timaeus222

It's the lead that's too quiet.

The sync lead is improved, but it's not quite there yet, personally. See if you can imagine a natural phrasing of the sync lead, and carry out what you're thinking.

Minor nitpicks: 0:16 could be better legato. 0:20 and 0:53 sound just a bit washed in reverb. 0:40 and 0:51 sound too detached. 1:18 - drums are a bit buried and kinda surrounding the listener a bit. 1:46 sounds like a repeat of 0:16 with some harmony. 2:04 sounds like it should be a climax, but it wasn't effectively built up to nor did it build up quite effectively later on either. The remix overall sounds pretty static. There isn't much of a "show-off" section or two so it's pretty straightforward and simple to me.

Actually, good video game loops don't use Wrap Remainder right away. Do Cut Remainder, and then Wrap Remainder for another copy. Run the Cut Remainder OGG, then the Wrap Remainder OGG for remaining loops.

Yes, MP3s create a small bit of padding, so render as OGG from the very beginning for space-conservation and WAV-like behavior.

Yep, automations in FL are separate clips, so just move them around to line up with the new placements if you need to.

You can use noteflight.com to write sheet music, and you can export it as MIDI, all for free OMGOMGOMG.

I like a lot of the timbres you have now. The glassy FM pad starting at 0:22 is pretty nice, but maybe turn down the detuning a tiny bit. The kick is a little low end heavy, and the snare gets buried sometimes. Don't be afraid of compressing the drums while maxing their volume. 1:19 is where the piano sounds mechanical, especially on the blocky chords at 1:22. Try playing with a MIDI keyboard if you have one, or ask someone. The pads are a bit bright there as well, so try a really small low pass, just to leave room for the piano to be heard. The hi hat is a tiny bit mid-heavy and consequently a tiny bit loud. You might want to try some keyfollow on the bass timbre. The lower notes on the bass are a bit unclear. The bass is also a bit too loud to me, possibly because of the frequency distribution. Extremely noticeable at 1:49. 2:04 has a little bit of bad clashing in the pad notes. I know you're trying to go for a jazzy chord, but that's just clashing without the sort of jazzy dissonance you were aiming for. The chiffy lead at 2:08 is a bit too loud, and a bit shrill in the higher notes. It's like you took a flute patch with some overblow and used it in poly mode. 2:57 - the chimes that come in here don't seem to make sense, at least to me, to come from the left. I would personally have done it from the center, or from right to left. Sounds chill though. Pretty good so far.

Great, I think you got what I meant with more vibrato on the sync lead. Now is there a way on your synth you can adjust the modulation on the oscillator sync with some automation? That could be cool, as you could adjust the development of the timbre so that it lines up with the song. For example, the sync modulation at 0:42 could be slower for a cooler effect when combined with the vibrato. The pitch bend at 0:50 was a bit strange, just personal taste. What happened at 1:02? Something cut off really quickly because of the short release and no sustain, or something to that effect. At the point when your finger left the key, it just stopped making sound without a sort of fading. The note at 1:40 seems like it would be better off a bit longer. 1:50 - 2:20 sounds a little repetitive as it repeats a static 8 note arpeggio that just retains the same rhythm the whole time. The gradual builddown was effectively done. Kind of common, but it works.

I actually do the automation to save room for effects if I feel the need to add more.

I personally think the first 32 seconds are too bare with the exposed piano with no variation. Maybe you can add some note variation or some new backing in more quickly? The structure of this song tends to be based on keeping the listener interested, rather than changing a lot, so I don't think it will be accepted by OCR based on the static arrangement. It will be good practice for developing your skills, though!

OA was right, the violin is actually a tad stiff. It was also fudged by YouTube in the first second The chiptune-glitch stuff worked better. Seems pretty chill and downtempo to me. I tend to like that. Nice resonant tremolo polysaw. EP was very pure and FM-like, you don't find that kind of EP easily. 2:20 had a pretty nice fretless bass. Interesting rapid perc fillers elsewhere. I kind of expected something like 3:09, as I was reminded of djp's comment about zircon's "Time To Oil Up".

Sometimes the link(s) to one or more artists in Russian ReMix Roulette is/are invalid. i.e. Today there were 2/5 that were valid. It might have something to do with them linking to old URL formats. Any chance this was meant to be fixed in the v6 update?

For metal experts: How should I adjust this rhythm guitar tone to make it melt more faces? Both technical and simplified terms, please. Somehow, I think the bass is a bit subdued by the guitar. https://www.box.com/s/1bv3z0hc82pv7u6cdbzq

I use Tinypic because I had an account there before it partnered with Photobucket, so I still have the tinypic account privileges. Yeah, that's RIGHT!

I'm kinda curious about this; sounds like Pachelbel's Canon in D, so what if that were to be remixed? Could that be a valid remix for OCR? It's certainly used in the game, but people might confuse it with the actual Canon in D.

I can't actually listen yet, but cymbals that don't sound quite right tend to be made of an old material (hence, vintage), causing some high end to be tapered off and occasionally making it sound a little dampened in a sense, creating the need to hit it harder and thus overboosting the mids. The mids on cymbals are generated during the drumstick impact and are usually the reason cymbals are hard to mix for most people. Try lowering the mids until you reach the point where the cymbal still sounds normal in the context of the whole mix playing at once. EDIT: Now I'm home. The kick and snare are both really weak and maybe even a bit buried. I would say try getting a sound like one of these with the kick and snare: Something I just made right now zircon's "Nuclear Dubstep" Shreddage 2 Demo You get the idea? I do feel like the synths aren't all that special though. They're generic chiptune synths, and although that in its own right is fine, you can always upgrade their expressiveness with some creative sequencing and/or vibrato and stuff like that. Onto the actual structural content. 0:25 is a pretty drastic shift into the dubstep. Any sort of transition there that you can think of? Up until 2:20, it's pretty much a dubstep frenzy, and not exactly something you can be addicted to for two minutes straight since it sounds pretty much the same to anyone who doesn't write music. i.e. 0:48 and 1:32 are pretty similar and that's a problem. You need more variation or more interesting synths. I feel like 2:24 would be more effective with a bass drop, not a static sub bass. 3:05 - hey, some bitcrushing automation. So, a minute of more dubstep. What can we expect, other than wubs and sub basses? Not much. Maybe you should rework that section? Try to compensate for people who don't listen to traditional dubstep (like me). 3:40 feels like an aimless buildup to me. It just sounds like retrigger on the lead, sort of, with a tiny little pitch rise on something else. Not really feeling the building up there. Polish that a little more. Snare rolls? Resonant white noise filter sweeps? 4:06 is finally a change in mood and a refresher from the dubstep, but it should have come earlier! 5:12 - I would have liked to hear that kind of resonant-filter+retrigger+speed-decrease creativity earlier. Well, that and there's unfortunately no real ending.

I can't really take a look at this at this particular moment, but don't be afraid to automate the volume and some EQ bands of certain instruments to adjust to sections in your remix, and then automate them back to where they were when the section is over, once you finally like the EQ and volume on every instrument.

Haha, oud. Gotta love typos that spell a new real word. Yeah, the "violin" at 2:08 sounds like some sort of thin-sounding synth lead badly emulating a violin. Or maybe it was sampled from a bad violinist. Yeah, without good realistic reverb, free orchestral soundfonts are pretty much kaput.

Nice, I don't think I've ever tried that and then taken it seriously before. I think once, I tried it and it worked to my ears, but I never thought much of it until now. In typical tracks, I just use a soft knee limiter, compress my drums, and have the limiter peak at 0dB, plus a spectroscope for an amplitude check. If I want extra power, I put some parallel compression in. In those cases I tend to experiment with the sound of compressor after the limiter or limiter after the compressor, and limiter after the compressor tends to sound less punchy to me since the compressor I use ends up leaving the final amplitude kind of unchanged and at or under 0dB with more punchiness, rendering the limiter kind of useless.

Grado SR-60i for $80. I transitioned from a Sony MDR-7502 (terrible) to Sennheiser HD201 (returned it) to Shure SRH240A (oddly ambient and lacks some bass and a bit of treble), and I finally settled on the Grado SR-60i, which had clearer bass, crisper treble, and really distinguishable mids. Then I have skullcandies for a general check to make sure a song sounds good enough on cheap listener earphones. Shures are an alternate check for ambience.

Really loving the western-like intro with the chorused electric guitars. 2:34 has such an awesome roll and synth/guitar mix. =D One of my favorite mixes.

Yeah, the organ is still dry, just thought you should know that. If you can imagine it in a room while you're listening to a result, then it's going to be in a good spot. Brandon is right, it does just seem like you took a bunch of presets and used them plus some modwheel stuff, but it doesn't seem like you tweaked them further or enough. For example, the sync lead, if it had delayed (slow attack) vibrato, would be even more intense. As for your other leads, what about extreme pitch bends and portamento, or going from staccato to legato? You can always adjust your sequencing to make a patch sound better than the patch actually sounds under "typical" sequencing conditions. Creative sequencing usually improves the perception of a patch's complexity. Well, the arrangement seems to change often enough, so I think it's just the sounds and sequencing that are holding you back.

It could be louder. A lot of the instruments are very dry, so it doesn't really sound like they're in an acoustically realistic room. Also, it seems like every note or many notes are the same velocities; try making it more human with some phrased velocities. 2:08 - violin or something sounds really fake, especially with the weird portamento. 2:28 - odd harmonies/clashing? 2:34 - really muddy, so watch those low frequencies. Try a steep high pass at 35Hz? 3:03 - near a good volume, but everything is still too quiet, even here. You'll also need some better samples than that, because although they're good for free soundfonts, they're not realistic.