's new for sure.

In a way, the pictures remind me of Ys. Mixing is clean and I think it's at a good complexity. Yeah, it does sound like an opening theme.

Haha, that keytar looks so fun to play. =D

Feels like I'm trying to walk down a dark alley, when I get jumped, all hell breaks loose, and it's time to take on three people at once.

Well, alright then. Pretty slammin' stuff. I wouldn't say I love it, but it's still pretty awesome in its own right.