timaeus222

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.

The goal was supposed to be to use 32Lives to overcome that and 'bridge' it, in a sense. http://www.soundradix.com/products/32-lives

These are pretty useful IMO: - full and maximized-potential partwriting for organic instruments - mixing visuallyI do my own "mastering", but honestly, I often don't need the mastering (read: finalizing) unless I really feel I need it for the sake of perfection (then I might consider someone like zircon or John Rodd). I only do parallel compression for EDM to get a glued result, or light compression to even things out. Otherwise, my finalizing is pretty minimal. Also, maybe these posts or topics could help: http://ocremix.org/forums/showpost.php?p=983982&postcount=4 (Loudness) http://ocremix.org/forums/showpost.php?p=984013&postcount=9 (Headroom) http://ocremix.org/forums/showthread.php?t=43377&highlight=mixing&page=5 (Topic: Compression for "Mastering") --- specifically, this post and this post are most helpful And this is a great read in general: http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/oct05/articles/gettingmastered.htm (Actual Mastering)

I think it could be fun, but I would prefer the summer.

Something that I think you can do right away (instead of learning for a while and doing it after that) is try switching out the instruments that are supposed to be more realistic and using alternate ones that are easier to work with. The hard way is to learn how to play those instruments in a theoretical or actual way, and recognize what's fake about those instrument samples you have and how to either work with those to hide the fakeness or work with commercial (not-free) samples to emulate the real thing more seriously. This would be a helpful read for EQ, in my opinion.

That sounds reasonable for the most part. Actually though, I don't think you should just purposefully make a track with poor drums and then specifically ask the Star how to fix it (assuming that's what you meant); do your best first, and then ask for the feedback on the work based on your regular effort (not your less-than-normal effort), and we Stars can help in whatever aspect that happens to be causing you issues. If you know how to do something, you don't have to fake it. Also, in response to Dj Mokram, another reason to not start without the Star is so the Star might be able to help you decide which direction you may want your arrangement to go. If you already wrote a lot of the arrangement, you might not feel so inclined to change it. I know when I have a lot of arrangement done, I probably wouldn't want to change it unless: 1 - it works 2 - I've waited at least a day to reset my memory of the remix so I'm not biased in favor of the older arrangement version

I really think sign-ups should happen successfully first, and then the round should start after that.

It's only a solo "segment", so yes, it's fine, for the segment. I integrated a full segment completely of my own content before, and it was about 16 seconds or so. I think it was 10~20% or so of content that was okay?

I should also mention that I do sound design all the doo-dah-day, so I'm definitely willing to help you understand this synth (which isn't that complicated, actually!).

Did you check your max polyphony limit? That just means, did you allow FL to put a limit to the number of voices that can be played at once (an instrument has one voice if it's monophonic, two voices if it's duophonic, etc). You should be able to disable this limit before you start a render/MP3-file-creation. The issues that are present throughout are overcompression and muddiness. Overcompression happens when your limiter is hit with loud instruments, and it reacts to push them down heavily. You can address that by lowering the volume on everything on the individual mixer tracks, so that they're quiet enough before they reach the Master track. Check your volume meter if you want to see what bumps 0 dB and makes the meter turn a little red. Muddiness is happening near the 200 Hz range in the EQ, and it's occurring whenever you have drums with your low bass. It doesn't sound like you sidechained the kick to the bass (assuming it's not an FPC kit. If it is, you'd need to clone your kit instance and write kick drum notes on the separate kit instance and use that as your kick only), which simply means you make the kick duck the bass volume downwards when both play at the same time. That would help with the muddiness. You can do that by selecting the kick drum mixer track, right clicking the bass mixer track, and clicking "Sidechain to this track" or similar, putting a limiter in the bass mixer track, switching over to the window in the Limiter that shows the Threshold, Ratio, etc. You can select the sidechain source in the "[--]" box, and the kick drum should be in that list. It should show up as "1". Then you can turn down the threshold to maybe 10:00 and the ratio up to about 1:30~2:00 to make the sidechaining happen. Turn down the ratio (should be at 12:00 or CW past it, usually) if you want it to be more subtle, or turn up the threshold if it's way below the actual volume of your instrument as you see it in the limiter so your bass isn't crushed.

Right off the bat, the guitar is fake (FL Slayer is just not good, honestly), mechanically sequenced, and just not a good tone. It's not your fault, it's because of the VST quality itself. Also, the panning supersaw is pretty weird because it's very fast; why not have it at about a quarter the speed? It's dizzying as-is on headphones. FPC drums, it seems like. The drums, combined with the guitar and the bass (BooBass? Sytrus?) create a pretty muddy result overall. Did you do any EQ or change any velocity timings or magnitudes? The instruments seem to not fit together at all, and everything sounds computerized. And I know it's a WIP, but it felt looped or repetitive. Overall, it's just lacking in cohesion (incompatible instruments), sample quality (fake guitar, fairly unprocessed drums), sequencing (mechanical), humanization (not present), production (muddy), arrangement flow (repetitive), and interpretation (not very personalized). I think you should get to know your VSTs better in FL and practice how to use specific ones more than others. But I think you should avoid FL Slayer and Boo Bass, because those are the most obviously fake instruments in FL. And I like using FL. Don't get frustrated though, because it sounds like you've just started. We've all started here, pretty much.

Very nice job! I love those videos! Neat touch with the sheet music, Jose, and great playing, Seb.

If you need me for anything bro, just holler. Mixing, 'mastering'/finalizing, synth fluorishes, dark basses, heck, even electric basses.