timaeus222

You already have a kickass guitar tone, JP. Why do you need that? xD @OA: Wat? GR5 is out now. o.o

Damn, that's a good deal. If I didn't already have Guitar Rig 4, and if I already had Windows 7 (I use Vista, Dx), I'd take that deal. xD

I definitely agree on the arrangement, it's fantastic. If you want some more realistic picked guitar stuff (I'm sure the GarageBand guitars, or any non-sample library guitars, aren't as realistic as, for example, some sort of a Kontakt guitar library), I can do it and send you back a WAV or MP3 if you send me a MIDI of the guitar track (for the greatest accuracy). I'm sure it's possible considering you're using FL Studio (and I am too). I have Keolab Spicy Guitar (acoustic guitar, free), this Kontakt lead guitar library ($179.99) and Shreddage Rhythm Guitar library ($50 or $70, depending on the deal you are looking at). Orangeholic is like the best sound demo for what you're looking for, btw, for Strawberry Evolution Electric Guitar. Oh, and I have a lot of other stuff, so if you want to collaborate, I'm willing. I can add lots of cool stuff, like better drums, brass, lush pads, bells, etc.

I think the main problem is not the repetition but the fact that you're generally writing the song with the exact same notes as the source. It'd be in your best interest to create an arrangement that either takes nearly the exact same notes as the source and adds some ultra mega epic blow-your-face-off effects, or rearranges the notes so the song isn't so strikingly similar, yet it is personalized enough to call it an awesome rearrangement. Keep trying. The non percussion has good dynamics, if you boost everything by about 3 dB.

Er... this song is way too fast for the samples you chose. You see what I mean, right? Piano professionals would have trouble playing that fast perfectly. No strings ensemble can play that fast, nor is it realistic. :/ Good idea, but try to go for a more realistic approach.

Usually I tend to do ambient, electronica, and rock. All my stuff ends up sounding like that, at least. And I usually just pencil in my notes, like Neblix. Other times, I write it in with my MIDI keyboard if I want to record piano MIDIs or something.

Pretty fantastic glitch dubstep there.

You have some good ideas here, but I'm not exactly sure what's going on in the song. Maybe you can improve on the sense of direction in the song. Try to make it so each part of the song leads up to the next. Right now it's cluttered with cool effects, but they're placed awkwardly and it doesn't seem to fit well.

I'd be up for it occasionally. I'm rather good at this kind of stuff.

I definitely would echo the idea of changing the chords around. I need to try lengthening a chord progression sometime and adding my own chords in between. That would probably give me some good ideas, and probably you too.

You do that. Sometimes it takes more than one full, complete attempt, maybe even more than 3. i.e. Dirt Devil by zircon took one try plus 3 redoes.

If you haven't already, try separating your drums into multiple instances so you can route them individually into a mixer. Then EQ them so that their frequencies don't overlap significantly with those of any others. I usually end up slightly boosting around 100 Hz for the Kick with a thin peaking curve, boosting a bit less than that for the Snare at about 200-300Hz with a relatively thin (wider than "thin") peaking curve, putting a really thin bandstop filter in between to fix up any excess boom from the toms, dipping the mids slightly with a wide peaking curve, and boosting the treble more than slightly with a high shelf curve for the tom's high-end hits and the hats/cymbals/rides. Of course, that's for one EQ module applied on an entire drumset, so you can definitely subdivide it and use each portion of the EQ as a reference for individual EQ's to apply for each mixer track.

Okay, yeah, I definitely hear the drums are overcompressed. You might be accidentally reducing the dry signal too much somehow. Reload the drum patch to how it was by default, and do what you need to to get completely dry, unprocessed drums. Then add your own reverb sparingly, just so it sounds like it's in a room, but nothing close to an auditorium. More like a studio. The guitars are too soft. I think the bass is actually at an alright volume, possibly. We'll see.

Well... if a song is made really well for how it's arranged, it sure feels nostalgic to me. For example: The Long Journey Ahead (Diggi Dis) Countdown to Infinity (WillRock)

I'm not home yet, so I can't give a proper look into this yet, but here's some advice for now. I find it ideal that, after my own experiments: - Drums should peak at 0dB, but be careful not to overcompress them. Get it to exactly 0dB or slightly less, but don't allow the amplitude without a limiter on to get too far above 0dB, or it'll add an unnecessary pumping sound that will dull the track. Very very slightly over in the 'correct' way adds some 'glue' or 'punch' to the drums (mainly the kick and snare). Watch the kick most often, as that is the most prone to be the cause of overcompression. - The rhythm guitars should be peaking close to -5dB. - The lead guitar should be peaking close to -4dB. - The bass guitar should be peaking close to -4.5dB. The reason that the bass is higher than the lead is because the bass frequencies are harder to hear, so boosting them by a reasonable amount winds up giving them a higher amplitude than another instrument with the same specifications and a higher frequency range. Rhythm guitars are a combination of both, but primarily the lows, so it should be slightly less than the bass, and the grunginess of rhythm guitar chugs should allow them to cut through, compensating for being at a lower amplitude. At least, that's what works for me, more or less to those specifications, but remember that those specifications are for when the EQ is already perfectly established and the only things left to do are master (track) compression work for punch/face-melting and instrument balancing for clarity. s(M)exoscope is a free spectral analyzer that you can use to preview your track's final waveform for the left or right channel so you can fix stuff and make it look and sound right before rendering, saving loads of time. Google it!

Yeah, you have to delete the entire link so the associated URL doesn't stay the same. Btw, it would be well worth your time to use a non-youtube music host, such as box.com, tindeck.com, or soundcloud.com (or some others).

Yeah, sometimes there are songs that work better in a similar arrangement to the original. I prefer to remix something with room for reinterpretation. You can always change up the atmosphere of the track in certain sections. Maybe have a no percussion piano breakdown, or maybe create your own variations to the melody and branch off from there. I find it better to analyze the chord progression of the original, modify the rhythm of that (or even add chords in between!), and when you think it sounds cool, fit the melody to that chord progression by changing the rhythm and/or spreading it out to span the chord progression. .

Density MKIII can do M/S compression.

Vocal exercises? Have him warm up. Or, wait until about 6 PM. Usually then the voice is easiest to control.

This is an old topic, but I did mean to go back and make that lead on Zebra2, so here it is. xD https://www.box.com/s/ibdsqpfimdmk73xl8a3o A small twist is that there isn't a modwheel control, but instead, an XY control. It's possible to do modwheel, but I'll leave that to the composer. Notes: - Saw wave, hint of reverb and delay. - 12dB LPF plus a very mild formant filter. - XMF lightly gives it that analog feel, hence the "analogue" label.

Better than what I could do in my first few months of mixing. xD Right now, the snare and kick are getting buried under the bass and the hi hats. In fact, the snare and kick are probably suffering from too little of the dry signal in the reverb you have going on with the drums. Try to fix the clarity issue there. Aside from that, the arrangement feels like a direct MIDI remix to me. Nice sound, though.

Hm... Is there any chance you're mistaking "clipping on purpose" for bitcrushing?

I agree on the timbre of the lead. This is one last thing I forgot to talk about. The lead by itself is fantastic, but the glide is a smidge too much. It gets more obvious at 1:16 when overlapping notes are more prominent. Actually, that's probably the only section that it's marginally too much glide. See if you can't do some MIDI CC automation to turn down the glide for only that section. It sounds fine in other places. Let's say that the glide was at "20". I'd say turn it down to about "14".

Hm. The arrangement ideas aren't all that bad. Of course, the quality isn't what you want it to be, but you knew that. The guitar and drum sequencing are pretty good. Actually, the drum samples are awesome.