timaeus222

Very fun remix here! I can notice the staccato strings need a little work, but other than that, solid production!

I feel like the wave sfx and the wurlitzer are too center-panned, so everything feels cluttered especially at 1:44. Recommended to be wider. Waves could also have a little more reverb, and be more behind, if you know how to move it to the back. 1:15 could have a reverse cymbal. Cymbal is dry-ish. 1:23 has no transition into a pseudo-DnB section.

From what you said, I would argue it's the textures and arrangement that are the problem, not the sample quality. What you're using has the capability of good quality sounds, but a problem could be your choice of sounds to combine and how you arrange them. Other than that... the song is private.

Seems a little liberal to me. Could be around 60~70% source. Yes, double track that rhythm guitar. Piano felt mechanical, just like last time.

YEAHHHHHHHH. Now I'm excited.

Wait, so have Shreddage and Shreddage X been combined into Shreddage 1, now?

TruePianos is really good too. http://sites.fastspring.com/truepianos/product/truepianos?member=new&option=show_contents I honestly love that although it's entirely physical-modeling-synthesized, it sounds so realistic, and it comes with 4 sets of around 8 different tones. I've been able to use it for plenty of electronic, hardcore, and classical genres so far.

The fire crackling is fine as long as it's more obvious, but if you want to scrap it, that's fine. It doesn't really add anything musically by itself, but it contributes to the backstory. You can be more liberal if it's still recognizable, but think about it. If you heard something that was "based on" a source section somewhat liberally, would you recognize it as the source either by accident or on purpose? It works well to start a little conservative and get a little more liberal as you go, then back to conservative so that the variations you make are more easily detected.

The strings still sound fake. See if you can open the song up in a waveform editor that shows you the exact times, because I am going to time stamp this to the thousandth place quite a bit. 0:00.599 and 0:01.375 - String velocity should be lower 0:01.586 and 0:02.001 - String velocity should be higher, and the second instance should be a lower velocity than the first 0:01.790 and 0:02.201 - String velocity should be lower And so on. You need to phrase your strings so that they sound as natural as possible with what you have, or use something else that is more customizable. Right now... I notice it every time. It's very distracting. 0:06.906 - Fast percussion is OK, but it needs some room reverb to accommodate for there being a lower reverb threshold on headphones than speakers. i.e. Speakers make things sound slightly better since they play sound into a real room. Headphones need that slight ambience so things don't sound so dry, but that amount of ambience can be a good balanced amount so that it isn't making the speaker experience too much more reverbed. I'm questioning the rather random low pass at 0:28.395. It was really sudden, and I didn't notice it happened until 0:30.697, when a resonant low pass swept up. 0:31.549 - The bass that comes in here has way too much treble, and is way too raw because of it being a single oscillator only, without any sort of detuning or doubled up voicings. The filter it uses is also very poorly responding to very low notes. It's really evident at 0:37.830. From my experience with waveforms, I can actually see the bass' waveform is taking over the song until 0:41.098. 0:41.098 has a pitch bending supersaw-esque sound that has a really wide delay. Since I can hear the strings at 0:43.395 on the left, I'm assuming the strings are a little wide somehow, so the delay is taking up the space with the strings. 0:44.165 - The kick is not quite fitting, but don't worry about that right now. The snare/clap is probably easier to fix. 0:44.993 has a snare/clap layered sound that is somehow clicking, literally. There's a transient at 0:44.993 AND at 0:45.125, and they're distinctly far enough from each other that I hear this weird clicking. Is there a slapback reverb, or a short marginal feedback delay on that snare or something? The simple high supersaw-esque lead has less resonance than before or has been slightly low passed, and it's a little easier to listen to. I don't mind it as much anymore, albeit it is rather generic. 1:07.081 has a pretty cool arpeggiating formant thing that could be slightly softer but slightly higher in treble. I'm surprised you didn't put a cymbal at 1:09.486 and opted for a sub bass drop. ...I don't get it. 1:14.351 - clashing notes between arp strings and lead strings. Bass is still taking over. 2:00.196 sub bass drop is very minimalistic, and it needs more of a transition. There should be something in the higher or mid registers to counterbalance the sub bass if you're going to use it. 2:17.896 has that same supersaw lead, but this time it's bothersome in the highs again. Weird. Probably because of that atonal reverse drone at 2:18.719 and 2:22.108. 2:28.562 square lead is quiet, thin, and generic. I highly encourage you to switch it out for something more expressive and laden with energy. 2:37.887 has this weird downwards augmented broken chord arpeggio that should have the second note up a half step. Everything after this is essentially more of the same, so I stopped here. I'm not trying to discourage you. There's potential, but it still needs a lot of TLC.

Alright, here's the demo with guitar only, then bass only, then guitar+bass only. I wouldn't say legato and vibrato are super necessary in a metal song, but it's good to know how to do it for realism. Overdoing it with attention to detail tends to pay off in the end. Note how the guitar is not always playing chords, and the bass is playing hard on the notes where I would want emphasis. ------ As for the separate bass, it sounds like the bassist is playing hard sustains almost all the time, but a real bassist would get really tired playing all those hard sustains so quickly and so often. I would simplify the bassline and make it something that can be played reasonably well in real life. 0:27, 0:30, and so on are places where the bass is playing way too fast but it's all hard sustains, whereas they should be notes that are less subdivided (8th notes instead of 16th notes, etc.) and more like regular sustains or soft sustains in between some hard sustains.

Thanks for temporarily removing the lead, it helps. I believe part of the weak power of the rhythm guitars has to do with the sequencing, mainly the velocities and articulations used. For example, 0:48 would be much more effective if you had riffed on the low E string rather than an actual low chord. The low E string creates a raw-sounding chug tone that is really what makes Shreddage special. I think that aspect of the tone usually shows up near 2400Hz. Of course, the real challenge is getting the lead AND that chug tone to be audible at the same time and finding a middle ground for the volumes. Oh, and I meant that my mids are usually at 45, not 90. 90 is the decay I usually put. The bass happens to be unusually lacking the lower bass frequencies (20~150Hz), not to mention there isn't much bite in the articulations either. Here are two demos I cooked up that you could listen to for tone-crafting practice (0:12 is the important timestamp). You can decide for yourself which kind of sound you believe is more fitting to what you want to do---clear/strong, or just insanely strong. I would personally try to go for something in the middle, but leaning towards the low end clarity of the second one. The first one is the one I just formulated, and the second one is one I've used and was satisfied with for my Gunstar Heroes remix. Keep going on this! Once the guitar/bass tone mix is sufficient, it feels really good, knowing the rest of the song will sound the same, provided the sequencing is also up to par.

The formant lead is super awesome. Vocoded?

Synth1 is confusing to me too, but only because I never did try using it for too long, once I found Zebra2. If you ever get the money ($200) and your parent's consent ($200 for electronic content...), GET IT! It does have an awesome comb filter, and it's practically all-purpose.

Yeah, definitely too much treble on the bass. The kick is probably getting overpowered by the bass in particular. The kick also has a little too much decay. Rhythm guitars need more power. You might have cut the mids and low end a bit too much. I usually put it at 86~98 on the mids scooping in Shreddage. I also wouldn't cut out the low end entirely. I would only do notch filters where the bass lies. You want the tones to meld, not the bass to be all the low end power.

Hehe, I just got the email bulletin yesterday telling me about the remix contest (the contest was introduced on May THIRD)... so I did a remix of my own in about 8 hours. I think you'd still have time to write something if you feel up to it. Phoenix - 'Trying To Be Cool' (90's Retro Electro ReMix) by Timaeus

Is it private? No access.

The remixer has been gone for quite a while; last login was 2010. The bass sounds like a saw wave with some detuning, and an envelope on a kind of low cutoff. The envelope has no attack or sustain, and little decay. I think the string instrument could be a 12-string acoustic sitar, and it was probably synthesized with, I agree, comb filters or FM oscillators (probably comb filters).

A good philosophy is to keep old stuff in case you want to reuse it later. ~ zircon (paraphrase)

You can still just keep what you wrote for later.

If you want to get to 0dB, just use a soft knee limiter like TLs-Pocket Limiter and do compression on your drums.

Had a little too much low end reverb for my tastes, but otherwise well-executed.

I would actually work on fixing the string sequencing first, and only using reverb for ambience, not hiding mechanical sequencing.

Either the beginning strings are mechanically sequenced or the samples you have are missing velocity response. 0:27 feels boomy for some reason. Sounds like you had some sort of low-passed dance kick? It's really quiet and ends suddenly at 0:31. The kick and snare are also quite weak and soft. 0:44 - The lead choices here and in other places are not actually the best choice tonally, IMO. They're also missing some reverb to make them 'sit nicely in the mix', and they're only playing simple sustains with a few pitch drops. 1:10 got really muddy due to that sub bass drop, so you should think about EQing that further and sidechaining the kick if you haven't already. 2:00 is an odd break that makes the remix lose quite a bit of energy since there's nothing much to lead in to the "breakdown". You need more than just a sub bass drop. 2:25 can lose that sub bass drop. It's just taking up space where you could be putting a really strong kick drum. The lead is also really simple and generic here. Square wave? Good start, but lots of production to work on.

1:18 - do I recognize the lead you used in Bleets of Lightning? : D

Relatively sure the 'yah-yah' stuff is from oscillator sync and some mild bitcrushing.