timaeus222

What is death? Stevens calls it the mother of beauty (explosions and destruction can be awe-inspiring... and sometimes even beautiful. Something Adam Savage might say). And for this mix... let it become literal!

Honestly, the most satisfying mindset IMO when it comes to writing what becomes an OC ReMix is to write for yourself, and then choose to submit something to OCR after-the-fact. I don't write to conform to OCR standards; the OCR standards helped elevate my own personal standards. I find that once you assume that you have to adhere to the OCR standards before-the-fact, it doesn't feel right. Now, I integrate the basic framework into how I write music: be interpretive, be creative, and flesh out the piece until it can't get any better for the amount of skill I have at that moment in time.

I'm feeling evil tonight!

I love the dubstep party that this brings. It pulls in pretty much every kind of dubstep wobble that Massive can create, and adds some more innovative ones that I never knew existed (like the glassy "warp"). Super fun.

This is one track that I didn't really believe in at first, but when I got to the introduction of the rhythm guitars halfway through, it just escalated from there past awesome and into the region of insanity. That guitar solo... I still think it's a sample library, but it really doesn't sound sequenced to me. Maybe Alan made great use of a MIDI guitar controller! Definitely the highlight of the track, and it just blows the listener out of the water.

You can pretty much always tell when it's SBeast's work because of his distinct "sound" and playing style. Great, high-energy work here!

Unless I'm missing something, I actually don't see that icon anymore either.

Well, tbh, not all dance music is repetitive to the extent that I find it excessive. Everything needs repetition so that it doesn't progress too much too quickly, and for that welcome familiarity you get when you hear a reprise. I find that the less repetition there is, the less memorable something becomes. So of course, I'm not inherently against repetition; I'm against excessive repetition.

OCR has influenced me to reduce my repetition, but also pushed me to make my arrangements as interesting as possible. I do have somewhat of a problem in that I occasionally have a hard time making my arrangements longer than 4 minutes, but other than that I'm very happy with my musical output. If I collab though, that tends to help alleviate that regardless. In terms of production, thanks to OCR, the difference is night and day. My arrangement intuition has basically become a more natural flow. Now I actually give my best effort with my production and arrangement, even if it's already "pretty good" (past OCR standards).

Dude, combustible lemons are the BOMB.

Are you serious right now? How in the world did I miss this?! That intro is so smoooooooth. The deep drone and the distant piano-like reversed/bowed pad is so cool. The metallic granular FX in the background (might sound like a shopping cart if you stretch your mind a bit) is also a really subtle but apt ear candy. Honestly, one of the best contemplative pieces I've ever heard. The soundscape is just spot-on.

I didn't talk about this earlier because I wanted to space out the critique, but probably the last thing I would look at now is the kick drum. I can hear the "click" (near 4000 Hz), but maybe see if you can get some more 40~100 Hz into it to help it to stand up to the bass. Try to do the EQ in context so you don't overdo it. Here's a reference so you know what I mean: It's pretty heavy, but it's just so you get the idea on the heaviness I might shoot for on the kick.

Well, you aren't crazy when it comes to doing that. If I'm thinking of the same thing you are, sometimes I make music containing synths that don't reset their phase upon rendering (because I didn't set it to do so), so I get versions of the piece that don't quite sound how I want it, and I render until I get exactly the phase offset I want. It's almost like a specific set of "round robins" is cycled through, in a sense. I would hesitate to say that there is an actual difference between perfect non-laggy playback and an actual render in FL though.

The album is so BadAss, that something is promised for LEAP MONDAY (which, if you think about it, only happens once every 28 years, right?).

If anything, I would not hard-pan guitars that alternate. I don't use Reaper, so I can't tell if you did that or not, but try about 30~50% L/R and I think that'll be less awkward. Also, since panned instruments stick out more than centered instruments, make sure that their EQs are approximately the same. You don't want a bunch of low-mids on one lead but little low-mids on the other lead (e.g. you might have some low-mids frequencies in the picking noise), because the "imbalance" in the frequency distribution will be more noticeable on those panned instruments.

Actually, FL 12 does have a 64-bit version, so it's all fine and dandy there.

Now that I think about it, at 0:00 - 1:25, what I think is your lead guitar is far back, and what seems like the rhythm guitar is pretty upfront. Is that intentional? That entire time interval, it feels like there's not much leading going on. At 1:25 - 1:59, though, that organ sounds like a practical lead despite being an arpeggiated pattern. At 2:10 - 2:21, what sounds like the lead guitar seems too far back. At 2:22 - 3:00, it sounds more like a lead. The rest sounds more reasonable to me when it comes to what's leading. Besides the production, I think this arrangement might come off a bit directionless sometimes because at 0:00 - 1:25 and 2:10 - 2:21, for instance, what seem like leads to me are not upfront enough to suggest that they are leading, and other instruments that are more upfront have been sometimes playing notes that don't sound like melodies to me (they sound more like accompaniment). It may just be a result of the source not having much of a melody to latch onto, but don't be afraid to put an original melody on top of source arpeggios or something like that, as long as the source is audible. Having arpeggiated patterns upfront can feel "longer" than having a melody upfront to latch onto.

The mixing seems boomy in the low-mids (around 120~200 Hz), and it's mostly coming from the bass guitar, I think, which plays about at the same time as the syncopated rhythm guitar (acoustic, I believe). It's most noticeable at 1:24 - 2:10 where you have clutter near 130 Hz whenever the toms try to play while the bass is also playing. It IS a problem in other similarly dense places too though, like at 2:35 - 2:37. But if you didn't cut down on the low-mids for the rhythm guitar, check that as well. The (Shreddage drums?) toms can be heard clearly enough at 1:05 that I can tell they are a bit more bassy/rumbly than would be comfortable for me. Maybe low shelf them below 200 Hz a few dB. Most of it is near 130 Hz, which will clash with the bass guitar and make the result muddy. The toms are audible enough, but they are adding low-mids clutter. Those are really the main issues: the bass guitar being indistinct, the toms being a bit too boomy, and potentially the rhythm guitar (acoustic I think) having too much low-mids and clashing some with the bass guitar and toms. I would suggest sidechaining the toms with the bass a bit in addition to the low-shelving the toms and rhythm guitar to decrease the amount of boominess overall. You might want to compare with this for the rigorous bass mixing I'm suggesting that you do, because this, admittedly, is not an easy fix for many people.

It's not a problem with FL Studio in and of itself. Clearly, if you have a problem in a practically empty project file and I don't (and never will), it's not a problem with FL Studio as a DAW. My computer is good, but it's not like it's incredibly strong and fast. More likely than not, it's a problem with your settings IN FL Studio. You even said that apparently Cubase worked fine, but if you then assert that it's automatically because it's not FL Studio, you've implicitly assumed coincidental correlation (post hoc, ergo propter hoc). Seriously, compare your FL Studio settings again with Flexstyle's configuration and experiment some more before shelling out money to avoid trying to solve your own problems.

Really, just any chord with really low notes (e.g. roughly bass/sub bass range) will sound bad---the frequencies will clash. For instance, you might expect a major third interval in the midrange (500~5000 Hz, let's say) to sound good, and it should. Start moving that diad down an octave and listen to how the harmonics play along. The respective harmonics for each note would overlap more and more at lower frequencies, so they clash more and more easily the lower you go, until it just sounds like mush. That's why I wouldn't suggest that you write chords on very low notes. On the other hand, fourths and fifths can still sound decent on very low notes, and octaves still play pretty well at low notes.

Yeah, pretty much all of the drum samples I have are samples, not soundfonts. http://goldbaby.co.nz has some nice free "sampler" packs of samples.

I'm so glad this made it on the site (was there ever any doubt?). The piano (and guitar) solos are killer as always. I particularly liked 1:53 - 2:18 where the piano and guitar trade off solos! I think you also added some subtle toms at 2:18 later. Awesome!

I always like how ambitious your arrangements can be. This still retains the general mood of Metroid, but adapts it into an orchestration that utilizes a great deal of dynamic range and lets the brass players have some fun too, instead of mainly the strings players. The percussion work was also notable and well-executed, and I thought they helped anchor the track pretty often.

I agree, that would do it, if "true staccato" samples aren't available (if they were, the notes should feel really short). I think this is getting to the point where we'd have a hard time describing things more specifically (like how I might say "adjust the second note on measure 192" or something). I would suggest comparing back to the examples I gave to see if there are any notes of yours that are being "played" particularly hard when you meant to have them "played" more softly (like at 0:59 - 1:00 in the left hand). Another thing I'd say is that if all the notes in a chord are the same intensity, it doesn't make sense. It would imply that your pinkie is as strong as your thumb when it's almost always weaker. This is why it would help to get a pressure-sensitive MIDI keyboard if you haven't already, so you don't have to simply imagine how hard each finger would likely hit the keys. Every finger will hit the key slightly differently in intensity AND timing on each chord, which is what gives each chord its own dimension and textural richness.

Yeah, that sounds better, though still noticeably plunky. Do you think you could check an even more substantial exponential velocity response? So maybe "Convex 60%" or however it's called. Getting there!