timaeus222   Members

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.

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.