timaeus222

I got these chords in E major: E G# B F# B D#, but F# A D could be a cool variation C# E A F# A D is technically in D major, but it seems to fit to me. Remember that the progression does change at 1:06. I hear: A D F# A C# E F# A D And it changes again at 1:37. I hear: B E G# B D# F# B E G# A C# E B D# F#

Sounds like you learned more in those 6 years, and decided you'd write less bad stuff. Kind of a good, but somewhat bad thing; sure, your standards have improved, but now you have this reluctance to write something bad. But go ahead, write something bad in private; you'll learn something in the process. Heck, you could share it here on the OCR forums and we could help you on it. Maybe having someone else helping you can push your music in a direction you didn't know was possible. ----- You could also try listening to new music. I tend to find Impact Soundworks demo songs to be pretty inspiring. ----- If you want to write something and you don't have ideas, improvise. If you can't improvise, practice. Try to learn some chord structures from music you like, and maybe your music can be influenced by those ideas when you play around with them enough and internalize those patterns. I've never been a great improviser, but sometimes I find great chord progressions just from messing around on the keyboard. My best ideas tend to be due to the chord progressions I accidentally find while playing around with an inspiring sound. My advice? Get a MIDI keyboard so you can improvise like this. ----- If you have ideas but you don't know how to execute them, probably: You're missing sounds you need to execute your idea. You don't have a fast enough workflow to flesh out the idea before it's gone. You're not sure how to identify what's going on in a model song you want to be inspired by. Not exactly easy to address those points though... Here's my take on each point: Maybe jot down example songs, and ask around (on OCR, hint hint) about what synths, sample libraries, or other resources you might need to accomplish a certain idea. Try learning keyboard + mouse shortcuts in your digital audio workstation (DAW) that allow you to work faster. I find that if I find the shortcuts myself, instead of reading from a manual, it feels more natural and easier to remember. Also, of course, practice in your DAW so that you know how to use its plugins and other features inside-and-out. This is quite hard at first, and the best advice I can think of is to ask someone else you trust to dissect an example song, and then maybe you can try to hear what they hear, and imitate that process on another song. Hone in on specific instruments in specific spots in the stereo field, and try to isolate what that texture is, and whether you have / can achieve something like it or not. Like lots of other things, practice this, and you'll get better.

Apparently I count amongst those people who have written techno AND rock... in one! By the way, I also appreciate that @José the Bronx Rican used my baby picture (courtesy of my dad) in the album art! (I'm the sketched baby)

There isn't really a set "formula" for auto-successful requests. Any artist has the freedom to choose to do or not do these requests, but he/she might be more inclined to try if the requester is clear enough. Here's an example to show approximately what a good typical request might look like (I just made it up right now; it's not real). EXAMPLE Thread title - Pokemon Super Mystery Dungeon - Boss Battle 3 (+ other) remix? Thread description -

Genre of the remix. Make multiple topics, within reason. two-source remixes are fair game, but they might be harder to write for some people.

I like how the syncopation makes this feel like 6/4, but it's actually 4/4. Birgitta's vocals were nice and upfront; apt and effective!

I feel it takes a great deal of 'restraint' to write a slow ballad like this and focus on the chord progression, textures, and the particular melodic notes you have, and not go on some crazy solo or add a big bass. Cool clock sound that you introduced around the 1-minute mark; it actually fit in, and despite being subtle, I could hear it that whole time. The production is relatively clean as well. Really nice job on this!

Definitely loving the nighttime feel from the bells early on. The electro drums were an interesting choice; I felt they made this less "sleepytime" and more "playtime", but they work nevertheless! I get hints of kirby in this, in both the sound design and some SFX, which is pretty cool. Great work!

Alright, it's finally here!

I was about to say that yesterday. Now you said it for me!

With orchestral pieces, you can do all your mixing ahead of time and save it as a template. That usually is enough, and you can focus on composition. But the mixing won't necessarily be perfect for every future composition, so you will have to do some tweaking to the mixing every now and then. As an example, obviously, if you have a lot of reverb, a fast orchestral composition will sound worse than a slower, more ambient orchestral composition, because faster notes will reverberate more often and smear together more. So, while the focus is still on composition for orchestral pieces, neglecting the mixing would be careless.

Yeah, though that's never really been a problem for me, I usually have less to keep track of if I've already polished each section well enough by the time I've started writing the next. That being said, if it's not something you're comfortable with doing (mixing as you write), you don't have to do it that way. I just find it easier if I hear all my sounds in the most recent mixing context, to know what I should do next. But hey, maybe arranging in chunks like that can help you. It makes my arrangements more spontaneous, I think. Thanks for your feedback; I personally don't hear the weirdness you say you hear at 2:30, though I can understand how since there is a lot happening there. It's basically a tension-and-resolve, just with more complicated voicings (like 7ths and 9ths).

I kinda agree about the cello; but I don't think it's as much a panning problem as it is a composition problem. I'm hearing basically a bunch of whole notes in a row, which feels droning no matter what, if it's going on for over a minute. Try making a more dynamic chord progression that invites you to write a more dynamic motion for the cello. Right now it's basically depicting a bored cellist waiting until the 1:45 mark to arrive ("okay, when can I stop playing this note? ... oh, right now."). In general, for atmospheric tracks like this, dynamic chord progressions really help people from getting tired of hearing the same thing for too long. When 1:45 finally comes, I did like the break from the static progression that came before, but the ocarina pattern at 1:45 - 2:41 is playing the same thing over and over again, and it could have a less repetitive part due to its high pitch. I could actually hear Ramos getting a bit tired and losing his breath once or twice (2:05, 2:10). It's a sign that the same pattern over and over again was too repetitive.

These days, what I do is listen to the original songs for a few days to a few weeks, until I naturally internalize them. There comes a point where I'm then able to hum to them, and so I come up with some ideas before going into FL Studio. At that point, if I feel pretty good and think I can finish a remix of the VGM I was listening to, I give it a shot. Generally, when I actually start writing... I start by selecting an instrument/sound that is the basis for my soundscape. I build my remix from beginning to end, mixing as I go and layering my soundscape as I go. I usually write the melody first, then hum the bass line, and then fill in the chords. I listen to the melody, and it implies one or more bass lines that can work. Once I write in my bass line, it pretty much flows from there. Bass lines outline chord progressions when paired with a melody, so I basically hear the chords I want to write once I have both down. I'm always open to going back and adjusting parts of my remix that I wrote in the past, even if I've already progressed to writing the latter half of it, and I usually do that. In fact, that's what I think gives my mixes the polish I think they need---the will to go back and revise older partwriting, mixing, etc, and the desire for improving the mix until I have no crits towards myself (even if it's a few months later). Here's an example where I did exactly what I said above. Maybe you can find the differences, and track when I went back and adjusted older partwriting/mixing (it's usually near the end of the current WIP, but it might be in the middle). Sometimes I add transitions, sometimes I add new parts, and sometimes I refine the mixing. V1 - https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/59338379/PSMDWIPV1.mp3 V1.2 - https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/59338379/PSMDWIPV1-2.mp3 V2.1 - https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/59338379/PSMDWIPV2-1.mp3 V2.2 - https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/59338379/PSMDWIPV2-2.mp3 V3 - https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/59338379/PSMDWIPV3.mp3 Final - https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/59338379/PSMD - 'CONNECTED!' [Revelation Mountain%2C Tree of Life (Roots)%2C Final Fight (PMD2)].mp3 ----- As for your second question, I usually have WIPs lying around to keep me busy. Right now I have 5 ReMix WIPs, and 4 original WIPs. Darn it, I had less last year!

Hm... I think I'm OK with the mixing on this. I can hear the mud, but it's more like background wash than reduction of overall clarity. I especially liked the heavy slams at 2:37 - 2:53. Could have been cleaner, but I liked the intent. The phasered guitar solo was pretty sweet!

Well, it's not *against the rules*, and I do like sonic SFX in general, so maybe a bit of both. The crit was more about the repetition of the SFX than the usage of the SFX themselves.

Hah, this is great! Solidly put-together soundscape, and I can tell you had fun with the synth jam at 1:28 - 1:56. Pretty good sample quality too, especially for 2001.

The SFX seems overused. It's nice to hear them every now and then, but I hear them here every few seconds, which is a bit too often for me. The rhythm doesn't really settle itself into a groove; it's very sporadic, getting almost into a groove and then getting right back out. It's a cool idea, but it's lacking in a grounded/concrete groove. It doesn't help that the drums are too distant to communicate what their rhythm actually is. It's cool, but right now it's not going to pass the OCR panel unless it has a clearer focus, less overuse of SFX, and more concrete drumwriting. I'm not saying it's *against the rules* to use a lot of SFX, and I do generally like sonic SFX, but it was getting a bit repetitive hearing them as the remix progressed.

Happy birthday, @zircon! Don't work too hard today!

Protip: Try not to curse every few seconds. It lowers your credibility.

Added an ear training video on detecting realism (or lack thereof) on a lead guitar sound, and updated the OP.

I agree, the lead guitar notes do cut off too quickly. As soon as the note stops, there's a click and a sudden drop in volume, with no finger release fret noises. By itself, it doesn't really create the "stiff" sound, but it does lack the realism in that aspect, since any real electric guitar with this much distortion in the amping would make the fret noises audible. I do hear the lead guitar is a bit too loud, since the background is quite quiet. Besides that, the entire song could come up by at least 6 dB. It's that quiet. The stiffness is mostly attributed from the lack of fluidity in the hypothetical playing (0:03 - 0:17, and slightly at 0:33 - 0:35). What it sounds like is the "player" is playing something, instantaneously lifting his/her fingers (and inconveniently reaching over to the amp and turning down the volume to 0% for half a second, then up again), and then playing other notes afterwards---all without creating a single fret or pick noise, or even recording what happens in between phrases (or amp noise, but that's another story), when a normal microphone would pick all of that up. A real, skilled guitarist would, more often than not, leave his/her fingers on the frets after playing a phrase, and slide to new frets for the next phrase right before playing again. An example is this power metal song here. If you listened to the lead guitar, you would hear the pick noise emphasis and (some) fret noise, and most certainly a lot of sliding in between notes. zircon even goes through the song itself, showing how he wrote the lead. And here, I recreate the melody, taking out what makes it realistic: Lastly, whenever the lead guitar is playing polyphonically, it loses the tonal clarity it would have if it played monophonically. The strings interact on the chords via sympathetic resonance (which I've already told you about), and blur the tonality of the result. It sounds particularly bad at 0:55, when the lower notes dominate in the chord and you lose the upper melodic notes that were in the original.

To be honest, I found Zebra to be easier to use than Serum; I think Zebra prepared me for Serum, since Serum gives you almost everything at once, but Zebra shows you only what you bring up (when you add more oscillators, or envelopes, their UIs are dynamically added in). There are a bunch of tutorials on youtube for it; zircon gives you a great overview on its main features: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NxyoA7WvF7c There is also an entire playlist of "Mini-Tutorials" by Urs Heckmann: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NmdEREBtTH0&list=PL7AFE9859406139AA The grid is a way to lay out the oscillator connections in serial or in parallel. Serial just means it's connected in the given order, and parallel means you'll hear both oscillators at once. It's basically a way to layer sounds (if in parallel), or process them like you would in a typical column signal chain in a DAW mixer track (if in serial). Zebra is more for diverse sound design (like this), whereas I've found Serum to be most useful for bass design.

In our day and age, we have access to some pretty hefty storage. I mean, look at this 128 GB flash drive for $5.59 (sure looks bleh, but man, that's almost as much storage as one of my external HDD's!) . I don't know how much that price got you in thumbdrive storage size in the times before I was born, but definitely much less than that! (Silly me, I still use an 8 GB thumbdrive for school.) I really don't think storage is an issue, so sure, the particular MP3 for the example I showed you (1:33 long) was 2.48 MB at 224 kbps and 1.42 MB at 128 kbps, but the main benefit is that a 192+ kbps bitrate minimizes compression artifacts across most genres of music (whether it has a lot of crisp synthesized elements or poorly-recorded mono distorted electric guitar), and keeps a consistent bar of quality when it comes to the "age" of ReMix submissions. I think it's a good thing that we at OCR favor higher bitrates over lower bitrates.

I added a few more videos in the OP.