timaeus222

A few weeks ago or so, I sent a PM to DragonAvenger, Liontamer, and Palpable. Can one of you read it, or tell me if you've read it? It's a minor fix on the first two of my last three subs (the first two were sent in the first week of December 2012 and February 2013, respectively).

FRACTION FRENZY. [/caps] Back when I decided to play that in class because I was bored... I didn't get in trouble because why? BCUZ FRACTIONZ. I think it was using the Shockwave Player. Nah, just kidding, that's too math-intensive. Some kids come with other students at my university and play at coolmath4kids.com. They happen to like it even though it's math.

The beginning sweeper pad, IMO, sweeps too quickly and to too high a cutoff because it hits the sync lead's frequencies. When the sync lead first came in, it sounded muddy. The kick is still pretty boomy without much high end energy. The snare is a bit better, but it could stand for even more compression. The organ definitely sounds dry to me. I don't hear any reverb, not even a little bit. The vibrato-high lead seems to be too loud. The 3o3 arp a little before 3/4 of the way through is pretty relentless on the filtering and should be adjusted. On the outtro, good variation with the kicks, that's something new, and you should be creative like that more often.

Those synthetic strings happen to be analog pads, I believe.

I think the ambience is a bit held back, because you can fit in a little high end reverb. You still need to flesh out the vocals a bit more, and I'd love to do that, plus some glitch fills. I gots some ideas, if you can send the vocals, snare hits, misc drums, and the rest of the instrumentation separately.

The intro hi hat is a bit mid-heavy or vintage. Can you find a better sample? The EP is muddying this up in the beginning. Maybe you can try bumping that up an octave, then softening it a bit. I'm sure the synth lead could cut through with some EQ work. Oddly enough, the Jupiter-8-style synth lead doesn't seem to have that much vibrato sometimes. I can kinda hear the vibrato. Sounds great though. The piano could use a touch more reverb and some slight stereo pingpong delay, just for some subtle ambience. Nice bass work at 4:16. It could use some more articulation detail, though, if you can. Maybe some hammer-ons, pull-offs, or legato slides?

Thanks! Actually, the guitars are... *drumroll* ISW Shreddage.

For some reason, the intro riffs remind me of one of the choruses of the OCR "Transylvanian Temptation". xD Sweet orchestral work there, and the guitar fits in nicely. Breakdown piano is a tad quiet, but it's pretty wide-sounding. High-energy stuff!

I loved this for its creepiness and awesome atmosphere. 2:09 resonant filter stuff is awesome.

The beginning synth played staccato like that was a bit odd when it started the song out like that, but that's probably just because there wasn't much silence padding before the song. Maybe you can automate a fade-in on the volume of the synth? It might also be possible that the synth is slightly too loud, at least in the very beginning staccato notes. I agree with Brandon, I think acoustic drums would work pretty nicely, kind of like this OCR: I'm not going to bother looking at the overall volume, because I'm sure you realize what I said earlier and you'll fix it eventually. In any case, the kick is still too quiet. The strings seem nice, and not badly sequenced at all, since in this case they're acting like pads, so not many articulations are needed. The main thing that bothers me is 0:40. It feels off-key to me without much heads-up. Keep it up, it's getting better!

I'd like to emphasize that being too imperfect will just be a bad performance. So... try to find a medium between realistically imperfect and perfect.

Really? I'm definitely using a bass guitar, and it's really noticeable in the breakdown sections.

Hey! So, I entered the FF6 contest that ended on Feb. 28. This was my entry: https://www.box.com/s/kmm3kxme4q1nipvkyj7y Feedback is welcome! Probably my second try at regular old metal, really. I only had about 3 days to really work on this, lol.

I actually think the intro piano was problematically rigid. 0:06 and 0:07 felt unnatural. 0:10 felt like a wrong high note. The chord at 0:13 was a bit dissonant, which is okay, but it doesn't really lead into the guitar stuff afterwards; it seems the left hand might be the issue there. Is the kick panned? I dunno, I feel like it's panned slightly to the left, or it's a bit wide or something. If it's not already in the center, make sure of that. Aside from that, nice cover. Sounds good so far.

I sense some contradictions. Let's see what I hear... Yeah, the kick and snare are both quiet, although the kick is much quieter than the snare. The bass is a bit quiet as well, but the other instruments seem to be at a good volume for me. 0:41 was really sudden, and it almost sounded like some wrong notes. Was that a key change? Piano sounds a bit mechanical. See if you can imagine a real pianist playing, and try to emulate the volumes of each note. Then, see if you can find some better samples for your piano, but let's leave that for later. Seems like your mix is peaking at around -6dB, which is really soft. You can definitely afford around a 4-5dB boost on every instrument (not 6 yet, since you might be using a hard knee limiter, who knows). Wait on that, though. Start mixing quiet like this, but I think you should begin with raising the volumes on your bass, kick, and snare. From there, when things sound more balanced, then bump the volume of everything by the same amount of dB. Seems like you might be a person who could like that method.

The snare is still slow. I don't think you really did anything with it. It's really lacking the punch it needs. The lead at 0:45 is a bit buried under its reverb and the tremolo bass, which... might be playing in octaves? I'm not really much of a fan of the tremolo bass that goes until 1:14. It just feels weird to have it for that long. The sync lead at 1:14 seems like it's playing on retrigger or poly, which aren't effective voice modes for this particular lead. Try legato with a little bit of glide and vibrato. The lead at 1:46 feels rigidly sequenced, as it doesn't really have any natural phrasing. It's like when a person is breathing in between every note. The distorted bass that comes in at 2:08 is too loud. The lead at 2:52 has the same problem as the sync lead; it would be better off as legato with some vibrato and expressiveness. And you probably know about the lack of an ending. I can see you're making some changes, but maybe you should take a little side trip to sound synthesis for a bit, then come back and try improving the synth leads in here.

The pizzicato is rigidly sequenced. It sounds like one person playing. Try adding offsetted notes to make it sound like 2-3 people playing. Just select all the notes, clone them, lengthen them on the left edge a bit, then shorten them from the right edge until you have the right edge of the cloned notes lining up with the left edge of the original notes. Now you have a slightly better pizzicato. 0:57 - filter-automated detuned square bass is too loud. 2:44 - instrumentation sounds like original to me, just a bit. Also sounds conservative. 3:26 was a bit sudden. I don't think that 'transition' worked. 3:52 might have a few different keys going on at the same time? 4:11 - something muddy or sub-bassy? 4:39 - I'm not hearing anything connecting those two parts. :/ Ideas are there, they just need to flow better for the most part.

AWESOME run at 1:55! =D Sweet mix, loving it like crazy. CLIMAXES EVERYWHERE.

The EP writing on this mix is downright BADASS. Got me hooked the whole time, Blake. Kickin' remix!

I think you turned down the right frequencies on the kick, but it's missing the high frequency thwap it needs, so now it's buried. It'd be great if you can use some sort of band compressor to slightly compress the low frequencies created at the tail of the kick. The sub bass is quite loud, and it's cluttering up the mix quite a bit. Try lowering the volume a little bit on it. I can barely hear anything else. The snare sounds slow. Try choosing a different snare sample with a faster snap. Or, layer on one with a faster snap, and the current snare could be the high end sizzle layer of the two-layered snare. 2:22 - the lead is pretty shrill to me. Can you try to find another synth lead? The song overall is very loud, but I think it's mainly because of the sub bass. After 2:54, it's pretty much over. The remaining 30 seconds don't really do anything, so it would be great if you could work out a quicker ending, or add something more to the remaining 30 seconds. You're getting better, but this still needs some work!

Bump for Mod Review.

Yep, needs some live implementation with the samples you have, especially the EP and organ. The source itself could be too short to really expand on in the way you have now without adding another source, so perhaps that could be a good idea? 2:00-2:15 was a good idea, and that's what I would expect from a source expansion, so keep going with that. 2:40 is a great bass breakdown, but it desperately needs more articulation on the bass, as well as backup strings. I don't think the organ is fighting with the EP at all, the EP just needs to be brought to the back a tiny bit more. Nice, jazzy interpretation. Probably your best to date, good job.

Intro is interesting, but the flute needs to be louder with more articulations. Guitar tone sounds a little too high passed to me, and also needs more tone crafting. There might also be too much reverb or delay on it. Speed up the BPM by about 4-8? 0:36 - lead needs a more aggressive tone with much more vibrato. 0:54 - Flute could work, but still needs more articulations like vibrato. Drums need glue or compression. 1:21 needs a transition. 1:37 might be missing a cymbal. 1:51 needs a transition too. 2:38 - things are sounding really muddy here. You might have too much reverb since things sound really distant. I haven't really heard much bass other than the low mids of a rock bass until 3:07. Good start, lots of polishing needed.

dat syllogism, gotta love it. [/sarcasm] Actually, in all seriousness, that wouldn't be a straw man to call an argument a straw man. You'd be debating the argument itself, so your own statement wouldn't be a straw man, but their argument would be. When you start a new argument, the realm of relevance changes, IIRC.