timaeus222

Great dubstep wobbles! I think you've created for yourself a Tekken-meets-dance-floor kind of feel.

I actually do like searching for the right tone that I hear in my head. I know it won't always end up like it sounds in my head, but it usually ends up close for me, at least in terms of the overall mood, maybe rhythm, but definitely mood. Won't be quite matching. But that's how Art works; blind intuition next to "fixed" rules (which are more like objective conventions for how things are supposed to be, like paint in a painting) that eventually evolves into something that the artist loves based on how the conception keeps developing itself. The artist isn't necessarily the slave to it, but he loves what comes out and keeps it going. And yeah, context does matter. Of course. Without context, a sound is only good because of its tonal qualities or because it sounds cool in general, rather than how it enhances a piece overall. I wouldn't call tone a 'lie' though... it makes it sound bad to preemptively like a NEAT tone because of how neat it is and how it's just the way it is (). I think it's more like, something that is incomplete on its own and needs context for it to be fully realized as a tangible role in a musical piece. Or maybe he's actually saying that in his own definition of what a 'lie' is for him in this case (probably the case of a tone 'tricking' us into thinking it's good or bad but then potentially makes us feel drastically different about it in context).

What beer is that?

The brass overall (mostly the trumpet), the snare & cymbals, and the strings overall. But I wouldn't stop looking there. Keep sifting through.

Hate to say it, but there's some mechanical writing just all throughout. Good samples, but they need more detailed handling to make them shine more. Right now it sounds as if it's simply VGM and not a VGM remix. In other words, the instruments feel lifeless and lack the expression and punch of a more pronounced feel. The partwriting itself sounds good though. Needs more TLC on the humanization and layering overall. Try listening to these for ideas:

This is... weird. I do hear AA in there, and I do think that on arrangement standards it is passable, but for me it was a little too loud. Too boomy, too much distortion, especially in the beginning, and I thought the textures could have been more distinguishable and distinct in this amount of bass; you can make a dystopian remix with more varied textures (you'll hear one from me eventually...). Gets better as it goes on. I wish that Brent would do more of the style in his first accepted mix, though (Eternal Descent); more accessible, and I thought that showed a wider range of skills than he would seem to be letting on for somebody who JUST heard this particular ReMix. In short... I know you can top this!

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"