timaeus222

I can see how this was probably well-liked back in the day. While this does start out fairly conservative, it gets more compositionally interpretive as it goes along, starting to get substantially more personalized at about 2:35. By the time it gets to the end, I actually want to play it again. Good job!

When I remix something, I consider what kind of mood I get when I listen to it, and then usually if there's a melody, I take the melody and write new chords under it. For example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xASXvoNU-5A When I listen to that, I hear an upbeat funky vibe that can be danced to, and so I slowed it down for an intro with an electric piano sound, leading into an electro house hook that uses that same melody with various basses underneath. https://app.box.com/s/j44ueda9bnjno6cw2zv90umfwvli6ptv And I have to say, I did not for a moment think it was going to be something that I would end up wanting to put a lot of work into, but I actually really like this now. If you're afraid of "not doing the original justice" or whatever, don't worry about that. The important thing, IMO, is to get the practice in so that you can improve. If you get yourself in the habit of doing something and finishing it, I think it'll help you with actually working towards finishing the track, rather than being unsure of what to do with it and not putting forth the practice as a result. The less hesitant you are, and the more you write, the more you improve. Practice!

Post the mix and let's take a look. That aside, it could just be that some issues that aren't that noticeable on your ATH M50's are more accentuated on your speakers or earbuds due to their frequency responses. That happens for me sometimes too---whenever I mix lead electric guitar, even when it sounds good on my Beyerdynamic DT-880's, on my (albeit rather average) speakers, I usually find a piercing thin midrange resonance that I didn't detect on my headphones, but is much more noticeable on the speakers when listening at a comparable volume. After I use my speakers to help me find the resonance and fix it with a notch filter, I listen to a before-and-after to check that it doesn't sound much different on the headphones after the adjustment. So, listen to your track on as many different audio systems as possible, make small changes until you find a good middle ground between the system that makes the track sound bad and your ATH M50's. That's what I do, anyway. It would also help to learn (if you haven't already) how to make fine-tune edits in your DAW, such as rolling the mouse wheel while holding Alt in FL Studio on a Parametric EQ 2 EQ band.

These days I've been writing first and refining afterwards ("going with the flow"). I find that if I keep reworking something in my mind, I won't get that far. It may work differently for you, but maybe you could try that for the sake of getting the practice in.

Hm. If a bass guitar may have been recorded live and then chopped and pasted in a way that makes it noticeable that it's choppy and wasn't played live all the way through, would I check "live-instruments" but not "live-recording"? (in other words, does "live-instruments" imply that you can tell the instrument is or used to be a recording, but clearly not performed publicly?) I'm thinking of this track, which has a noticeable hiss but a choppy bass that, in the intro, plays certain notes that have a phase-reset feel. (Then again, it could just be a bad sample that was recorded with a hiss in it. Or maybe I'm overthinking it. o.o) I'm tempted to just not check anything "live".

It goes without saying. Yes. Post more.

That bass and that hiss feel so off. I think the bass sample may have been recorded with the hiss in there, because you get that phase reset on each note. The guitar ain't bad but it's noticeably tracker or MIDI. The wide kick is really weird. It's an OK track but it just doesn't do it for me. :/

I think this sounds fairly 80s-rock. I like that old-school charm on it. The samples don't really hold well today, but I agree with Stevo on the feel I get from this.

timaeus222 Vector Point Engineering Sigma Fortress (Blizzard Buffalo in Final Weapon [X4]) Sins of the Syndicate (Gravity Antonion in Final Weapon [X4]) Sword of the Scavalier (Ground Scaravich in Final Weapon [X4]) Zero Tolerance

Well, considering Capcom asked OCR to do the album, I would think they have the rights to use the tracks on the album.

Wow, for such an old track, even for its absolute length, I find it a complete arrangement, and quite well-thought-out. This is a solid jazz arrangement with somewhat of a Latin feel to it, and some pretty good production.

Yeah, it's still 2 AM for him. =p

Gonna be a bit late on that next WIP due to the SFRG compo. I basically got two weeks free now though.

You should post that on the private forums instead. *nudge* EDIT: Thanks. =p

FL doesn't have an MP3 encoder built in, but you can still use WinLAME to accomplish that. And cool, I didn't realize Box.com had a .net URL too.

Working on a couple tracks at a time; one for the Goemon album, one for the Satoru Iwata tribute album, and one standalone. Finished two SFRG compo tracks and subbed two standalone tracks. I was programming for computational chemistry over the summer, and got through about 1000 lines of (efficient) coding to calculate energies, generate matrices, etc. Built a pull-up bar with my dad for my room. Playing Plants vs. Zombies 2, Two Dots, and Threes (recent high score was 3522).

This is surprisingly good for 2000. The electric lead guitar solo was a bit plainly played and lacked some fluidity to the note connections, but otherwise the soundscape was pretty well-developed for that age and time!

I think it actually sounds louder now, too. So, actual non-encoding critique: - It's actually too loud. I'm surprised it's not clipping (until about 1/4th of the way through, where there's some static on the edges of the stereo field). Try turning down the volume of every instrument by about 4 dB, and using a limiter if you aren't using one right now. - Pay attention to the instruments you have going on at the same time. The most prominent issue I keep hearing whenever I mix someone else's music for them is that they try to layer too many instruments at once, whether in the densest parts of the track or everywhere in the track. Isolate groups of instruments and make notes of which instruments are playing when. You have too many bass instruments playing at once. If you disable an instrument and hear no difference, that instrument might as well not be there; know what I mean? - The sequencing of every instrument is mechanical, but it's not an easy fix; if you have some sort of MIDI keyboard, I think you could learn how to play simple piano and from that, figure out how to put emphases on certain notes where it makes sense, and it'll make for more realistic partwriting.

I used the first descent and the melody in Final Weapon (a perfect fourth down), and the first melody of Cyber Peacock. Lots of rhythmic fun in there.

For me: 1. Wrote the hook 2. Wrote the intro in the wrong key with a mismatched transition 3. Fixed the key 4. Fixed the transition 5. Wrote what came after, got to the solo part 6. Reworked the solo for like 5 hours 7. Wrote the rest 8. Face =

I've never tried it, but there seems to be a LAME encoder for MAC: http://download.cnet.com/LAME-Audio-Encoder/3000-2140_4-51042.html

Submitted!

I took all the time I could get this week. This track is one of the most challenging ones I've had to finish in such a short time!

It's satire =p

You don't have to link the youtube video; you can download WinLAME and encode like this.