timaeus222

It's quite ironic, actually, because this is actually Shreddage, not real guitar. So I wouldn't have minded fixing octaves if I had to. xD However, even if I wanted to, I couldn't. The mapping on regular Shreddage actually limits me to almost those exact octaves. I can't bump the lead up an octave, and I already have a layer of low riffs for the metal feel. I'll just have to mess with the EQ some more. If it helps, I have one layer of low riffs, one layer of full chokes, one layer of regular riffs, and one layer of the lead, if you look at only the guitar. In V3, the bass is actually there, but it apparently isn't as loud as you anticipated. EDIT: AHA! I figured out the main reasons why it's muddy! I usually forget the fact that the mixer effect tracks work in order from top to bottom, not at the same time. My lead and low riffs were feeding through the EQ before they were amped, so they were quieter or sounded differently than they should have. Therefore, the EQ I had was overboosting the mids. Now the drums are less subdued and there should be much less muddiness and low-pass-ish sound. Remix: >>The Death of King Desmond (Metal Mix) V4<< The Death of King Desmond (Metal Mix) V3 The Death of King Desmond (Metal Mix) V2 The Death of King Desmond (Metal Mix) V1 Source: Hm, it might actually be sounding pretty good! (Bumped twice)

I think Will is right, but I'm directing his critique on the reverb toward the floor toms / bass drums (it sounds like one of those). Try gradually lowering the wet and upping the dry and seeing what gives them less of a hissy reverb but more of a... heavier sound? You might see where I'm going with this. It's kind of hard to explain this type of sound, but if you can imagine a pipe band playing a bass drum, it's kind of like that. This is at 0:20, 0:29, etc. Leave some of the hiss though, but reduce some of it so it doesn't have as much of a tail. At 0:55, the wet reverb on the snare is starting to create a muddy sound, so decrease the reverb at that point a tad until maybe 1:14. At about 2:56-ish, your... vocal-like pad is kind of overpowering your lead. Just reduce it a bit. It's sounding great so far! Very cool glitch effects, actually! Letting the reverb go on so much, though, at 3:29 might make people skip forward in the mix to see when the song continues. Try fading into the next part slowly as the reverb dies away, not after. At 3:53, it could be cool to add some crackle effects. Other than that, keep working on the arrangement and production! Good luck. =D

Very nice and unique so far! Here are some things: I think the kick is a bit subdued. It feels like it has no upper mid so it's not piercing through the mix. It might be in the bass frequencies, but it shouldn't just be there. For the snare, it feels like it's in the "high end" of the mids. Try bumping it up to the "low end" of the upper mids. I also think you should make use of more wubs in the half-time sections. It could sound somewhat dubsteppish at that point and add a cool aspect to your remix. Sounding great so far!

I agree about the arp. Perhaps filter it in and out, kind of like what you thought about doing, at about 2:08 - 2:26? Yes, bump up the bass some. The high treble is a bit overpowering, but personally it's not from the hats. I think it's occasionally from the triangle waves? That's what I got for ya. Good luck!

Sounding very nice so far! Here are some things: I agree about 1:34 - 2:30. Maybe add some upper mid sounds at 1:34 - 1:42. Tone down the resonance/treble in the lead at 1:42 - 1:48. Add vibrato on the lead, perhaps? I'm hearing some sort of a dissonance at 1:42. It might be a major second in the bass? 1:48 - Yeah, definitely add some mild delay on it and a good amount of reverb on it. It also sounds a bit hard, so try playing with the velocities a bit. Starting at about 1:55, you could put a bit more variation on the piano arpeggio. The same old pattern gets a bit stale. Maybe add a few grace notes? The last thing is that maybe on the parts where the piano plays chords (i.e. 2:02), you could replace it with a rhodes or something softer. It would seem to work better there. Good luck!

I think the mixing is there, but that's just me. For now I'd suggest these things: At 0:11 - 0:14, which is the second time through of that pattern, try adding upper third harmonies. At 0:21 - 0:34, you can always have a more expressive synth than that. That decay is really low, so try increasing it and adding some delayed vibrato (vibrato with a slow attack). You could also add a small amount of portamento/glide on certain notes. At 0:35 - 0:42, I hear a triangle wave filling in some frequencies. Try playing around with its octave. Maybe one octave up or down would sound better? At 0:50 - 0:56, where the triangle wave comes back in, you could also add some glitch effects, or maybe slice its pattern some more and have a machine-gun-like effect on some notes rather than simply sustaining them. At 1:11 - 1:14, where the guitar plays the same notes twice, at 1:13 - 1:14 you could pan the first time left and the second time right. Be creative. At 1:14 - 1:17, where that pattern has repeated a second time around, again, try adding upper third harmonies. At 1:57 - 2:00, same thing as 1:14 - 1:17. At 2:00 - 2:14, you should add a really cool new synth there. Maybe a PWM lead with vibrato? Portamento/glide? The last thing I'd say is that you should create a more obvious ending. Right now it seems to end very suddenly, without warning. Maybe you can change the drum pattern there to slower, half-time drums? An irregular drum beat that emphasizes certain notes rather than playing just as accompaniment? Good luck!

There wasn't a bass. I was actually hoping the lower rhythm guitar chords would create sufficient low bass frequencies. I can try to squeeze in a bass at 20-70 Hz. For some reason I seem to get compression at higher frequencies. Well, at least I'm hearing it. There isn't much I can do about the hi-hat; it's a WAV implemented into EWQL Stormdrums's .nki, not an actual separate WAV. (Well, it is an actual separate WAV, but it wouldn't make sense to use that on its own when I could use it in the .nki and get the round robin effect) Same with the bass drum (although I think you're mixing it up with the toms). I suppose I could try changing the EQ and reverb. Remix: >>The Death of King Desmond (Metal Mix) V3<< The Death of King Desmond (Metal Mix) V2 The Death of King Desmond (Metal Mix) V1 Source: I don't think it sounds as good as the V2, though I shouldn't really be comparing them. The drums do sound less subdued though. Right now it just sounds like there's too much bass, but I'm not sure. (Bumped once)

This would be the V2, with my fixes to the muddiness, stereo panning on the drums (mostly kick and snare were affected at first), and (hopefully more than slightly) more evident breakdown: The Death of King Desmond (Metal Mix) V2 Source: Remix: The Death of King Desmond (Metal Mix) (Bumped three times)

It's sounding good so far. I know you want to stop working on it, but I think you should anyway. Try again on a fresh day. I do think it can be improved. I'd advise you to strengthen and brighten up the snare. Layer on some high end. Also, the instruments seem lo-fi in general. If you can, try replacing the instruments with "better" choices. i.e. The poly saw can have a slightly wider sound, similar to synth strings. The clavier (or I'll just call it a keys instrument) can have some more reverb and delay. I think you can do better. Good luck!

At first, I thought the drums should have an increased stereo width (with Stereo Shaper) in order to make them fit more easily, but I definitely see where you're coming from; I had them at the center earlier. Since there was mid to low-mid compression that I didn't hear, I'll fix that instead and return the drums to center! It might also prove useful to you that I was using EWQL Stormdrums for the drums, so the snare, kick, toms, etc. are automatically panned in Kontakt, and are in the same channel, but I'll see what I can do. 1:34 - 2:00 should have been the breakdown I intended to put, but I'll work on that more and make it more evident! Thank you for the awesome feedback! It completely makes sense, no lie! Personally, it's quite an honor to receive feedback from you!

Source: Remix: The Death of King Desmond (Metal Mix) Just wanted to show this to you guys! Shreddage rules! Currently, this seems passable. Is it?

Well, I'm going to have to clarify some things: Well, I figured starting off soft and getting louder would be an intro. o.o I may do something with that then. Also, there was a lead from 0:00 to 0:38. Really? It doesn't seem like that to me. Some mods also said earlier that it was too loud then. That was planned for a later time. That's not a snare fill, that's glitch effect #3 from dBlueGlitch. Can you be more specific? Take another listen and point out a whole range. It might be easier whenever I end up thinking of a person to collaborate with.

Here are the things I did recently: - Added some (more) reverb, and some delay on the piano. - EQ'd the timbre of the piano to a brighter sound. - Changed a few notes in the piano sequencing to make it less dissonant, as it apparently sounded (I like jazz chords). - Balanced the mix levels some more. - Changed guitar ampsim patches for a "closer to real" sound. - Edited the guitar notes to make them less dissonant on the third long sustain in ~2:40 ad simile. - Edited the guitar notes to be more synchronized with the rhythm. I guess I put the final note in fret slides on the beat rather than the first note in the fret slide on the beat, and that put it at too much of an offset. - EQ'd out miscellaneous unnecessary frequencies (or so I believe). - Double-tracked the guitar ampsim patch mods. https://www.box.com/s/57ae67e543da93e0dcda - V3 Tell me if it improved enough to move on to the drums, and later I plan to ask for a collab on the guitar, so don't talk about how real it could sound, but rather, how much better it might sound now. (Bumped once)

Do you think there will be any more contests in the near future? I probably won't be able to get the inspiration to write a remix in 1 day.

There was actually a lot of effort put into these, but really, anyone can just listen for free and that would be perfectly fine. Donations are more like supporting actions.

The drum rhythm at the beginning seems to be very simple and repetitive. It didn't change until about 1:37. Try varying it up a bit, adding rides later, and then creating a sort of DnB beat with the samples you have.

I just want to say a few things: @WillRock: - The drums layered in that way was intentional; I did want that kind of a low passed sound in the snare. That gives it kind of a distant feel. - The piano was probably from the best possible plugin out there. TruePianos is completely epic. Maybe I'm just not pulling it off as well as it could be, but the plugin has some great capabilities. - The bass sounds treble-heavy because I was layering it with lightly distorted guitar for an extra fret slide feel. @Rozo: - The "samples" (more like plugins) couldn't be low quality. I'm only saying that because they all cost money. I would say otherwise and say instead that the patch choice resulted in a low quality sound. - I think the arrangement is fine, but I agree with most other things. I'm happy though that you picked up on the 90's style that I intended, so something worked. - I also don't like how there just has to be more than one answer to music production, but that's life I guess. Thanks for the feedback!

I second that. Just upload it someplace where it's easier for everyone to look at it.

Oh, pH, that reminds me. PixelPanic: I used to use these plugins that are great for 8-bit music! Chip32 Basic64 They're both free, and very versatile! Chip32 allows you to draw your own waveforms, and Basic64 comes with a lot of cool presets to show you what you could make from it.

I'd just like to say great range! Those are some pretty high notes you can hit in mixed voice! High B! I can usually manage a high A, maybe a B, but I generally use falsetto between high A and high high A.

Something I would suggest would be to add some light reverb to the snare because there aren't many high-mid frequency instruments for most of the mix (~6000-10000 Hz). I would also recommend you widen the soundscape on the rhodes. I hear it throughout pretty much the entire mix, so try making it fill more of the frequency spectrum.

I'm not a mod, but I think you should replace that organ plugin with something different, because right now it sounds very lo-fi. If you're going for a chiptune sound, you shouldn't try putting in low quality instruments that could possibly be higher quality. Try replacing it with a square-saw lead or something, with slow LFO for a constantly changing sound. Maybe something like this, which looks like this? Good luck!

I recently started backing everything up on mediafire, box, and two thumbdrives. xD

0:00 - 0:18 ~ the bell-like sound that comes in is only slightly high in the 1.6-2 kHz range. Try EQing that down a bit. Just a tiny bit. It's not an irritating ratio, but with my headphones it's borderline "slightly", so maybe someone else might have said something eventually. I dunno. The snare sound could be better. It sounds like you took an acoustic snare and stretched its waveform a bit. Try looking for a high-end snare and add some nice reverb to it. If you use FL Studio, it's kind of like DNC_Snare_3.wav. The triangle wave that comes in at 0:27 could be a bit more expressive. Try adding some vibrato either manually through the note sequencer or through the plugin. If possible, I recommend you route it through an envelope and give it a ~0.25sec attack. The saw wave that comes in at 0:34 is a bit annoying with its detuned nature and should be fixed. It feels like it's ~20 cents flat. From 0:52, it does seem that the snare has too much tail, so that's another spot I recommend fixing the decay on it. I also think putting the dubstep wub through a notch filter and slightly accentuating the ~200-300Hz, ~1300-1500Hz, and ~6000-8000Hz ranges would make it shine more. I'd say 1:18 - 1:31 is where the focus shifts to your dubstep idea. Go all out there with the wub variations! At 2:07 - 2:09, I suggest using a wub as an introductory sound for the next section. That would be pretty cool. But really, I have no idea what you're doing after 2:09. It seemed kind of random there for me. You might find this as some good inspiration: Good luck!

This is quite enjoyable, actually. But yes, I would find a more velocity-sensitive plugin for the piano and bass (assuming the bass is supposed to be organic), or edit the velocity responsiveness curve on your DAW if possible. Personally, I want to see this ready for OCR approval.