timaeus222

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).

Agreed. The wub is very annoying and repetitive, in the nicest way possible. It would have been nice to mix in that theme you hear before you face Agatha. Pretty much the entire remix is covered in 1 minute, and copied and pasted 7 more times. Needs much more variation.

Of course. I probably should have mentioned that my suggestions were during the extreme cases of THIS IS TOO THICK MUST Y00Z COMPRESSIONZ TO FIT. No worries; personally, I don't actually do that all that often either.

lol, notice I said "light" compression. By light I do mean very light, to not ruin the timbre. Essentially, I'm thinking of something similar to hard limiting (in case it creates any confusion, hard limiting, at least on Adobe Audition, is cutting off the excess amplitude). The DI suggestion was just a "try it once and see how it goes" type of thing. I don't have a DI cable, so it's just speculation on the safe side based on what other people (Dj Mystix, zircon, etc.) have gotten with DI recordings, at least, on electric guitar. It seemed intuitive to me.

I think you guys are confusing listening on one speaker with listening as mono. It seems like you're thinking of listening to only left or only right speakers, when PD was thinking of merged mono. I just listened to two of my mixes on merged mono, btw, and they actually still sound pretty good. Sweetness.

Well, it's missing a whole lot of things. Clarity, cleanliness, proper compression, etc. Your drums are probably way too loud on a hard knee limiter.

Do i hear a lafta yoga mod? =ooo

You can always do some light compression on the rhythm guitar if you feel like the dynamic range of it is too large (+/- 10dB is a little much). Yes, it is a tiny bit too loud. Too short, needs more expansion. Might be too conservative. Needs more ambience since it sounds dry. Sounds like straight room recording. If you can do DI recording, that could benefit you, or not.

Yeah, I knew it was a liberal arrangement, as I stated it in the OP, lol. Thanks for the feedback anyways.

Drums are alright, but you gotta layer some more punchiness into that kick and snare. I'm barely hearing them. Toms are rather spatially narrow. First impression on the piano and it's actually getting a little buried a bit by the hi hats. Strings are a little bit slow on the attack and need more variation on the articulations to match the played notes. The hi hats seem to be playing too often and are too loud. Arrangement is a bit simple. Otherwise, it sounds good.

Try not to use instruments that you don't have sufficient samples for, or try not to expose instruments that you don't have great articulation possibilities for. At this point, it's best to perfect it with what you can work with best.

+1 ---------------- I compressed the drums with, believe it or not, Fruity Compressor (only because ACO doesn't share the same compressor as I have, and I use The Glue). The Master has a Fruity Limiter with soft knee characteristics (relatively short release, "Curve" numbers are 8 instead of 3) since I knew ACO obviously had Fruity Limiter. I figured it would help him use that more creatively to get around overcompression if he had to or wanted to. I did the sound design in Zebra2, and automations were added to automate filters inside Zebra, automate EQ bands in Param EQ 2, or automate the wet mix in Fruity Reeverb. Zebra patches: - "Inner/Outer Temple" pads (Howard Scarr) - Hoodoo people emulation lead (modded from zircon's patch) - slap bass - "bamboo" flute (just a normal flute with some white noise for a blow effect) - digital FM-like bass (cause for "strumming" sound in the second half of the song) - sync bass (outtro), meant to emulate "Hyper resonant" patch from Sytrus - PWM saw lead (during lead harmonies) - resonant filter with an LFO on the cutoff and an envelope on the LFO rate (leads into breakdown) - resonant sweeper bass (during breakdown, automated filter) - "Percolator" and "Beat the Bug" (filler FX patches during breakdown, the second from a free patch bank from u-he website) Piano was me too, and ACO polished some of the harmonies. And some typical reverb/delay stuff, though I usually use other reverb tools. =)

Hey, it's us again! =D This time, with some Plants vs. Zombies love. We want your opinions and critiques on this one, even if you're not a mod. 'The Zombies Are Coming' - Box 'The Zombies Are Coming' - Soundcloud Mod Review schtuff: Sources: Watery Graves, Loonboon, Rigor Mormist (all IN-GAME versions) http://laurashigihara.bandcamp.com/album/plants-vs-zombies-soundtrack 0:00 - 0:04.5 = Original 0:04.5 - 0:09 = Watery Graves (0:00 - 0:02.5) 0:09 - 0:25 = Watery Graves (0:00 - 0:18.5) 0:25 - 0:38.5 = Loonboon (0:00 - 0:05.5) 0:38.5 - 0:45 = Watery Graves (1:03.5 - 1:05.5) 0:45 - 1:03 = Loonboon (0:12 - 0:25) 1:03 - 1:21.5 = Watery Graves (0:18.5 - 0:27.5 [The backup instrument]) 1:21.5 - 1:39.5 = Watery Graves (0:27.5 - 1:03.5) 1:39.5 - 1:53 [such a fun solo] = Loonboon (0:49 - 1:11.5) 1:53 - 1:57.7 = Loonboon (0:23.75 - 0:25.25) 1:57.7 - 2:15.25 [Havin' too much fun here] = Watery Graves (0:00 - 0:18.5) 2:15.25 - 2:33.93 = Watery Graves (1:03.5 - 1:21) 2:33.93 - 2:52 = Watery Graves (0:27.5 - 1:03.5) 2:52 - 3:10.2 [glitchy goodness] = Watery Graves (1:23.3 - 1:41.3) 3:10.20 - 3:28.25 = Loonboon (1:22.2 - 1:46.5) 3:28.25 - 3:37.88 = Watery Graves (0:00 - 0:18.5) 3:37.88 - 3:41.82 = Rigor Mormist (0:02.7 - 0:06.6) 3:41.82 - 3:46.38 = Watery Graves (0:00 - 0:02.5) 3:46.38 - 3:50.90 = Watery Graves (0:00 - 0:02.5) and Rigor Mormist (0:02.7 - 0:06.6) 3:50.9 - 3:55.7 = Watery Graves (0:00 - 0:18.5) 3:55.7 - 3:59.9 = Rigor Mormist (0:02.7 - 0:06.6) 3:59.9 - End = Watery Graves (0:00 - 0:18.5) = almost 100% source, but you know, in case you want to double check.

So what you're saying is, you aren't comfortable with shifting from a semi-repetitive genre to a mix of organic and EDM? Then you just need the practice. Get in the habit of changing things up in a song very often.

Maybe like something from my newest shared remix at 1:12?

The levels still aren't quite there during the dubsteppy parts. The wubs are still too loud compared to the lead. At about 1:30, the lead is way too shrill. It's like you detuned an FM lead (which would sound really bad). Try just a simple square lead with vibrato and go from there. I also don't hear all that much source. It could be less than the reasonable 50% at the moment. As a whole, you have very generic sounds, except in the exact middle of the song. Maybe practice some other sound design?