timaeus222

RIP.

If you are willing to buy VST plugins, then I would definitely recommend Zebra2 for its flexibility and ease of use (synthesis demo here), or Serum for its synthesis engine (I have a demo of some experimentation with it). I also rather like Variety of Sounds' free plugins, especially their NastyDLA MKII delay plugin.

There is no "standard" DAW for writing music with. If it fits your workflow, and you like it, then use it. But download some trial versions and evaluate them first if you want to make a decision early. Even if you do make a decision early, for as long as you haven't bought a DAW yet, you won't have wasted any money buying one you may not like, and you can try a different DAW. I use FL Studio, but that's because I happened to choose it and made it work. (Unlike what you may have seen in tutorials on YouTube, if you gather your own plugins, you can write music other than hip hop, dance, dubstep, "techno", or whatever.) These were written in FL Studio (with commercial and free non-native plugins, but still arranged and mixed entirely in FL): Drum & Bass / Metal Electro / Funk Middle-Eastern Big Beat And these were written and mixed entirely in FL Studio with all stock/native plugins: http://ocremix.org/remix/OCR02935 http://ocremix.org/remix/OCR02876 http://ocremix.org/remix/OCR02956

What's going on? You said right in your post that you did pan the guitars left and right, but it didn't happen. Are you aware that it didn't happen at 0:30 and on? It's important that your audio system can tell you whether something has been panned or not, and that you can hear it. This did improve a bit more. I hear the kick a bit better, but the soundscape as a whole is still rather narrow compared to the previous versions, and there is noticeable overcompression when the kick plays quickly (e.g. after 1:49). See if you can get the guitar panned like you are stating, and again, check your instruments to see if there are so many that some instruments don't contribute enough to be audible. I hear some extremely faint brass at 3:20 that is just almost impossible to notice, for example. I get that you may want that brass there because you believe it makes the soundscape more intense, but try taking it out and really comparing the differences; I really believe there won't be much difference at all. If that's the case, then it might as well not be there. It's like someone screaming in a screaming crowd of people at a live metal concert; it doesn't matter whether that screaming person is there or not because no one can hear that person. Try comparing the soundscape at 0:35 - 1:48, at 1:49 - 2:12, and at 2:16 - 3:34. Are you noticing how it gets more cluttered as the track goes on? If you do, that's a clue to compare those timestamps with each other to make them sound about as clear as the clearest one. I would use 0:35 - 1:48 as your standard for now.

Dandy. And you? pu_freak and I are looking for a third teammate. EDIT: Got Mak!

I like the expansion of Brinstar into this rubato take. Slow, but well-executed, and I liked the Eastern part at 3:20.

If you (or anyone else) want, feel free to bounce ideas off of me. I'll be available. =)

Well, I for one strongly believe limiters are extremely conducive to helping achieve an optimal loudness. They are not inherently going to ruin our music. Anyone who uses them to write ridiculously loud music is doing it wrong. I use one all the time, and I have no compression issues at all these days. In general the vibe is enjoyable, and the instrument choices make sense. However, the flute and strings are noticeably in need of more humanization. The flute keeps reintroducing its slow attack envelope, instead of playing connected legato notes whenever it makes sense to do so. The strings also experience the same issue. It would really help if you overlapped your notes more in places where it makes sense to play legato. With strings samples like those which lack sufficient articulations and round robins, you essentially need to overlap most if not all the notes to hide the fakeness. It would help even more if you additionally automated volumes of the flutes and strings to properly emulate breathing and bowing. Right now, the flute and strings just do not sound convincing to me. With those instruments being pretty much primary, this becomes the dominant portion of the composition that should be addressed, if nothing else. I should also mention the drums, which are pretty quiet. You should boost them higher so they're actually audible and not just able to be felt. They just feel subdued, IMO. And then of course you'll probably need to actually use a limiter to keep the drum peaks in check. You've basically led yourself into this one.

What I would do is at least learn how to theoretically play the instruments. If you can imagine how a real person would play the instrument, it would be easier to model that. For example, if you were to model someone playing electric lead guitar, you probably should consider when they play any of the following: - hammer-ons and pull-offs, tremolos, portamento (single notes), portamento (chords) - pinch squeals, tap harmonics, etc. - whammy bar vibrato, finger vibrato (light, hard), etc. - pitch bend via finger, pitch bend via whammy bar - tapping down/up vs. picking/strumming down/up - chokes, mutes, etc. and so on. Then once you have an idea of the features you would need, then see if there's a way to emulate these features. If you can't afford the libraries you want (tends to be $50~500, more or less, with what I've seen), then some of the major things I would say you should concern yourself with are: - human timing via MIDI note rhythm (avoid 100% quantization for realistic instruments) - human volume variation via velocity magnitudes - faster passages tend to be sloppier than slower passages - consider note length variation and overlap - pay attention to when playing the same note yields the same exact sample; that usually is the problem to contend with on free VSTs

Well, you don't have to have master track compression to get louder results. I just use a limiter that allows me to boost to near 0 dB without overcompression (TLs-Pocket Limiter).

Team Zero Tolerance with Mak and pu_freak (1 = highest-ranked pick) 1) Blizzard Wolfang, X6 2) Cyber Peacock, X4 3) Grizzly Slash, X5 4) Gravity Beetle, X3 5) Bamboo Pandamonium, X8 (if only one, Stage 1)

The rhythm on this feels strange. Everything sounds like it's at a different amount of swing with something else. The shaker seems to not have much swing, the bass has a touch of swing, and the drums just have some off timing ("sloppy", but not in a mean way, and both late and early timings are present). For me it just distracts me from enjoying the mix otherwise. In general I think you got the vibe you were going for, and the instrument choice made sense, but the rhythm on everything should be more in sync with each other.

For the record, I don't really "get" why the guitar is auto-panned left and right until about 1:39. Personally I find it a bit disorienting in a ReMix that seems otherwise in good shape! But no big deal; to me, if you lowered the effect's "mix level" (wet mix, basically) some, I think that would help.

Yeah, I'm sure. I heard the dynamics still preserved in there. Granted, it's a hybrid orchestral track, but it's still orchestral, and I didn't hear overcompression that I would point out. But, for you, I'll use a more suitable track (I'm aware of the poor youtube compression on this, but the actual audio file is pretty dang loud =P).

Well, it definitely depends on your purpose. If you want to write EDM-style music, sometimes high compression is helpful for the glue you want, and a limiter would help keep that in check. Sometimes, if it's really bassy music and you want some insane bass presence without the clipping, again, it helps to have that Master track compression to glue things together and a brickwall limiter just in case. And if it's orchestral, you usually don't need Master track compression. (with the occasional exception of controlled/careful multiband compression)

Except I never actually intended to say (explicitly, on the page, literally) that people always clipped without limiters. You implied that. What I DO intend to say is that without limiters, it was easier to clip. If someone says that "hey, we should try mixing without limiters!", well... we'd have to be really careful of our peaks, then, because there's no ceiling above the song. That said, I'm pretty sure we OC ReMixers joke about the loudness war being an "avoid winning it" type of deal. So, it's not as if we (or at least I) don't agree with the OP on at least that point.

Um... yes, we do need Limiters? The whole reason why we DON'T clip is that we DO have Limiters. That's the whole point of having them in the first place. We DO need Limiters.

Hm? You did mention the guitars are now supposed to be wider, but it's still narrow; wide implies it's in both the left and right speaker in far positions, just so you know. Also, when I talked about the choirs, I actually suggested a decrease in their reverb, and unless that was a typo, you apparently did... the opposite? It's improved, but the clarity is still lacking. Listen to 1:49, and be honest: can you hear the kick well enough? I can feel its thump, but not hear its presence above 2000 Hz. For this musical approach, one should hear something near 4000 Hz on the kick, called the "click". Also, look at the Master EQ and look near 200 Hz. That will tell you how much frequency clutter there is near 200 Hz in the track as a whole. Even if you can't hear it, you can see it; the brighter it is, the louder it is. Ideally, the only instruments that should occupy that range in your ReMix are guitar, bass, kick and snare, and occasionally pizzicato. Almost nothing else, for as long as they don't play low notes, needs anything below 200 Hz. Why keep what's not there, right? Even though I didn't say it was too loud, I did say it was lacking clarity due to frequency clashing in the low-mids (also known as muddiness). That's the main issue right now, and some of the causes for that muddiness are having too many instruments to work with, and possibly not filtering them at a high enough cutoff frequency.

Did this in about an hour and a half. Fun little experiment on a C note with reverbed percussion and using FM to sweep through overtones (distinct tones, but only through moving an FM depth knob). I even tuned the percussion to match the key. =P https://app.box.com/s/v9qe5yrs469x9qrupv2g2twqkfbbtud6

Pretty cool! Really loud, but otherwise nice!

Yeah, I wouldn't know what the heck to do with that.

Hearing this fresh since two years ago, I like how the intro sounds. Could be a bit more varied in the velocities, but it's not a big deal. When the guitars do come in at 0:34 though, it feels jarring to me due to the panning. The guitars are dead-center and stepping on the flute, and the kick feels odd thumping without EQ presence. At 0:58, you have some sort of pad coming in, perhaps a choir, and I can't really hear its contribution; it sounds more like added muddiness IMO. Furthermore, Tuberz's lead guitar is too far back in the mix to hear, and it sounds like he's supposed to be more clearly heard. Did you try high passing the choir near 200 Hz and lowering the reverb on it? At 1:50, the muddiness has increased further; the kick and toms just... T_T yeah, they just decrease the clarity even more. I'm going to echo what I said two years ago: take out the instruments you don't need, and only leave in the ones that are absolutely necessary for the sound you want. This arrangement is pretty ambitious, and for what you're going for, the production isn't really doing the arrangement justice. I still hear that resonant arp being too prominent on the resonance as well. Also, a small thing at 3:38, but the fade goes down to too quiet a volume that the intro-style keys coming back in sounds like a new song. To me it sounded like the song ended, and then it started again. So overall, really consider what instruments you do need, and which ones just don't add anything to the soundscape but mud or clutter. I often see this as a prominent issue in ReMixes, where there are too many layers for what one wants to accomplish, while neither I nor the ReMixer know just how many layers there are without seeing the project file itself. Check that, and check how much reverb you have on the choir, and whether it's high passed enough to leave room for the bass. Furthermore, please try rethinking how you place the instruments in the stereo field; the guitars should not overpower the flute, so I would recommend having the rhythm guitars wider and the lead guitar a bit panned left or right, with the flute either center with respect to the rhythm guitars, or on the opposite side of the lead guitar. Lastly, consider having 3:38 not fade out so much before the intro comes back in. Hope that helps!

If you're willing to save up $200 at some point in time, Zebra2 is always something I would recommend, and it can definitely do everything I specified up above in post #6. Also, it looks like Harmor has a Vibrato depth knob in the middle-left. You should be able to right-click that knob and link it to the modwheel. (Link to controller, move modwheel). I'm currently unable to test this, but it should work. If it doesn't want to work, I have a short video about this.

I agree the drums are too punchy and aggressive for a "chill"/relaxing remix. Is this supposed to be relaxing or simply atmospheric? What was your intention? Either way, the drums stick out for me, and I think if you want this to be more relaxing, the snare/clap layer should have less below 300 Hz to lessen the punchiness, and you should have a kick that is less pitch-envelope-like (pitch envelopes tend to add punch). Also, the outtro with the shakers seems a bit basic with the reverb processing. Perhaps a wide ping-pong delay on the shakers could work better, and a lower dry mix on the shaker reverb can bring it further back in the mix. The pads can use more motion to really embrace the ambience of the outtro. Here's an example of pads with lots of motion.