timaeus222

Hm. The new snare sounds good. I would have introduced it starting at 0:28, though, not earlier. It didn't feel right to me, at least. Maybe hi hats to replace those before 0:28? I don't get it, the snare is still buried in the busier parts. Are you using hard knee limiting? Are your volume knobs in the step sequencer window at 100% for your drums? Those knobs control the dominance of your instruments.

Both, but the strings were more obvious. Hm... The snare sounds a bit too vinyl for this mix. It has a short tail, too. When it plays rolls, it sounds especially bad. Try to go for more low end punch with some layering. The second snare sound from a bit over halfway was okay, but it sounded kind of acoustic. You're at that fine line between too vinyl and too acoustic. Both are sounding buried, still. The kick is a little better, but you can do even better. It's still buried as well. At this point, the lead with the most vibrato sounds too loud, and it's pushing every other instrument back.

goldbaby.co.nz has some great drum samples, and definitely some for electronic music. They all cost around $30, but you can get free sample packs with about 1/8 the size, which is still a good amount. When you say "effects to modify their sound", it makes me think of external plugins for effects. By "change the sound", I mean go into the VST UI and edit the sound from in there, via synthesis techniques. Turning knobs and such. I sure hope that's a typo, because you should be sidechaining the kick to the bass. Otherwise it's backwards at this particular moment.

I AM EXCITED. SEE MY EXCITED FAIC. =DDDD I'll see if I can make something for this since I got Monday off (I plan to do something to the effect of electronica/glitch/rock). Good luck to others. By the way, what if not all the source tunes are chosen? Another contest? Last-minute remixer joins in? You take a shot at it? xD

That's true---I was primarily talking about how it is on Zebra; there isn't a resonance knob for formant filters on Zebra, last I recalled.

I've never reached 50 MB for a 2:50 song. I have a 3:05 song that's 31MB as a WAV and 5MB as a VBR1 MP3. Yeah, it's probably just the sample rate that's making it that large. Check the export settings.

Haha, that's fine. I'm on a 6-year old computer too. xD

Protip: HD! 'nuff said. ;D And lol, I love Breakbeat Paradise too.

I have to admit, the phasered supersaw kinda threw me off when the piano came in with it as well. It seemed louder than the piano. Nice kick. Not much of a fan of the sub bass though. 1:13 felt oddly abrupt to me, because it sounded somewhat off rhythm. Nice glitching at 2:01. Loved the retrigger and delay on the hi hat and kick. 2:48 - the drums seemed disconnected with the feel there. I would have made the drums softer there, but oh well. 3:17 felt a little bare without a cymbal, but it's OK. Solid enough, agreed about borderline pass.

The percussion in general is a bit quiet, but especially your kick. It's buried. Sidechain the kick to the bass if you haven't already. There's a guide on youtube about sidechaining by zirconst if you need it. The 8-bit (square?) lead (the kind you typically hear doing really old school synth arps) and the square/saw hybrid bass in the beginning are really that generic. There's nothing interesting that can be appreciated about those particular sounds, as nothing was really done to modify them more dramatically from the basic 8-bit quality synth sounds. Not to mention a lot of them are really similar in timbre. It's not nearly as bad as a whole bunch of detuned saw waves trying to harmonize though. After I finished listening, I heard the first song in Bits n' Bobz by Case Portman. You might find that inspiring for your style on this particular song. Like what Skrypnyk said, it sounds like you're still using an acoustic drum kit with electronic instruments. Try vinyl or Roland TR samples, or something to that effect.

lol, it's not all that dominant, it just happened to pop in my head when I heard this. I'm still noticing the fake-y sound of the strings, especially at 0:27. Maybe someone can collab to replace that, or maybe you can somehow find some better sounding ones, or maybe you can adjust the attack on some sort of internal amplitude envelope? I think the snare is still being obscured a little by the non-percussive instruments. Don't be afraid of maxing out the volume on the kick and snare, and then compressing them using a nice punchy compressor VST. The kick itself is a bit bassy still, as you might have noticed. I heard When Alien Drum Robots Attack and Platinum Percussion could have some good drum samples (Platinum Percussion does have some stuff for world music that I love to use). A lot of the instruments you're currently using could benefit greatly from more reverb. Not so they will have a longer decays necessarily, but just so they sound like they're in a room that's a little more ambient than how it sounds now. 1:46 - I'm not sure if you meant that arp to be that loud, but it sounds like you meant it to be softer than that, because it's an arp lead at 2:04. Maybe you could lower the velocities until it becomes a lead? Velocity response is crucial for humanized music! So... a lot of your sound design choices are good, but it still feels like you could have more variety in them. I think there's about 8 instruments, but it would be interesting with even more, even just filler effects or something to make the soundscape a little richer. The arrangement could also use a little more creativity; a lot of the song sounds a little similar throughout in terms of the energy. My general rule of thumb is if I were to scroll through the song, say, 15 seconds at a time, I should be able to distinguish where I am in the song without looking at the time stamp. If that is true, then it means your song is dynamic enough to retain people's attention.

I figured I'd show you what I thought your mix first sounded like: http://zirconstudios.bandcamp.com/track/shadows-feat-jillian-aversa

I would say a little of both, actually. I create or reuse some of my own bass sounds, craft it, etc. In mixing the song I naturally adjust the EQ on the bass mixer track as I go, with a subtle high pass on the Master at about 35Hz. I don't touch EQ on the master, otherwise. I consider mastering to be both what Dan said and the processing you do on the Master track to finalize a song.

After watching Dan's video, I want to add that it's not a resonant filter you should be working with to make that sound. Resonant filters give a vocal table between Ooh and Aah. At least, that's what I've been hearing when I used resonance. This particular sound sounds like it's... going from Ee to Aah, somewhat. Kind of like Ee to almost Aah, with lots of detuning and an LFO on a bandpass filter.

I usually don't find any inspiration from orchestral music---I don't write orchestral stuff, so it doesn't help me to listen to orchestral music for inspiration.

Might be some sort of resonant formant filter on a pulse wave with a lot of weird pitch bends.

Nice, reminds me of Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2. Something of note, the piano playing is slightly off. Examples: 0:53 (between hands), 0:59 (between hands), 1:59 (rushing a bit), 3:49 (wrong note?).

Great deviation from the usual, Will! Yes, the violin sounded kinda fake, but it had some really nice attention to the articulations, so it wasn't all that bad. Fantastic interweaving of sources!

Cool, good idea with the LFO controller on a pitch knob. My MIDI keyboard does have a pitch wheel of course, but it's hard to record pitch bends on it because it has a spring-type thing that brings it back to center every time, so it "clicks" as it passes center. That's why I tend to use LFO modules. I can just adjust the rhythm and it's always synched to the tempo. Then I can automate the LFO rate if I want, without having to record it in live, where mistakes can happen that delay that perfect recording. There's also that need to fix LFOs later, and if you record it in live, it tends to be tough to fix it since if you don't have a Delay feature in an existing LFO module, you don't have a way to adjust how early or late the LFO comes into full effect. Of course, remember that there's a lot of uses for LFO. Most people use it on pitch, but you can also make it a wider LFO that reaches more than just a whole or half step for more dramatic vibratos. I noticed you adjusted the strings. Unfortunately now they sound pretty fake. If you can, make the attack shorter, and the release slightly longer. I think spiccato-ish strings might work better there. 0:58 - just personal taste---you could make it last even longer, and then automate the volume down. Or, even better, you could automate just the dry signal down, and it'll sound even cooler. 1:12 - still sounds a bit bare there. Sounds good on its own, but it would be way better if something else was playing alongside it. Perhaps a resonant sweeping digital filter? The drums overall seem to be on autopilot to me. I don't hear a lot of fills. Additionally, the kick and snare are quite weak. Needs more layering on the fundamentals (80-140Hz for the kick, 200-300Hz for the snare), and some saturation to add some more power. 1:16 - Here's where it gets really muddy. I tend to do this, so maybe it'll help if you do a notch in the EQ in the bass exactly where the kick lies, so that the kick has some more room to breathe. You could also high pass the 3o3 arp to accommodate. Or, you could automate a high pass by automating an EQ band's frequency. Recently I started automating EQ bands to adjust to certain sections in a song. 1:47 doesn't seem to be gelling to me. I'm sure you'll polish it a bit more, but I just wanted to mention that.

It doesn't matter. People have posted unfinished arrangements before, and it works out. The intro sounds like a beginning to an electronica/big beat track to me, but you went a completely different direction with that cello-thing. xD I think that acid arp might have too much in the 300-500Hz range, but only by about 1-2dB. 0:45 - the lead is pretty interesting, some nice PWM stuff. Try adding vibrato on that. Also, lower the extent of the LFO by about 4% so that the PWM effect isn't as dramatic. 0:58 - the drums should be different here, as it sounds like a small bridge. Maybe high passed or band passed? The tail of the lead there is great, but I would prefer a longer tail there on the pitch drop. 1:12 isn't quite as effective as I would imagine you wanted. Needs another sound to accompany it, and possibly the arp could be twice as fast? 1:30 - Great lead there, but maybe the vibrato needs a longer delay before it comes in. See if you can do that in the LFO module. Hopefully there's a Delay button (more like attack). Sounds good so far, keep it up.

The voice could use some high-passed stereo delay. 0:36 - the bells sound a bit thin. Maybe layer something to give it a tone with more body. The kick could use more punch. The thump and click is alright. 1:45-1:53 - nice wubs. Should be twice as long because it's one of the more interesting and creative parts. This would be a good improv part for the wubs. The wubs are also kind of obscured, at least on these cheap earphones I use when I'm not home. 2:28-3:02 - Eh... here's where the wubs get kind of gimmicky. They're getting overused here. Change up the synth patch or arrangement there. 3:57 - perhaps fade the bass out by 4:02, in a linear volume automation. Track needs a better ending. Sounds like a fadeout to me. It's OK overall, needs some polish and detail fixes. Almost there.

I think the synth at 0:33 is unfitting for a lead sound there. Sounds like a saw lead that has a envelope on the cutoff with a long decay and no sustain. It might be better if it was softer, more like a moog lead's cutoff freqs. I've always found 0:57 abrupt. Intro it better. CSD stuff can easily sound out of place when it's not mixed well enough. In that section, the low war drum hits are kinda obscured, IMO. Could just be me and my skullcandies as I'm not yet home. Cymbals sound out of place at about 2:00. Actually, from that point on, the percussion sounds disjointed when compared to the rest of the instrumentation. Sound choice is OK, but needs some production love, smoother transitions, and more cohesiveness.

Bump. I'm kinda curious on what people think of the Dubstep section (2:00). I tried doing some more to the mastering since then, but it didn't work, so I left it as-is. In retrospect, I should probably have taken off that master compressor before doing any fix-it tries. xD After any comments, I might take yet another shot at this later, now that I've realized that.

No, don't randomize velocities. No one plays woodwinds at random volumes. Adjust them so that the phrasing is more clear.

The reverb is slightly too much. Things are blending together a bit too well. If it's slightly too much on these headphones, it's probably too much. Reduce the wet mix by about 1 dB. The piano does sound pretty thin when it plays chords. Maybe EQ up the treble to brighten it up a bit. 2:34 - the bells are too loud, or too wet. It's burying the sax.