timaeus222

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.

I actually came back to this and looked at the original, and there are actually pretty substantial differences in the melody and in particular the emphases in the lyrics' syllables (EX: the emphases on "Open your heart, it's gonna be alright!" shifted from "it's" to "heart" before the pause in the middle of the sentence).

Sounds like Toxic Biohazard! Well, mainly the issues are the fake bass and guitar being very narrow in the stereo field. Also, the bass pattern doesn't really change that often, so this gets repetitive. I don't care so much that it loops, but it could use more realistic instruments, or synth replacements.

This is very beautiful. Jill almost sounds like she's singing with a French accent on faux-Japanese lyrics, and I think that does make it sound like a unique language. Great stuff!

Oh yeah, also, I should mention why I suggested 15~20 dB boosts on the really quiet parts. I personally begin to have a hard time hearing things below -30 dB on my audio setup, and I actually have never mixed an orchestral track section under -20-something dB. So, I see that as a conventional minimum. I consider this being the maximum loudness I would listen to (in general, not just for EDM), for your comparison. For orchestral music though, I would recommend about 1~2dB quieter than that reference as the max peaking dB, and for your track in particular, probably around 1~3 dB quieter.

Yeah, it's definitely too quiet. I wouldn't do compression that is suitable for EDM (not that Skrypnyk suggested that), or even rock music for that matter, but rather, I would start by putting on a tolerant limiter and just raising the volume on the track. I know you said you seem to get distortion when you do that, but you never specified if you were using a limiter at all when you tried that. Try this limiter. (I can't try it out right now, but even if it doesn't sound right, it's still free) An important thing is to not compress it too much, so that's why I'm only suggesting that you do manual volume edits and not edits using compression. However, the loudest parts only ought to be about 33% louder. The size of the large dynamic range this has can't be fixed by simply slapping a tolerant limiter on, and I would definitely not suggest using strong compression on it either. Overall, maybe boost by about 4 dB, but in addition, you need to raise the volume of the instruments in the quietest parts with volume or CC11 automation (if volume is too low, CC11 doesn't do much, and if so, raise the volume and check the result, adjusting CC11 as necessary), and lower them to how they are now during the louder parts so the louder parts don't get too loud. The quietest parts were said to be about -40 dB, and boosting by 4 dB won't really feel much different at that level (our perception of loudness is logarithmic). Those would need about 15~20 dB boosts to get to more conventional levels. A 20 dB dynamic range is about a good maximum case for orchestral tracks in my experience. Then of course, the articulations are more exposed at those higher volumes, so you'd also need to rework your CC11 automation slopes. The louder it is, the more exposed the automation slopes are and the more issues you might hear. Check any parts where the strings (EDIT: or even brass, really, like Gario suggested) are disconnected in a legato context. I hear some parts where the string instrumentalist rebows, but it's not smooth and legato or slurred, but like new phrases were repeatedly started. So it's like a flautist breathing in between each note, but with violinists, violists, etc. Reworking your reverb would also help your strings. I would try starting with about a 1.5 second decay time, about 20 ms predelay, a low cut near about 100 Hz, high cut near about 8000 Hz I suppose (you should experiment with this one), and a wet mix of about -7~-5 dB. Maybe you can go from there and see what else it needs. Keep in mind the amount of reverb your instruments already have due to the air on the mic mix choices (hall/stage/close).

Oh, okay, so the mixing feels fine, but the partwriting makes things feel imbalanced in the midrange vs. treble. I'll try out new octaves; I actually like the airiness of the high pad though, so if that airiness doesn't stay up there on a lower octave, I might instead raise the midrange up a little bit on the "pad" (the midrange portion is a distant bell synth) and synth leads first (the leads probably could use a little more 1000 Hz or so, and with the parallel compression it should be noticeable even on smaller edits). I've had plenty more happening in the treble before in past mixes, so I'm not concerned about clutter there in the mixing, but I might also try lowering the first synth leads down an octave (besides the sine wave).

Could be my multi-band compression doing that, but I could also check the treble more closely and do some notch EQs. I didn't think the multi-band compression was that intense, but I'll try a 50% mix instead. Or maybe it was the sweeping pad that got hissier. I'll check, but I don't understand. It almost sounds like you want me to make the midrange even hollower, which would be weird. Do you mean lower the volume of the pad a little, raise its midrange a little, and lower its treble a little? About how hollow IS the midrange for you? And are there specific time stamps where you think I should focus on?I'm actually not hearing a midrange or treble issue in the sense that I don't hear a scooped feel to what's here now (so I think it's more the partwriting than the mixing), and I'm not cringing from the treble, so I'll have to ask someone else to check that too.

Change the date range at the bottom and you can view from the very beginning. http://ocremix.org/forums/forumdisplay.php?s=&f=16&page=1&pp=40&sort=lastpost&order=desc&daysprune=-1&prefixid=

I just want to say I get this error too when I use Firefox 36.0 in Windows 7 and on Safari on an iPad 2.

Oh, nice, so it's his guitars! Cool, I didn't know he played!

How about this? It's basically a "now we part ways" feel. It plays when the main character (who saved the world 6 times in grade school) has to move away and all his friends gather to say goodbye to him.

Some passing critiques: Jonathan!+Cyril - Nice, I remember this source well. I'm guessing Cyril did the guitars (edit: nope); recognizing the tone (edit: nope). Small note: Cyril's timing was a little off on the rhythm guitars, if you listen to them alongside the drums. Good featuring of Bleep, though I think that it was lacking expression (vibrato, pitch bend, etc). At 1:35, I was hoping for some sort of solo since the mood changed for a while with that dissonant arp, but oh well. Also, the ending was odd since it was very left-panned without something on the right to balance it out. Overall not too bad IMO. Definitely not lacking in energy, and in general solid performances from Cyril (edit: Jonathan) and prominent usage of Bleep. Yoshiblade+Gario - With this being almost pure chiptune, it really puts a lot of weight on arrangement for me. I just thought the arrangement was... plain/straightforward... and the production felt sparse. It was practically Bleep and drums. That ( ?) drum loop also doesn't help too much with the arrangement flow there. Needed more chiptune synths or something to fill in the soundscape more for more interest. I thought it was a little quiet or missing a lead at certain spots.Necrox+Me - I actually really liked the sound choices here. It sounds rather cohesive, especially in the first minute with the ambient noise hits. All of the sounds are him, except for the violin. That trembling sine wave later on near 1:10 was pretty cool; I think I saw what you were going for there---a delicate lead, but I think it worked. I thought the piano notes were basic (common intervals), but the volume was nice and I didn't think it overpowered too much. The structure is surprisingly not cryptic, which tends to be a problem with ambient music---I would think people tend to get lost in the expansiveness of the sound design and think "okay, what just happened again?" and rewind or skip. supercoolmike+Esperado - I liked the bass sound here. Good use of detuning work to thicken it up there. Some of the sequencing felt too fast for the tempo, but it's OK. Oh, this source. MMZ4! Interesting shift in mood from the original's (obviously) rockin' vibe for the first half of it. It almost felt like a march toward the battle itself, before getting into the battle vibe (rather suddenly) at 1:21. Overall, I actually liked this quite a bit (though it could just be because I played this game before).

Yep, that's the one. Btw, what I ended up contributing was the violin solo.

Fun facts: The pizzicato is fake. It's a synth, but I didn't feel like using the real pizzicato samples I did have. I omitted this in the end, but the last 3/4 of the arrangement and its production was all done in about 12.5 hours straight on Saturday (before the revision).