timaeus222

It's worth noting that earlier I said the bass stems were silent. Sadfaic

I just mean that the melodic contour felt odd, like if it were a person talking, it felt rambly (3:16 - 3:42). But it's a small thing.

HAH. Nice one.

Just so you know: free FL can't open saved project files by free FL.

I think I'd have a lot of fun with reverb on this. I'll give this a shot probably tonight or something. EDIT: Well... yeah, I don't have enough RAM to load all the samples. :/ I loaded half of them (as OGGs, too), and it took up 4 GB of RAM. Also, none of the bass stems seem to have anything.

It's hard to find one that cheap that is also good; you can find the Samson CO1U here for $55.48 (which is much better than $109): http://www.bhphotovideo.com/bnh/controller/home?O=&sku=492446&gclid=CM2WpvG4xsQCFQGTfgodCSAA4w&is=REG&Q=&A=details And a review, with actual singing (yay): (Read the description too)I did find the Samson Meteorite for $39.99, and a review here, but it doesn't seem to be oriented towards musical vocal recording: For $40, it's probably about what I would expect. Anyone else have suggestions?

I think the snare is a little more reserved than before, but that's not a major issue to me; I think the arrangement and balance concerns are more important. Melody stuff: Noting my breakdown section, I think the arps before 0:54 that play the source tune melody can be louder because they seem to be the melody, but they're quieter than the octave-playing arp and feel like they're in the background; that's one thing Chimpazilla was having issues with---no discernible lead until 1:11. Stylistically I personally think it's OK to do leads with short decays on their envelopes, but perhaps rebalancing the lead with respect to the other melodic elements (that don't play the melody) can help to bring the melody out more. I sort of see why Chimpazilla also thinks the melody at 1:11 - 1:26 feels noodly (lacks contour). It doesn't feel like a typical call/response-style melody, in which one iteration plays something that feels like it's incomplete, then a repeated iteration alters the last few notes to "resolve" the incompleteness from the first iteration. Try chopping the melody pattern you have into two iterations (slice tool?), and layering the second one on top of the first one, and comparing the notes you are using, seeing how similar or not similar they are. Then try making the first half of each chopped iteration more similar and see if you can make the second iteration resolve the first. For example, take the variation of 's melody here and separate it into four logical chunks; chunks 1 and 3 are the same, and 2 and 4 differ. Chunk 4 resolves 2 and prepares the listener for the song to go back to the beginning of the loop by using a picardy-third-like "resolution" that ends on the 7th note of the scale to add tension. That kind of feel is what people expect for a "good" melodic contour: one iteration that adds slight tension to keep people listening for a resolve, and one iteration that resolves the melodic tension.Those things aside / overall comments+suggestions: To be clear, I do hear an improvement in the way you handle the melody in general, and there appears to be a higher melodic emphasis this time around, so I'm glad you looked into that more. There also seems to be more expression on the leads. Still, for some reason the melody feels "noodly" and "directionless". Larry calls the arrangement cerebral, meaning it's not something to sit back and enjoy, but rather, to pay close attention to, to figure out more on what's happening. I don't think it's really an indication on how interested he is, per se, because he loves OCR! I think it's more like, he has to think harder to "get" the arrangement. Something I would suggest is to sit back and try to identify on a larger scale, what the structure is supposed to be. If possible, try labeling each section in your remix to see how the structure looks afterwards (tab labels?). If there's no clear section (like if it's hard to figure out where the breakdown section starts, or where the intro ends, or where the outtro starts), then you've got a structure issue. Once you've got a better idea of how everything's put together in the grand scheme of things, then try looking at the transitions between sections and see if it all connects. To me, it feels like what's past 1:59 in this remix is leading me in multiple directions at once (and in that sense is 'directionless' because it's every which way) because at 2:28 - 2:44 or so, the drums feel as if they aren't sure what to do, and they just raise the energy up, then bring it back down soon after, then back up again soon after, and as a result you've got 'indecisive' dynamics. It could be hard to think about, but having an idea of the dynamics someone could perceive in your music at particular moments in the track can help you to figure out where you want the track to proceed from a particular point while you're still writing it. So I guess that means you might want to consider muting certain drum parts and reworking them (almost) from scratch, just to see how you might do it *today* compared to ~4+ months ago.

Nice! I think the drums are very well-produced; nice and punchy, and not buried. I'm not wearing my regular mixing headphones right now, but on just decent skullcandies it sounds pretty good in the EQ in general. The only thing I find odd about it is that the lead appears to be sidechained, and not just the bass and pads, and I think it makes too much of the track feel pumped; I like my leads being stable in volume. So overall, besides the slightly noodly melodic contour towards the end, it's quite good.

It may sound like a 'cop-out' answer, but that's how FL works; you can place audio files, event edits (MIDI CC within the piano roll, even if separated from the piano roll pattern itself), automation clips, step-sequenced patterns, and piano roll patterns all in the multitrack ("Playlist") in any order, placement, or alignment. In other words, you can put any of those on top of each other, overlapping each other to any extent, in any combination, with or without quantized snapping to the grid. I wouldn't know how to do it similarly in Cubase, though.

Hopefully it'll be clearer how it sounds based on how it looks, when the BadAss 3 album comes out; it's the egyptian dance track on there. /plug /OT

Basically, no. People earlier have said it already; biggest issue is lack of in-common plugins (I'm not that concerned about considering project organization because of course people will organize them differently and some more organized than others). I can tell you general things I do, though, regarding automation and routing. I usually automate things like filter cutoff, FM depth, volume, panning, effect mix level, frequency bands (frequency distribution compensation, like scooping the midrange in a midrange-heavy section, temporarily de-essing slightly, etc), pre-programmed XY controls, CC11 (expression), other CC specific to particular sample libraries (e.g. CC14 for Friedlander Violin vibrato speed), etc. I probably take up over half my project file with automation, but I keep it placed all together, and label everything that's unclear. I tend to rout drums to a drum bus to do collective parallel compression and/or reverb (if a kick is involved, I raise the reverb low cut above 100 Hz), orchestral instruments to a reverb send, or maybe if I'm layering sounds, I rout them to a single bus so that they'll be cohesive. Specifically when I layer sounds, I rout to individual mixer tracks first, and then rout to one bus afterwards, so that I can do extra mixing before getting to that bus (so 3 sounds => 4 mixer tracks). I don't know if it would help that much, but I post FLP screenshots on my website every now and then at the bottom of the page (speaking of which, I should turn them into links instead of images). For example: http://tproductions.comeze.com/imgs/VectormanReMixScreenshot.png (yes, it's a BIG project file!) Some of what I could say about it: - The "Kick <-> Silent Kick" automation is so that the kick drum is inaudible but still sidechains so a pumping sound is incorporated into the motion drone. - The Guitar Rig 5 Transient Shaper Sustain, Band 3 and 7 "level" automations are so that the snare doesn't get too messy at fast sequenced notes, and the Band 2 "level" automation on the Mechanized Riser (yellow) is to account for the faster snare sequencing as well. - The Limiter "Comp threshold" automation is so the sidechaining on the Mechanized Riser is LESS pumping (higher threshold). - The red and purple Dark Scraper automations were for timbral shifts, the yellow one is for filter cutoff, and the Didgeritalk Band level ones are for midrange scooping. - There's a green one on the bottom right for dBlue Glitch's pattern number to switch to a new glitch pattern. - The rest are pretty straightforward volume/panning automations, mix level edits, etc.

You mean "44.1 kHz"? That's a common sampling frequency (44 literal Hz would be inaudible). I would be happy with 16-bit, 44.1 kHz. It's pretty typical to render a 16-bit, 44.1 kHz WAV file. If someone recommends 48 kHz, it may be to reduce aliasing (http://duc.avid.com/showpost.php?p=1630752&postcount=7, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aliasing), but they're not that different in perceived quality. Whenever I listen to an audio playback from a phone (specifically iPhone), it ends to lack bass, so maybe that's what you meant when you said "hollow" (it actually refers to a lacking midrange). As for a good cheap mic, I think other people could make better recommendations; zircon has recommended the Shure SM58 for ~$99 before, and Nutritious has recommended the Samson CO1U for ~$109 (or possibly under $80 if you look harder) before. EDIT: In terms of reverb, it's hard to say. It's supposed to make it so the sound fits into the mix, so it depends on the particular song.

I think it would be pretty cool if someone tackled a Return All Robots! source tune. http://zirconstudios.bandcamp.com/album/return-all-robots-original-soundtrack

It's not worth it. A phone will record at that phone's quality. "CD quality" or "HD recording" are just labels and don't really make it any more impressive-sounding than an actual, good microphone made to record audio. You should be looking for suggestions on what microphone gives you the cheapest, cleanest recorded result with the least amount of effort in treating your room acoustics issues, but at the same time, is not going to make you work too hard at it to EQ it to a good final result you can use.

It's okay man, you didn't have to apologize; your reason did make sense in its own way, and I respect that you may not have wanted to see potentially similar remixes result from this compo or something like that. We have our own ways of seeing what makes sense to us.

Not that I want to start an argument or anything, but it sounds like you're saying people would prefer the easier way and that it could limit the variety of results you could get. Well, I think that's fine. I think that's a good thing in the following sense. I would rather people be able to choose something that they're most comfortable with and make something they're happy with than to be forced to do something they're not comfortable with and possibly ending up with something really poor or not turning something in at all because they couldn't figure out how to work within the constraints to create something they liked. That's my take on it anyway.

How is that promoting creativity? Shouldn't we be allowed to choose? Shouldn't we be able to pick one of them OR both? Isn't that how "OR" works? If you search "Blue OR Gold", then "Blue AND Gold", you can see that the search results give you less and less options as you try each one. That tells you how restrictive "AND" is over "OR". I think of "OR" as "this, or that, or both"

Okay, now that I'm listening on my normal mixing headphones: I'm hearing that the rhodes has frequency buildup near 280 Hz; it plays notes that land at that frequency pretty often, so it stacks up to be resonant, and while it doesn't really hurt, it would help to scoop a bit at that frequency (maybe about 2 dB) to leave room for the chorused keys and occasional low harp notes. This isn't as big a deal, but at 1:59, the descending bass ends up clashing at pretty much 200 Hz when it re-enters, so right before that point, I think it would help with the frequency clash to automate a high pass on the rhodes up to 200 Hz by the time the bass comes in. I wouldn't do it too steeply, though, so the rhodes still retains some body to its low end. If the rhodes moves towards playing higher notes than the lowest note it plays at 1:59, you should move that high pass back down so it occupies the original frequency range again while it doesn't clash. Other than that, I don't notice anything off in the low end mixing. Nothing much reaches below 70 Hz, but that isn't a big deal. If nothing much reached below 40 Hz, I wouldn't worry too much about it. Many speakers only reach down to about 60 Hz without subwoofers anyhow. However, it does seem like you have a lot of instruments playing low notes pretty often; for example, at 1:36, no instruments playing reach above 2800 Hz aside from the percussion and occasionally the harp (this happens elsewhere too, of course), but the harp is playing pretty quiet notes there. So, maybe you can consider shifting some note octaves or rewriting some parts to incorporate higher notes. Without much above ~3000 Hz, the mix feels low-end heavy (or top-end light), even though the mixing itself isn't a major issue there.

This one. http://ocremix.org/remix/OCR01812 Not exactly the first, but it made me want to try more VGM for remixing.

It's something that is technically illegal but few people (should) really care because for as long as you are keeping the music on your own computer and not sharing it with others, there's no profit being made by you, and the "loss" of profit is what bothers people. In other words, for personal use, like burning to your own car CD, it's OK, but you can't redistribute it. Additionally, if you can't even buy it anymore, there's no real "loss" in profit anyways because it's no longer officially selling. That's my take on it, anyway.

I'll come, sure!

I'll be in again as a Star, why not!

This is actually really great! Definitely some phat basses here, some better than those made on Massive (pretend that that's saying a lot, because I want it to say a lot ). My only gripe is that in the section at 1:10 - 1:31 had a bass that could have used more filter motion for a more interesting result. The celtic mood definitely worked though, neat work on that.