timaeus222

I hear something really weird in the intro, and it sounds like it's majorly clipping. Intro is really muddy. Some sort of low end drone is cluttering things up like crazy. EP sounds like live or live MIDI, dry and exposed. Pizzicato is dry and exposed. Timpani feels randomly placed, dry, and exposed. Sub bass is too loud. Sax is dry and exposed. Other drums are dry and exposed. Organ is dry and exposed. No transitions. You get the idea. You might be missing a limiter, and your instruments need more time spent on placement in a proper stereo field. Almost all the instruments are fighting for attention up front, and the sub bass gets tiring after a few seconds. Arrangement needs a sense of direction.

It's not wrong, but I wouldn't recommend it. It's better to start off with a mono source (like DI Electric Guitar recordings) and stereo enhance it from there if you wish. If you're starting with a stereo source and you want to make room for other instruments using stereo mods, sure, it's fine to narrow the stereo source a little bit, but try not to do that so much that it becomes a habit, because narrowing the sound sometimes merges specifically oriented sound waves that might worsen the sound quality overall. It's like when you try that trick to isolate vocal tracks and the result worsens the background instrumentation but leaves slight traces of the vocal track (which might be the wet signal obtained from effects like chorus and flanger, I believe); I discovered that Fruity Stereo Enhancer can do almost the same thing and it works pretty well, so I'd imagine that stereo reduction has the possibility of worsening the sound quality excessively. I find it better to just arrange things by stereo enhancing them to different extents to "position them around me" at "different angles".

You can disable them both separately. I would assume that the same people who made those over-the-top comments also disliked the video, and she doesn't want to lose her credibility to trolls that almost solely hate her, barely considering her arguments from a more objective standpoint.

Basically I'm asking for a way, as I play my MIDI keyboard while FL Studio is currently open, to show the keys being pressed on some sort of isolated virtual keyboard display that I can crop down to overlay on videos. It looks like LoopBe1 is a tool I might be missing. It's like what's on this video, on the bottom right at 1:31:

Exactly. The way you said it, when you said "...because of that gut-punch (but what would it be without it!)", it sure demonstrated the idea of the "central focus" being the damsel, at least in that case. However, thankfully it's progressively gotten better in the later editions of series such as Zelda and Mario, like you said. These days, the idea of the woman being kidnapped and all those "save me!" moments is fading into the background a tad, allowing more interesting plot twists to develop, which is great. EC isn't trolling, by the way. It's more like he's getting information (or debating), if you will, through arguments that promote more extensive explanations.

Let me clarify a few things. From what I read on this topic, it looks like she's been getting harassment comments that are beyond trolling to the point of her taking the reins and stopping the nonsense. Critiques are typically meaningful, and obviously, harassment isn't meaningful. Yes, critiques can be harsh, but not to the point where it's quite literally an ad hominem. Critiques can bring across the person's point, but attacking the person doesn't prove any point at all; it only shows that you can't at all be credible. She didn't want to be a person that attracted highly critical trolls who insist on badgering her. Mature self-defense, that's what it is. Actually, if a story is about a hero, that's what zircon was saying---it's supposed to be about the hero, but instead, the focus is placed on the damsel. Without a damsel, what would the "hero" really be? The "hero" develops his/her (let's say his) character throughout the game, and when he rescues the damsel, he can then be called a "hero". Without a damsel, the structural content of the game is essentially nothing; Anita was emphasizing that the damsel is the meat of the plot in many of the older games and is still continuing on in certain series. Developers of those series try to make the game about the hero, but really, the backbone of the story revolves around saving the damsel in cases such as Zelda, Mario, etc.You're right, fairy tales aren't disrespectful or sexist, but fairy tales and video games are under completely different contexts, so that's actually a false analogy. Fairy tales were typically meant to entertain children and the general audience in the context of books, worldwide TV, and movies, whereas usually, video games entertain those that enjoy the relaxation time away from more stressful activities in the context of electronic graphics generators and personal TV use (XBox, PS2, DVDs, etc.). However, the fact that developers were continuing the trend found in those video games instead of deviating from that demonstrates an inherent laziness (which zircon did say) on forming a more creative plot structure. It's like how people used to sample other artists' music and lots of songs had copyright issues because of non-originality; with video games like those mentioned above, the problem doesn't extend to copyright issues, it lies within the raw originality of the structural content. I don't believe zircon said it was harmful, necessarily, to leave women as damsels, but rather, I believe he was just clarifying or explaining your misconception with some hypotheticals without connecting the proposed consequence with the proposed antecedents, which would then not be any sort of argument.

Is there a way to take that and have it react to MIDI notes I play in FL Studio, or does it automatically respond to a MIDI keyboard while it plays, no matter where the output is? For example, if I have FL open and Bome's mouse keyboard open at the same time, and I go into FL, open up a VST, and play that, is that reflected in Bome's mouse keyboard too? I might make tutorial videos in the future, so it'd be great to have a virtual keyboard overlay on the videos that accurately shows what I just played. I do see that it has MIDI In and MIDI Out, so I hope so.

13:38 - If she didn't make that graphic, it's an official typo. I actually kinda like this series so far. Although I do like english analysis.

Well, it seems like the chords you were playing matched the sound of an EP in my head. An EP, or just a different piano sound would work before 1:26, whichever you want to go with. 1:11 - I just realized how mechanical the slap bass sounded there. Do you have round robins? You could just find a synth VST that you're comfortable with and make a pad with that. It usually isn't that hard to make a pad. Multi-voice saw wave with some detuning, a slow attack, and maybe an envelope on the cutoff to give a sort of evolving sound. It's basically like a supersaw with a mild low pass that's turned into a pad. 2:43 had a synth run that was a little off-rhythm.

I think there's an EP or harp in the beginning? Well, whatever it is, there's a bit too much feedback, and sometimes it resonates really heavily, like some sort of inharmonic metallic vibrations. It could be because of EQ, or something with the mic I think you're using. I can hear a little keypressing or plucking. The acoustic bass that comes in the middle was a bit sudden. I just heard it and rewinded a little to see why it came in. I have no idea why it came in. The rimshot is a bit dry, and actually a little weak. An 808 rim shot doesn't seem to work for this. Maybe an acoustic rim shot instead, with a little bit of reverb?

Wubs sound better, but actually still too loud, and overpowering the lead. The wubs are also a tiny bit busy in terms of the rhythm. The 1:39 lead is still very shrill. Just try copying the MIDI data to a new lead and see if you can come up with a better one than that.

The cello is a bit loud in the beginning, and it's clashing with the lower frequencies where the guitar plucks lie. You'll probably need to automate the mid-frequency EQ bands down while her voice is singing to bring it out, but still add some reverb to the voice and soften it a little bit more to compensate.

Does anyone know of something similar to this, besides Virtual MIDI Piano Keyboard 0.5.1, that works for Windows? http://www.manyetas.com/creed/midikeys.html If not, I'll just settle for Virtual MIDI Piano Keyboard 0.5.1.

That went by too quickly. Interesting arp there with the slow attack. The chiptune breakdown was pretty cool.

Yeah, triangle waves do tend to sound like saw waves. Good to know you recognize those details. I really like TruePianos as a piano VST. It's $190 though. I think some stuff on soundfonts.darkesword.com has some decent pianos in the soundfonts, particularly the one that starts with t and ends with x and possibly a number.

Sounds good as background music, since you want this to be considered finished. As a whole, it actually builds very slowly and is missing loads of transitions. In the future, try considering how lots of people have short attention spans and putting that into account.

The piano seems low quality to me. See if you can find a better sample. It might be a little robotic too in the sequencing. The intro drums are a bit odd. I think I'm hearing a really old vinyl snare? The timbre is low quality, basically. The snare needs a slight low pass to cut out that weird high end fuzzy distorted sound. When the new snare comes in, it's a bit unfitting for DnB. The volume is fine, but the timbre seems too close to a pitch envelope to me. Try to layer it with a more high end snare, with that high end snare slightly dominating the timbre. Right now it's a bit mid-heavy, when it might work better as low-mid-heavy. The lead during the DnB part could be more dynamic. Yes, there is some creative sequencing, but it's basically covering up the fact there's no real expressiveness on the longer sustains. You're just trying to make up for that with portamento and fast runs. Don't try to make up for something you don't yet have, try to get the expressiveness in the way that you want. Vibrato, oscillator sync, however you want to do it. I'd suggest vibrato or both. The arrangement kind of repeats itself for the most part. Maybe you can shorten it and not miss anything unique. Try to keep things changing often. People have short attention spans, it's life.

There's dat edit button. The kick is good for what you're going for. The snare, not so much. Should be closer to a rimshot at the beginning. Maybe it'd fit later on. The saw wave pad at the beginning is generic. I'm not sure it really defines a sound as complex as it needs to be to be a step up from the source. Sounds like some sort of slight flanger on the piano? It seems a bit grating when it's combined with the water effects. The piano actually sounds a bit low quality, or the flanger made it like that. The organ-like lead afterwards sounds like something from Toxic Biohazard, which isn't necessarily suited for organs, actually. The same drums play the whole time, making the arrangement pretty static. Needs more variation! Good start, but it needs a whole lot more personalization to set it apart from the billion other Aquatic Ambience remixes here.

I already posted mine earlier, so I'll just say that I recently cleared my SoundCloud and left in the stuff I would consider good.

Yeah, definitely. Whoever gets here first gets dat review!

Back when I started in April 2011 (so not that long ago)... yeah, I sucked. I know that now. But I still made do with what I had, which brought forth some stellar arrangements now that I can look back at them and critique more objectively than I could back then. Unfortunately, those stellar arrangements were essentially based on the fact that I used specific sounds. Rozo is right, sometimes a mix just can't be salvaged because the arrangement is highly dependent on your sound choices at the time. I tried changing some of the instruments in my old, old Golden Sun remix which I actually still kinda like (I abused dBlue Glitch on synthetic guitar to create a neat groove, and used Harmless for synth leads), but it didn't really work because a whole bunch of mix levels, balancing, acoustics, stereo fields, and other spatial stuff changed due to the new sounds I had picked at the time to replace the older ones. So I really just find it better, if you find an old mix of yours of which you really like the arrangement, to just take it and recompose it completely from scratch following the ideas you had. That should turn out to be much easier than trying to redo something butt-old by editing directly from the old project file. Seems like Chimpazilla and I will have our first mixpost within the realm of 2.333 - 2.833 years, depending on if it happens to be a DP or a regular old judged mix. Gario and loads of other people sure seemed happy with it. =D

Great mix of timbres you have here. The beginning pad is a bit dry to me. You have that sort of envelope-routed-to-a-resonant-filter type of sound going on (no attack, normal decay, no sustain, normal release), but it's missing that chorus and rich reverb it deserves. The default (amplitude) envelope release is also too short, whereas the attack is late, so you need a longer release to blend the pad better between notes. I'd suggest switching out that piano for an e.piano instead. That would fit a whole lot better, IMO, as you have one at 1:26. Unfortunately, that EP just happens to be a little too wet, so I'm not hearing that bark from the keypresses as much as I'd like. Just lower the wet mix about 1-3dB. Of course, it would be great too if you kept the piano after 1:58 as a sort of progressive difference. 2:43 should be re-recorded or quantized for better timing. The ending chord would be nicer as a jazzy 6th or 7th inversion chord instead of just a simple major chord. That kind of ending usually works better as a picardy third effect (easily googled, simple to understand).

I'm just gonna bump this. Needs dat mod review that I requested from both Rozo and Flexstyle, both of which I PM'd (which I would expect you guys to see by now, since I've seen some random posts on OCR that were after the time either of you received the PM). Either person is fine, but it'd be great to have both if you both want to. Just whenever I guess, take your time. Chimpazilla and I both want this on OCR. Any other mod is totally welcome to check this out.

How funny, a FF6 remix contest was just over on Feb. 28, and this was one of the available sources. First impressions: Drums - awkward timbre compared to the rest of the instrumentation, especially the snare. The snare seems too acoustic and might be better suited for rock stuff, rather than jazzy stuff. The ambience is very minor on the drums, but it could settle for some subtle drum room reverb. Subtle filters and glitchiness were nice, but rare. Arrangement - Kind of meandering. It's fine as long as there's solid transitions, but there aren't any that jump out at me, so basically I don't hear any. There are some seamless shifts, but they went without transitions. Piano had a good timbre, but seemed random in the way it was played. It sounded improvised to me.

Well, it's totally fine as long as you know you're being conservative. ;D I would encourage you to figure out a good arrangement to any sort of song where you find the arrangement is already good. No, let's put it this way. I CHALLENGE YOU. (and, of course, try not to use generic MIDI instruments like the bass you have here).