timaeus222

If you pay closer attention to 0:03 on "All mics", there's an odd note on the right speaker. Is that a library issue?

WOAH. Wartime Kabuki Robot KASHIWAGI! That's some tight stuff! You've got me in for this track!

Hm... yeah, unfortunately it doesn't really jive with my tastes here. I do agree that it is mixed well enough, but I just think the vibrato was a bit much and the lack of a substantially long breakdown section made the chaotic aspects of it more memorable. I dunno man. I think it's good in the objective sense, but it's just not my thing.

Just sit up straight, breathe in, leave your chest up when you breathe out, and you should be able to sing or talk pretty sufficiently as if you were standing up. I did that in choir all the time 4 years ago.

Fixed. icwutudidthar

Why is it not related to pigs

I don't have an actual, physical bass, but I do use a VST library (specifically, Spectrasonics Trilian). An example of where I used it would be the Jazz Fusion Kirby's Dreamland mix I'm working on in the remixes forum.

Okay, like I promised, here's what I have to say about this: So, first of all, the kick is missing a touch of lows to punch through; I can hear it, but it's a bit light in the bass (specifically at (90 ± 10) Hz by about (2 ± 0. dB). It's easiest to hear at 0:33 - 0:47 that the guitar in combination with the bass has a bit much bass (specifically at (100 ± 20) Hz, by about (2.4 ± 0. dB). Coincidentally, it seems like based on what I just said, the kick happens to be light near the spot where the bass happens to be too heavy on my audio system. I'm on Beyerdynamic DT-880 headphones that monitor cleanly at 30-20000Hz (where 20~30 is obviously hardest, naturally, to hear). These headphones specifically monitor the low bass range, midrange, and upper treble the best out of 20~20000Hz frequency range. You do have a good guitar tone, and the drum tones sound suitable. The main issues I'm hearing are the bass mixing on the bass and guitar in combination with the kick. I also 100% agree with AngelCityOutlaw that the lead guitar at 1:18 is narrow. It sounds like it was recorded in mono, which is fine, but like he suggested, I would specifically suggest that it could have used some sort of stereo delay with a delay time of, say, 1/32 of a second in 60 BPM (you can calculate how long that would be for your tempo), to just widen the stereo field without adding an distinct echo (15 ms or more is distinguishable between the left and right speakers). If you want to see where I first learned that idea, it's here; just search "15ms": http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/sep10/articles/pt-0910.htm Cheers, as you say.

Yeah, that sounds much more reasonable. I think you should start it as an EP recruitment, and if more people sign up than you initially hope for (10, for example), then maybe you can decide whether or not you want to expand it and work towards a full album in 2017~18, or send it in as an EP in 2016.

When I get time tonight, I'll post some feedback on this... thrash-ish metal, I think it is. Hope your day goes well/went well. At some point, I would suggest checking this as reference for mixing metal. https://soundcloud.com/isworks/shreddage-2-subterrenea-by-ian

That's fine. I was aiming to convey to you that music is not entirely subjective; that's all. Good day to you.

No, only when it's proven that I am. No one's. It's not an opinion. That you can enjoy it yourself and indefinitely not get critiqued for not being good. Because it's certainly correct that you can believe, subjectively, that you are good, but in reality are NOT good. Surely you can see that... Completely misconstrued, again. It's not "my" opinion because it's not AN opinion. This type of person wouldn't KNOW to give a "hoot". Did you read the bold part of your own writing? Do you read what I type or do you just like insulting people? Extrapolating far too much here. It's incorrect that you thought I even said that.

It's not my opinion, it's a prediction based on what I've witnessed so many times. It's not my opinion, yet again. It's a completely objective statement. You can like your own music, but it can be completely terrible. When you are NOT good, you can never know how good you are, unless you let someone else tell you and you believe them, because at that time, you don't have the objectivity to perceive your own music with disregard to your own subjectivities. You don't have to write "formulaic garbage" to make money; that's a mentality coming from someone who feels restricted or can't imagine how to write music in a way that satisfies both them and their client. It's defeatist, pessimistic, and unhelpful to your own improvement. Nope. Even something like "I'm not sure how to say this, but there's something off with that guitar" can tell you to look at that guitar performance again to see what's off. Only if they are mistaken should you not do anything with it. And not mistaken in that you think they're wrong out of your own subjectivity, but that they truly are, objectively mistaken. Again, not my opinions. They're observations based on experience, and not subjective.

One problem... taking a MIDI file and learning to play it could begin a habit of using MIDIs instead of learning by ear, which inhibits your creativity. Really, what should have been said is "if it sounds good, go with it". What sounds good "to you" one day will sound worse "to you" next year, if you really have been improving. And when you aren't good, how can you say you're good? If you've watched a show called "Kitchen Nightmares", so many of those chefs say "my food is good. I don't agree with Chef Ramsey's remarks", but it's just bad, because it's either cross-contaminated, old, frozen, canned, microwaved, or otherwise poorly handled. Falling into that subjective trap is what you shouldn't do to improve. You shouldn't say, "well, it sounds good to me, so whatever." What you should do is be open to critiques and have a thick skin for it. And songs DO have to be written a certain way. However, that way is just very vaguely defined. Certain things can't be done, and that's right. That's why there's bad music out there. You can't have overly sparse textures for the context, large amounts of rhythmic error (to the point of sloppiness), completely random notes that make zero sense (to the point where others scratch their head), etc.

For next YEAR? That's going to be a hard deadline to meet unless a lot of really good remixers jump in. I'm all for it, but you might want to try going for an EP, and not a full album.

...Yeah, it's no comparison IMO; the real thing clearly sounds tighter (especially at 0:09 - 0:16 in the real thing), and the demo just sounds a little more washy and it might even be using articulations that don't match the original. Hopefully it's a problem with the demo and not with the library.

For me it wasn't really as epic as I anticipated. The strings aren't super punchy (try layering more staccato and spiccato layers), and indeed, the percussion was lacking in the bass contribution (what happened to the timpanis? Why are they so background? Any bass drums? Gran cassas? Toms?). I reserve "epic" for what wows me, puts me in awe, and has a strong impact (for example, this: https://soundcloud.com/stephen-anderson/the-black-flag), so I think this is more majestic and heroic than it is epic. Sounds good compositionally though. That aside, I do think this is great work overall.

lol, it has nothing to do with youtube. I think it gets repetitive in the beginning until 1:10. I get that it's supposed to be some sort of semi-scary groove thing, but the groove gets repeated quite a bit. Maybe add in some syncopation here and there to change up the rhythm a bit. The drums are a tad plodding too. I do agree that it's a bit quiet, but again, not because of youtube, but because of how it's mixed. I think the drums are fine, though 2:44 is rather weak on the impact in the guitar department, oddly enough.

I think there should be!

My bad, I said cowbell; meant to say ride bell. Anyways... Of course, I'm perfectly fine with you doing this how you want... as long as it has direction, which is what I'm mostly emphasizing here. Every song has SOME sort of progression, no matter how stagnant it seems, and for me, this felt like it just gets to the solo parts, then the lead tells me to go back and forth between "let's keep going" and "no... wait... I gotta do something first, and then we gotta go back to where we started. One moment. ... Okay, NOW let's go back". What I think you wanted was for the lead to say, "okay, focus on me for now, and I'm gonna jam out while you bob your head" and then say, "alright, ready? We're going to move on... right... now." By randomly placed, I mean that it sounds as if you suddenly said to yourself, in the middle of writing out the melody, "ooh, what would happen if I just did this right now?", but at an inopportune time in the partwriting. I'm not referring to the rhythmic error, but the randomness of why they were executed in that way in that spot in this remix. It's like someone talking normally for about five seconds, and then suddenly acting weird and yelling incessantly for about 5 seconds, and calming down in the next five seconds or something. That's the 'randomness' I'm hearing. I like groove too, but I honestly don't feel grooved here each time the lead does those wild pitch bends. Well, I'm hearing it for sure; I try to treat my observations with uncertainty, usually. For example, a tabla might sound like a conga. But this time there's nothing for me to be uncertain about. What headphones are you using? Try looking it up on http://www.headphone.com/pages/build-a-graph and posting the result. I have a feeling your headphones are low on bass response. If you wanted to know, these are the ones I was using when writing that previous post.http://graphs.headphone.com/graphCompare.php?graphType=0&graphID[]=963&scale=30 I used to analyze waveforms to guess how the balance was, saying bass waveforms are lower frequency and treble wave forms are higher frequency, but I wouldn't put too much stock into that. You can have a completely squashed waveform railing at 0 dB that sounds terrible because the whole song volume was raised until it got to that point (and possibly past that), and you can have a loud waveform railing at 0 dB due to good compression that sounds just right. I'm not saying forget about waveforms, but I don't think you should assume that just because it looks like what you have seen as good, that it actually sounds close to that. Use your ears more, rather than your eyes for this. (Railing in this case means pushing up against 0 dB for a long time) ...What? What is a "track queue"? A regular "queue" is an abstract data type, like a restaurant reservation, or a "please hold" wait-in-line type of deal. Also, hard limiting cuts off the transients (for example, the loudest spike in a kick drum), so if you do that excessively, it can create a small static noise, which I don't think you would want. I would lower the volume of all the drums by about 2 dB, then apply some master compression sometime later so that everything gets raised somewhat evenly towards 0 dB and volumes are evened out a little more. If you DO do this, I would also suggest that you do not do any edits while the compressor is on, but turn the compressor off if you have more edits to do; the compression, if you do it, I would recommend you do last, so what you do to the mixing IS what you should hear.

*coughocrtalkbackcough*

Well, here it is: There is no guitar solo. It's not a guitar, it's a sync lead, and it's a synth. I can see how it can maybe be confused with a guitar, but it's 100% not a guitar. The ride bell, as you call it, is indeed a ride bell and not a cow bell. Now that we've got that out of the way... The most major issue in here is the lack of direction. The lead meanders and its melodic contour doesn't make sense... It sounds like you wrote one prolonged improvisation where you just did it all in one take, not knowing what you wanted to do next, and then kept the entire thing as it was. Not that you actually did that, but that's how it sounds to me. Mainly, what is the point of all those pitch bends? I think they're all excessively overdone and too randomly placed. I don't really have any desire to urge you to make this remix sound a lot like the original, because you don't have to, but it should sound more like the original than not. The second biggest issue for me was the muddy bass mixing. The two basses do not work well together. The first bass sounds like a fake electric bass sound, and the second sounds like a detuned polyphonic sound. When you combine those with whatever those low timpani-like drums are, the harmonies clash in a not-so-good way, the frequencies pile up in the low-mids, and in my opinion, the arrangement flow was lost at 0:23 - 2:38. The harmonies just makes it sound random, all the way until it stops using those harmonies too prominently, which is about 2:04. At 2:04, the bass is just too loud and slightly clashes with the pad's harmonies. The third biggest issue for me was the volume of certain things. As I said earlier, the detuned polyphonic bass is too loud. The sync lead (not guitar) that enters at 2:48 and stops playing weird stuff at 3:57 is what meanders during the track. Again, I think it sounds as if it was one long improvisation where you didn't know what you wanted to do next, but you kept all of what you did anyways. The cymbal at 3:57, 4:08, and so on is too loud, but the melody sounds a little more focused here. The lead that joins in at 4:20 and leaves at 4:44 is too loud and overpowering everything other than the other, sync lead. 4:44 goes back introducing more clashing harmonies. If I ignore the detuned polyphonic bass's contribution to the harmonies at 5:06 - 5:52, I think this section actually has some direction, but it sounds most like a buildup to me. 5:52 - 6:37 just sounds cluttered, though it appears to be a climax. What's there is too loud and everything there is fighting for attention. The ride bell's persistent, the lead is meandering again, the pad is pushing its boundaries, the bass is pushing the limiter (5:56, especially). What's past here is alright, and these parts are my favorite in here. So overall, main issues: - Lack of direction. The lead meanders and the clashing harmonies in most jam/groove-centric spots make those sections sound random. - Muddy bass. The two basses together do not work, and only clash in harmonies and in the low-mids and bass frequencies. - Lots of things are too loud in volume. - The partwriting does not make these instruments complement each other, but fight each other for attention. - The length of the remix could be cut down some to keep your ideas more concise, less repetitive, and less random. I think the lead meandering may be a result of you wanting to write too long and demanding sections in this.