timaeus222   Members

This is a pretty awesome cinematic remix. 1:38 had some creative SFX use too.

It would probably be better to record your own vocals, rather than use possibly copyrighted vocals from an arrangement album.

I think both of you might be confused somehow. Byproduct is talking about splitting the drumkit into several rows of patterns instead of just one set of patterns housing all drum parts. i.e. Splitting into Kick+Snare and HiHat+Ride+Cymbal. I usually only do this if I want to do a buildup that includes a HiHat or something separate coming in, but not often.

True, but almost no one feels very comfortable with a DAW in a few months. A tracker may feel better to you, but it's far more limited than a DAW.

Way too quiet until 0:30. I could barely hear stuff on my headphones. I don't think the volume jump from 0:29 to 0:30 is too sudden, but 0:30 crescendos too quickly into 0:32 and on. 0:39 staccato violins/violas sound mechanical to me. The articulation is fine, but the phrasing and timing sounds static. The background legato cellos are pretty static too from being legato the whole time. This takes a long time to build, IMO. 1:10 flute is buried behind strings. 1:25 sounds a bit overcompressed somehow. 1:36 sounds better than 1:25. A lot of the articulations remain the same even now. 2:27-2:59 is overcompressed. 3:17 harmonies sound a tad cliche and simple to me. The sounds are realistic; you just need to figure out how to use them.

Pretty much every DAW feels overwhelming when you first try it. However, if you've learned how to use a tracker, I'm sure it won't take you that much longer to learn how to use a DAW from a basic standpoint.

I would suggest doing two actual takes, and not using chorus. Two unique takes makes it much more realistic than one take with chorus.

Well, based on what I'm hearing, I believe the type of guitar tone, specifically, is great. It's the bass tone that's holding you back from the power. Try imitating the bass tone you hear here: http://soundcloud.com/isworks/shreddage-2-shredjent-by

Sounding great! The only thing I'd do now is slightly low pass the PWM saws at about 17000~18500Hz with a slope of "2" or "Steep 4" (relative to Steep 6 and Steep . It sounds pretty bright now, especially at 2:42. The tremolo picking guitar is a bit hard to hear behind the backing synths.

I'd like to build on what SnappleMan here has said. I consider sample "quality" to be not only how realistic it is, but also the competency of the timbre. A low quality piano can still fit into a song if it's processed well, like, say, through a little chorus and some hall reverb, then integrated into an 80s retro remix (where's WillRock? ). A synthesized electric sitar (like mine, for example) can be considered good quality if it still evokes the middle-eastern atmosphere every time it's played, whether or not it compares well next to a real electric sitar. The only time when sample competency really matters is when you've established a sound palette for yourself that you like, and your ears find your samples not quite satisfying enough yet. Right then, go find what you believe you need. Once you're satisfied, you're good to go. Just work with what you've found until you know how to use it well, and you've got your sample quality set in soft stone---still time to change your mind. Even if you're satisfied with your sounds, you can always add more to your palette; just depends on whether or not you get good enough to keep wanting more. I wouldn't say the goal for realism is to trick people though. I'd actually call something real if it sounds convincing enough, but whether I'm convinced or not, I haven't been tricked (unless it's something I shouldn't know squat about).

That lead starting at 1:07 is incredibly resonant... not a good thing. 2:01 sweep is way too ear-piercingly bright. 2:03 is sounding overcompressed. Kick has too much bass, likely. 3:02 doesn't make sense. There's nothing to lead into it. 3:54 has way too much treble. 5:08 bass is way too loud. 5:30 was clipping. Even if it's just a "showcase", you do, in fact, have quality issues to worry about. Try not to be too surprised if an OCR Judge says nearly the same thing.

Intro was nice. Not really a fan of the PWM pads at 0:34. Their filters sound pretty cheap and thin, at least until the low pass comes in. 1:16 lead into the drums wasn't all that great. The 808 drums don't really work too well here. Soft acoustic drums might work better. 2:03 bells were OK, but I wasn't really "getting goosebumps", probably because they're a bit dry, thin, and bright. 2:26 drums weren't expected, and are too loud for the background instrumentation. 2:58 synth is low quality to me, especially after the weird pitch drop at 3:02. 3:12~3:33 felt stiff, especially in the drums. Very few humans play a kick drum like that. 3:12~4:16 didn't really have a direction. It was just drums, the PWM pad, and a bass, until 3:59 where there's the same bell from before. I couldn't tell if the bass was leading or the drums were just playing on their own. I think you're missing a lot of instruments that could get you the mood you're going for, but it's getting there.

Solo piano piece had mechanical sequencing. Harmonies and mode shifts were awkward at times, like at 0:26, 0:31, and 0:54. Fast sections emphasize the mechanical feel. Main theme was alright. Again, piano was mechanical in velocities and timing. Some harmonies or intervals were awkward, such as 0:38, 0:43, 0:49, and 0:55. 0:24~0:26 was a nice chord progression, but I barely heard it, as it was split between hands in diads. 0:55 was static with its constant 8th notes in both hands. 1:06 choir felt mechanical with the fast release. Cave song was the best of these three. You got the feel you were going for. Piano is again a bit mechanical, even in a non-solo context. Bells are, too, as well as being low quality. Low end is iffy on the mixing. A tad muddy. 1:05 was nice, but there wasn't any signal into it. Not as majestic as it could be, because of the limited clarity. Choir is a tad buried as a result of little stereo separation or ineffective stereo separation. Strings are unfortunately fake-sounding and sound like a soundfont or some sort of free Kontakt samples. Harmonies are simple (4ths, 5ths, etc.).

That's probably the issue. Step recording, if I'm understanding you correctly, would be defined as recording sections of a remix separately and stopping the recording in between good stopping points. It just so happens I've done that before, but it sounds reasonably realistic (except in some spots that I am actually aware of but don't really want to fix. Yeah, ignore the strings, I know they aren't realistic. ) because I play piano. However, for a person who doesn't play piano, it might not sound as cohesive. In essence, you're playing a different take in every section, so it isn't as natural as you would hope. It would be like you had a different person play each section and then you combined it. Try to treat a combination of separate recording sessions as a cohesive whole. Make each section sound like it's connected to the others, instead of concentrating on getting it to sound right on its own. The most important thing in recording piano is the timing. If you play piano, you can probably figure out the velocities on your own time if you didn't really record velocities well in particular while recording the first time.

Happy le birthday, halc, and may no one spell your name with a capital H.

In my opinion, that view seems narrow-minded. If you know how an instrument should sound, regardless of whether or not you play it, it's not wrong to use it. Sometimes, a person just has the intuition and the instrument really is that easy to think up. I've never played a duduk, nor do I know what it even looks like, but I know how I want it to sound, and I've written a short song that uses a duduk before that I rather like. Synths do also have that phrasing aspect, not just organic instruments. A synth can definitely feel unnatural if its tone begs for expressiveness, like a waveshaped detuned saw wave or something non-generic, and it doesn't have to be a complex tone to warrant attention to detail. Also, even if someone did record a piano song on their MIDI keyboard or even a real piano, if it sounds mechanical, it's either stiffly sequenced or stiffly played.

Oddly enough, I just mix by ear, ignore everything about transients that pertain to the gain, and then turn everything down at the end before it reaches the limiter, until it looks (smexoscope) and sounds right. A bit unorthodox, but it works for me. In most cases I can just look at a song's waveform and tell if the whole thing is too loud or something specific is too loud. In short, once you get good you can just trust your ears, and check later with a waveform viewer.

Having the hi hat on the fourth beat is a very short leadin, and makes the first note pretty jarring. The piano is stepping all over the chorused guitar, and the timpani is sitting on both of them. You need more stereo separation on the guitar and the timpani should be a bit quieter. The piano sequencing is mechanical in the consistent velocities and the timing. It's most evident at 0:04. The backup guitar is much too loud at 0:08. The lead and snare are just buried. As a result, there's a whole bunch of crowding in the midrange. It makes me question what instrument exactly the lead actually is, because it sure isn't a guitar. It's violin-ish, but not a violin. The piano at 0:22 just complicates things. Overall things are pushed way too loudly. Turn it down, and you should be able to tell better what's too loud. I think it's the backing parts, especially the bass, that are louder than the lead guitar.

I don't believe you actually play piano; this arrangement sounds mechanically sequenced, both in velocity and timing. I do hear the reverb though.

I'm not particularly a fan of that kick, but everything else was great. I noticed the strings were a bit plainly sequenced, but assuming you didn't have a thousand-dollar sample library, it was a good way of handling that. I didn't mind the length. I listened through the whole thing without fast forwarding or rewinding.

Sounds like more work than necessary. You shouldn't need to sidechain the snare to the bass or anything else. It just adds a weird pumping effect to the entire song if done badly, and it hurts the transients of other stuff. Just max out the snare volume, control the transient with a transient shaper or a compressor (or both). Then lower the volume, and raise it back up until it barely hits 0dB or so (your preference). Do that while everything else is playing at the same time---it stacks.

Aw yeah. EPICNESS STRIKES AGAIN.

I wanna show you some fun stuff I did using dBlue Glitch v2.0.2. I also just made a very cool sample pack consisting of glitchy drum samples I essentially synthesized in this video, as well as chiptune-y effects, reverses, and more! There are the raw glitched samples as well as some samples that were further processed through external VSTs. 55 samples total. It's free, by the way. REALLY Quick Audio Demo http://mediafire.com/?t2uhbmhrhjbp2sk - Mirror 1 http://4shared.com/zip/MIB3xZG_/timae - Mirror 2

Alright then. Yeah, it was a bit unclear at first. My mistake.

Not bad for your first. The orchestra and choir are very fake though, and the arrangement doesn't stray very far from the original other than 1:24 or areas like that, which is pretty minimalistic. The intro takes too long to lead into the main sections. I would have halved the length of the intro and put more of a progressive instrumentation, as well as reverb on the glock.