timaeus222   Members

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.

I remember when Kristina showed this to me 5 months ago. I love the slow deliberate pace this has, and the bells give this a nice serene atmosphere. Classic Chimpa groove meets Emu ambience!

First of all, frame rate only applies to videos. YouTube videos currently peak at 60 fps for HD and 30 fps for SD. Second, people can hear differences between 128 kbps and 192+ kbps bit rates. Well, I can anyway, and I expect some of the younger people on the Judges Panel to be able to as well. A 128 kbps MP3 degrades audio above 16000 Hz, whereas I can hear pretty much all the way up to 20000 Hz. 128 kbps constant bit rate: 224 kbps constant bit rate: The difference is not obvious, but I hear it, and I can definitely see it. It's not the same as simply hard-low passing (high dB/octave slope) at 16000 Hz, but I do hear a slight degrading of the upper treble frequencies as a result of compression artifacts in 128 kbps relative to 192+ kbps.

For some reason, part of me kept reading it as "Breath of the Wind".

I remember when Nabeel showed this to me last month for some last minute input, which I believe was temporarily faded out near the 3-minute mark. Now that it's complete, I would say that it was a smooth integration of motifs, an engaging arrangement, and was a good balance of repetition for the sake of saving time and repetition for the sake of familiarity. I'm usually impressed by Nabeel's workflow speed, and this is no exception.

I also see the same thing, on Chrome 51.0 and Firefox 42.0 (Windows 7).

If you wish to try out some of the library, there is a free sampler version for you to check out (or at least I could've sworn there was). This was the one that I saw before the new ISW website update: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/59338379/ReForged Sampler.zip

"Sub" and "sub content" just mean sub bass. Somewhere around 20~60 Hz is generally what most people define as sub bass. Right now, your kick has more sub bass than a hardcore hip hop kick [inside joke]! I agree that the snare is too treble-focused, without much low-midrange body (~200 Hz), making it sound "splashy and thin". The lead at 0:30 is OK, but a little grating. I'm honestly not sure what this genre is supposed to be, as your instrument palette is confusing to me. Something middle-eastern I guess, but that's a bit vague of a descriptor because I could say that simply by listening to the melody. The drumwriting is kind of all over the place, as if it was written just to have energy; it doesn't seem to complement the non-drums. The calmer sections with the harp and strings do work better, but the notes are very rigid/stuck to the grid (EX: 1:21 - 1:24, etc), and so they sound robotic. All human beings play instruments with a little bit of "mistakes" in their timing; even a few milliseconds' worth late/early is reasonable. At 1:56, and elsewhere, there is some clipping/crackling; the instruments are pushing above 0 dB (decibels)---meaning that they're collectively becoming too loud. So, you should be using a limiter, or turning down your bass frequencies on whatever's playing bass there (and elsewhere), since it's the bass that's mostly doing it in this case.

Well, while FL isn't the best DAW in terms of what stock sounds are provided, I've been using it for the past 5 years and I've never wanted to switch. I think if you proceed to check out zircon's FL Studio tutorials, you'd learn a lot.

For what it's worth, even Miroslav Philharmonik 2 sounds pretty good. Plus, you should be familiar with its interface already.

Maybe because you used the british spelling?

At this point, the snare on track 1 is still the most refined IMO; - In track 2, the snare is a bit too boosted near 240 Hz in comparison to track 1. - In track 3, the snare is a little more reverberated in comparison to track 1, but slightly less overboosted near 240 Hz compared to track 2.