timaeus222

The first clap threw me off immediately. Sorry, it doesn't work. It comes in too quickly. The bass at 0:07 is too low passed. Needs more presence in the 90-120Hz range. The ride at 0:30 is too mid-oriented, needs more treble. The arp used is bleeding into itself with the excess delay and reverb that it has, as well as its plain timbre and overly long release. 1:29 is too sudden and needs a transition. Leads are buried in the more drum-oriented sections. Snare-clap layers are missing low end punch. Kicks are missing a high end thwap or frequencies are clashing at 100-140Hz. Needs an ending.

...Yeah. I'm in that rut right now with my Gunstar Heroes mix.

Oddly enough, I partially disagree with that. Personally, I prefer perfecting what I write as I go, and I always find it harder to go back and try to fix the mixing in a section that I wrote earlier, mainly because I could have written it with poor velocities, a bad instrument choice, etc. If I write as I go, my mind is fresh on the current section and I know exactly what I need to fix if it sounds wrong.

Mixing the low end, for me too. Not necessarily the low-mids, mainly the bass and sub bass. I tend to have trouble bringing the bass out, and I have to check between my Grados with clear bass and okay sub bass, and my Skullcandies with muddy bass but good sub bass. I have literally no good way of testing my bass. Other than that, just finding ideas to write a song at all. I didn't start listening to music until the 7th grade, so I have almost no inspiration other than ocremix and a few oldie artists. When I do find my inspiration, it tends to flesh itself out rather easily, within 3-30 days, depending on how complicated the ideas my brain wanted to create.

On the contrary, Argle, I also save a lot of unfinished works in case I want to use them. However, if I know it downright sucks or sounds way too much like someone else, yeah, I don't save it. I think the best information I can think of is how to mix in a quiet sound that is loud. PARADOX. No rly. I figured out how to mix in a sound that does not amplify the final waveform of the song, but is still audible in the song and contributes to the atmosphere anyway. That way I don't have to worry about things not being overcrowded until I layer too much.

He would need to remember to sample some burping noises and process them like Infected Mushroom seems to have done in Frog Machine. =D

I did EQ it down at the mids, but I didn't want to do it that much so the power is retained. It was done inside the UI (which is honestly more practical than EQing in the EQ plugin. Do you get why? It's the fact that internal EQ and external EQ are different). If you're implying an overboost in the mids, I didn't do any boosting in the mids. That is pretty much the EQ that I have now right after considering Melodious Punk's Sausage Fattener post, other than you not having a high pass above around 100Hz. You just have a peaking band. Why would you scoop it at 25Hz instead of doing a high pass? There isn't much of the bass guitar frequencies at 25, so why not just cut out the extra subs? There's also the issue that my bass guitar hits strongest near 60-80Hz (Fundamentals) and does have some frequencies near 100-200 which are the Presence, which is why I did that high pass on the guitar. I could hear the high pass being too much above 100, so I stopped the cutoff around there.

Well, there's something else to remember. If you EQ while an instrument is soloed, you only know how it sounds soloed, and not how it meshes with the whole.

Sounds like he said you didn't implement half of the source.

Be patient, I honestly wasn't happy with my skills until nearly 2 years of experience. Right then, I knew I was capable of producing something of OCR-quality or maybe even DP quality.

The intro has some notes on the strings that are too long, so it makes the intro feel overly long. I think the snare is a bit buried, and the kick rhythm is a bit erratic. It's okay to be erratic as long as it's consistent, like in here. The drum rhythm there at 0:44 is strange, but it's consistent. Now try being consistent here in your track. The soundscape is pretty bare sometimes. The pad-like backing is too centered and short-lasting, so it doesn't create the ambient soundscape that you seem to be going for here. I think the transition from 3/4 to 4/4 is noticeable, but it could be better. I think at 1:16, it would be better if you didn't use the kicks in the transition, and just used a resonant sweep. There might be slightly too much mid-range in your kick, not much. Needs more ambience and fillers.

Right, I think the game ended up being a PC/MAC game, so it worked out!

I just feel like Amplitube is easier to use, just my opinion.

Actually, sidechaining something "more" wouldn't really fix anything, it would just add a more compressed feel. What I would recommend instead of sidechaining the kick to the bass with a really low threshold and a really high ratio is just working on the timbre of the kick. Layer on some high end thwap samples and do some really mild compression on the low end kick layer with a dual-band stereo compressor like endorphin or something. You want it to come through better, not compress things more.

Maybe people couldn't think of anything and then it got lost. I think the low pads are a little reminiscent of movie soundtracks. 0:08 - the bells are a bit quiet. I didn't notice they were the lead the first time through. As a result, I think the low pads and strings are too loud or the lead is not an excellent choice. The kick overall is too quiet and buried. I'm not sure what's going on at 0:38 or 1:45 in the background. Something sounds like it's wobbling, but it's too muddy. 1:12 - that's probably what I heard wobbling at 0:38-ish and 1:45-ish. 1:26 - where did that piano come from? I didn't hear it anywhere else, I don't think. Mixing overall is really muddy.

Well, to be honest, the recordings you have sound old-timey, like a retro rag-time movie, which isn't quite up to the standards these days. I think the reason I thought the chiptune beeping sounds were off-key and you thought it was okay was because it was supposed to be background FX. However, the way it's playing, it sounds like it's trying to play actual notes, rather than be in the background creating a digital atmosphere. If you can manage to make it sound like those beeping sounds are properly carrying out their purpose, it could work. Have you thought about looking up your speaker and headphone models and checking their frequency ranges? If they have overboosts in the bass, it'll make you think you have more bass, and if they have terrible high passes above the bass frequencies, you shouldn't really hear much bass no matter what you do.

The chiptune stuff seems to be off-key from the other instruments, and is pretty erratically played. The recordings seem to be lacking bass. Is your room full of carpet or something? I also don't really hear the bass you're talking about. I only hear the bass' plucking.

Well, I'm using Shreddage with Guitar Rig, but I do have Amplitube. I just used Guitar Rig for this since it takes up half the memory that Amplitube takes up (100 instead of 200MB). I can't really find a way to replicate what you suggested though, with Amplitube. I can't change the routing. This is with Amplitube on Shreddage: https://soundcloud.com/timaeus222/some-cinematic-metal-stuff

Shreddage automatically strums round-robin. What is with the bandpassed japanese vocals? Sounds like some sort of acapella rip... done badly. Or a radio edit.

I've already done it with my friend's game, and the programmer was able to work with OGG just fine. In fact, OGG was requested because it's way smaller than WAV but acts pretty much the same in terms of silence padding.

...Yeah. Weird hard panning doesn't work. Please fix. Why would the drums be panned so widely? Muddy bubble FX afterwards. 'n stuff.

Yeah, I don't think the drums fit the mood at all. It's like you're trying to match hip hop drums with chill/downtempo. The 808 stuff isn't actually working. Aside from that, repetitive, but decent soundscape going on. Sync lead feels awkward panned left rather than center. I didn't hear anything significant panned right while the sync lead played.

Sounds like it could be funky, but as it is, it's repetitive. Hope to see cool variations coming on later.

Sorry, generic percussion, machine-gun kick, plain sounds, etc. PWM saw lead was okay though. Song sounds loop-like. Good random effort on the arrangement, but I think you should be able to create something better in that 6-7 hours. Keep practicing.