timaeus222

I actually think all that detail is very helpful. You have to be willing to filter out what you don't yet understand, but still, I would recommend SOS on anything audio they publish.

Sounds good! I don't really get a "Casino-ish" feel, but it does sound pretty rockin'. My only gripes would be that the kick isn't all that punchy in the ~4000Hz range, and the guitar-playing is plain (lacking in emotion, a little rigid, like you left your fingers or pick near your strings before playing a chord and then casually rotated your wrist, rather than really flicking your wrist to give some hard strums where appropriate).

What about OCRMX?

Here is the revised version, with a changelog! https://app.box.com/s/a27tzottwe7v3rsyr33yprbzjra86fq2 If you have any questions, just ask.

I'm making some good progress on my track! Gonna be really creepy!

I haven't heard many of these CoT ReMixes that actually altered the source tune that much. This is one of those firsts that actually had some nice differentiation!

Yeah, the kick sounds centered now. This still sounds weird overall though. Can you just post your project file? I use FL, so maybe I can take a look at this, clean it up, send you a revised FLP with a list of the changes I would do, and have you take a look through it to see what's different. It's hard to tell what you actually did with the EQ, but as a result of what you did so far, the remix as a whole sounds like a strange stereo mixdown that is also a little distant. It almost sounds like you panned a lot of things really far left and right to separate them, but at the same time defied common mixing conventions. For example, I haven't encountered very many situations where the bass was supposed to be wide, or where orchestral instruments (or orchestral-emulation synths) are supposed to be very far-panned.

move that hyphen = giant ass-control rooms

Well, it's not specifically genre convention I'm referring to here; it's actual, general drum convention for any genre ever; I've never heard kicks and snares panned anywhere other than center in any situation other than a live recording.

? It still sounds like the kick isn't centered. It sounds slightly different, but not really that different. Or maybe it's just me; are those the same files? Did you have an idea of about what genre you wanted to try?

Get that Pork Chip

Hm... can I "un-claim" Kashiwagi and claim Festival Temple Castle instead? I'd feel more comfortable with that; I don't remember what I was inspired by earlier, but Festival Temple Castle would be a better fit for me.

It has nothing to do with any bias I have for zircon (which, by the way, I've never seen spelled with an umlaut ). It's just a purely logical thing. You can't expect someone to perform better than a human can do something. That IS what I said, though.

If that wasn't true, he wouldn't have kept reworking his synth work and retweaking his melodic contours. I'm not saying he just knows precisely how to get where he wants to go. That's not quite how music composition always works. I'm saying he has a good idea of what he wants to accomplish (not how), and tries things until he gets to a point where he has enough context to deliberate what he wants to do with what he has laid out. Maritain actually says that Art is "the undeviating determination of works to be made" (Ch. 3, pg. 18, Art and scholasticism, and the frontiers of poetry)---that Art (a.k.a music...) has an "infallible rectitude" (Ch. 4), and the artist, specifically, finds his way blindly with accidental deliberation/counsel (paraphrased, Ch. 4). I quite literally read that two weeks ago, and asked my professor in class, and he said yes. So when you say something to the effect of criticizing him for not being able to produce precisely what he wants to do, exactly how he wants it, it's unreasonable to expect, in my opinion. I would expect him to know what's bad, not to be perfect. All I said was "pretty much" and "beyond what most people". I didn't say "perfect" without qualifiers or "all" instead of "most", nor did I say "he knows exactly what he wants", but "he knows fairly well what he wants". Besides, if you don't mess up, how will you learn? I learn from my mistakes, so I like making mistakes, fixing them until it sounds right for me. That's totally in line with the phrase "happy accident", which is technically a "good" kind of mistake. And like I said before, if I don't just write something at all, I don't really get anywhere, so sometimes, if I get stuck on writing something, I just play SOMETHING, and when I get an idea of where I want to go, I (as stated earlier) work on it until I get it just right for my intents and purposes.

I actually agree with this sentiment; if you learn without MIDI, then it's easier to develop an ear for differentiating from what melodic contour or chord progressions might be in the original MIDI. I was honestly against using MIDI from the start of my music production experience, and you know what, I'm glad I made that decision, because it allows me to make stuff like this, with complex chord progressions and whatnot. Some people learn in different ways, but I really would suggest not using MIDI so you develop that ear for writing your own, more personalized interpretations of music.

Something you can look into is how the drums are so panned; it's much more conventional to keep the kick and snare center-panned, so the right-panned kick sounds really weird to me. The same with the bass being panned left; basses are almost always panned center. Something else to note is that your drum tones seem to imply a hip hop song, but your instruments imply a heroic orchestral synth hybrid.

If you have Kontakt, you can use Impact: Steel from Impact Soundworks for $49.

Yeah, I agree. Maritain also said that Art is an intuitive intellectual virtue, rather than a rational one. Whenever I'm not sure what I want to write, I still write SOMETHING through some improvisation with some chords maybe, and then revise it until it turns out how I want it. If I doubt what I might write, then I might not actually write it and I won't get anywhere. As long as I have some context, I can figure something out on what to write next.

Doesn't the piano sound a little thin to you? I feel like it's missing a low-end warmth to it. Yeah, there's a bass there, but it doesn't mean you have to high pass the piano. The note at 2:42 on the organ seems a little loud. Otherwise pretty solid!

Well, yeah, when you don't know, you might as well leave it alone and see what happens later so it isn't a case of being ignorant, sure, but when you've experienced it before, you no longer don't know, and that was what I was working off of. You CAN predict, when you've experienced it enough times before that you have a good idea of what the outcome might be. It's good to leave an air of uncertainty, though. Also, if you can't take all criticism into consideration by even a little bit (which was one of the debates earlier), it shows a slight ego, almost, and inhibits your growth, which Socrates wouldn't want. I think objectivity does exist conceptually, but I also think it can be grasped, in chunks or intuitively without a reason-able explanation, at least. Maritain talks about Art in general (so including music) having a divine interpretation---and thus an objectivity in a sense---during its conception and a human interpretation---since we're able to make mistakes---during its production, like matter and spirit meeting to collaborate (paraphrased). There's a subjectivity-->objectivity spectrum I previously had some idea about that I learned in ethics class last semester, and I'm towards the side of believing in partially grasping objectivity with some subjectivity on the side. For example, two of the ethical positions on the spectrum are nihilism and subjective relativism (yeah, it's morality-based, but a similar analogy applies here). What I mean by considering what sounds good to you is that you only have a good idea if you're good when you get good (Plato). It's almost like the Paradox of Learning (more Plato); you don't know what to learn unless you know to learn it, or someone teaches you, so you go around somewhat blindly, taking criticism and getting 'taught', until you start to feel like you understand enough to start learning on your own. Now as to when you might really "get"/have a good idea of your distance from objectivity, that's the unknown part, and that's the part where I think the ignorance comes in as a good thing to facilitate your improvement for as long as you live. That way, you'll keep wanting to improve, and as a result you'll keep improving, no matter how slowly. For me, I WOULD go with what sounds good today, but I wouldn't say that if it sounds good today, it'll sound good a few years later necessarily, even if it might actually be the case. BUT, unlike four years ago, for example, where I would take maybe a year before I would realize there are major flaws in my old, old music, I would know the next day if there's something off in my music, despite it being my own music, and if it's substantial enough for me to need to fix. Heck, zircon polishes his music until it's pretty much perfect, beyond what most people could criticize, and he knows fairly well what he wants in his head, and works until he gets it. So those types of people exist. So yeah, I think we're both in agreement (or we could reach one) about what Socrates would want.

Well, compare to the original. It's chiptune too, so the emphasis on the judging would likely be on your arrangement and your synth expression. I imagine if there are issues, it might be on: - The somewhat still-buried kick, but there might be a "but I'll live" or something - The strange vibrato speed and intensity on the solo; at 1:55 during the vibrato due to overlapped sequencing it sounds weird to me - That it's chiptune and that they'll look at arrangement closely - The somewhat unintelligible vocoder I think it could be close.

This does everything right. I want more of this. Honestly, the horn at 0:28 didn't bother me as much as the midrange on the one at 0:10, but those are pretty minor nits to pick.

I really liked your CV: Harmony of Dissonance ReMix. This one just topped it (and that's saying a lot)!

Yeah, I keep telling myself, "compare the loudness with my previous tracks, and don't get any louder than THIS one!" So now I always check to make sure I mix at a consistent loudness.