timaeus222

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.

By far. Oh yes. The specs say it all.

What do you mean? They're all new if you haven't bought them before. What's new to you? Some synths share the same types of sound synthesis capabilities and so they can be used to create the same sounds with slight differences due to the internal circuitry. To be specific, I would suggest you check out Zebra2's demo. However, I wouldn't say it's indicative of what it can do; in fact, I would say that the demos show less than a quarter of what Zebra2 can do (just look at how many patches have been made for it). If you do the math, it comes out to nearly 5000 free patches.

He's a Geobro. #Legen-dairy

That's true, but while visually it's slightly different, listening for the differences, there's almost none, so you might as well save computer space and just render as 224. Hardly ever will you need 320 (I haven't, at least, in all the time I've written any music). Anyways, I'll give this a listen sometime soon.

There's no truly better quality than that high of an encoding. In fact, 224 kbps is practically indistinguishable with a 16-bit 44.1 kHz WAV file.

A quick tip on writing complextro is to treat even a few seconds of remix seriously; if it's 6-second-chunks of goodness, then focus on creating an interesting pattern (not like "pattern blocks" in FL Studio, but a predictability of sorts) and vary it slightly every 6 seconds. For what I've done with complextro, the key is to create a pattern and tweak it to form a progression of patterns. You might find it helpful to study (especially at 2:06).

Nice, I've been meaning to remix this properly sometime. Alright, let's get crackin'. =) ...Okay, I'm gonna start with the mixing first because it jumped out at me first. Just so you know, there ARE some good ideas in here. I'll get to them later. Some of the sounds you have here are slightly resonant to ultra-resonant. Yowzers. Some others are just basic. As a result, to me this comes off as both sparse and (I hate to say it, but) painful. Some sounds could just use more EQ polish in general to clean things up. Here's the timestamp breakdown: 0:00 - 0:25 - This sound is, simply put, generic; it's a polyphonic filtered synth, basically. Since it's the only thing playing anything tonal, the soundscape comes off to me as sparse. Also, you can high pass it above around 200Hz. You don't need anything below that for that sound in particular, although it has some sub bass somehow, which wonks up the waveform a bit. The hi hats here are also a hair resonant at 14886 Hz (± 1000 Hz), by about 0.8 dB (they come back again around 2:33 too). 0:25 - 0:27 - The descending lead here actually hurts. It's resonant, but with this, you can lower the resonance in the synth itself. It's at 9624 Hz (± 200 Hz), specifically on that first high note, but you should rotate the knob until it's reduced by about 10~15%. 0:32 - 0:58 - The high pass-like saw is a little resonant at 10886 Hz (± 1000 Hz) by about 3.6 dB and at 15455 Hz (± 2000 Hz) by about 6.4 dB. It also gets to the point where I want to fast forward until it's past 0:58, because the high pass is at too high a cutoff frequency and because those two resonances are there. The resonances should be able to be fixed using the resonance knob in your synth. Maybe reduce it by about 10~25%. Actually, that's all the timestamps; all of these sounds were used later during your copy-pastes. The arrangement itself is what I would consider the major issue here though (textural sparseness, incompatible harmonies, lack of direction, copy-paste). 0:29 - 0:32 doesn't fit; the drums appear to imply that it's a "main" musical section, but its placement in the arrangement implies to be a transition into 0:32. I don't think the drums here should be anything more than overhead drums, like hi hats, tambourines, shakers, etc., because it's like you're "getting ahead of yourself", in a sense. You're not at the drop yet; what's at 0:58 is more like where it drops. I could see 0:45 - 0:58 being a short leadin towards 0:58. 0:58 - 1:10 is where it starts losing direction. The harmonies are clashing; you have two different keys going on at the same time, and the part of the Koopa's Road being used here makes the remix sound like it's not dropping at 0:58, but at 0:32, and instead, it makes it feel like 0:58 is just... "Welcome back to the 'main' section. You remember 0:32? Well, here's part 2, 0:58!". It's like the remix that can't stand still and wants to jiggle all around, stand up, do some stretching, sit down, and stand back up again. I think it would help to instead hold off on using that part just yet, and use the part you had at 0:45 - 0:58, but more melodically grounded and not just holding back on using a melody. 1:10 - 1:30 just doesn't sound like it fits. It's more of that "I don't know what I'm doing" type of deal where the remix doesn't stick to one mean-free path; it tries everything, and wants to collide with everything it sees (or I'm in the mood to talk about ideal gases). The snare roll makes me think it'll get heavier, but it gets lighter and downgrades the drum beat to a basic 4-on-the-floor, and it doesn't make a great deal of sense in my opinion. Where's the transition? Why are we crossing over to a different genre? Why now? The kick roll at 1:30 goes over to the corny end of transitions in my opinion, but nevertheless, from that I expected something heavier, and it got lighter, as a sub-bass-toting breakdown section in a sense. It's not lightness in the sense that there's not much bass, but that it doesn't feel full. I actually think that section has merit though, but it should be fuller. There's almost nothing in the midrange at 1:32 - 1:52. At 1:58 - 2:11, it can make sense to get into that dubstep mode, but it needs a pretty killer transition to tell people you're going to bring it in, at about 1:56 - 1:58 perhaps. Maybe a bass drop with a filter LFO that slows down, followed by one big snare hit right before 1:58. Consequently it would make sense to fill in the low mids at 1:58 - 2:11 as well. Keep in mind that not everyone uses subwoofers when listening to music. Also, the 2:08 transition felt like a cop-out to me; you have cymbals, right? Sweeps? Reverses? Something in the treble range? I think you should use those more often. I haven't heard a single cymbal yet! Wha? 2:24 - 2:59 just sounds like a copy-paste of 0:58 - 1:33. Needs much more variation. It sounds exactly the same. Same with 3:00 - 3:31. Almost exactly the same. The ending, as you may predict by this point, is texturally sparse. It sounds like one high-passed polyphonic pad playing lead. I know you wanted to bring the energy down by that time, but I think as a result of... I guess overly bringing it down, it came off to me as "thin" (not enough body in the midrange, at the very least, if not low-mids). --- Sorry to have so much to say, but there it is. To sum it up, the major issues are that this arrangement has too much copy-paste, it has little direction to the arrangement flow (does whatever it wants), is missing 6+ transitions, has some resonant sounds (hi hat, high passed polyphonic synth, initial descending lead), has incompatible, clashing harmonies, and textural sparseness in most sections due to the basic nature of these sounds and also due to how you clearly have room to add more sounds. I did really like the sub bass-centric breakdown section and the temporary dubstep side-venture. What I would suggest you do is to study the music that you like more closely. Listen for what transitions those people use, what elements precisely are in the soundscape that you are familiar with in some sense (sweeps, pads, arps, keys, etc), the tonal character of the drums, of the bass, the general balance of instruments (what's in front, what's in back, what's wide, what's narrow, what's barely noticeable, etc), but most importantly, the overall structure. If your remix or song goes too many places in one sitting, people will question why. If it repeats too much, some people will stop it early and move on. Try to have a grasp of how some people form their structure. This is a good song to study: http://zirconstudios.bandcamp.com/track/the-end What you could look for here: - The layering of the pads in the intro (listen for the shimmering layer, the sweeping layer, and the choir-like main layer) - How it shifts to a syncopated halftime-ish drum beat at 0:46 and adds a buzzy bass and gets fuller at 0:58, then 1:04 by adding overhead drums like open hi hats and rides) - How it transitions at 1:09 - 1:12 with a band-passed drum loop followed by a set of FM sounds - And so on. Just pay close attention to how it's proceeding. Chord progressions, melodic focus, drum arrangement, as much as you can pick out. You can probably listen to this more than 10 times and still not notice everything, so don't feel like everything's going to come up to you on the first few listens. It'll come with time.

I kinda wish the naked demos actually didn't have the reverb, just so the essential character of the violins is more evident, but oh well. Based on what I CAN hear from the naked demos, this library is... about what I would expect for $45 USD. It's not bad but it's not great either. The Symphony No. 25 demo doesn't sound convincing to me in the first 7 seconds. The notes don't really connect too well. If you want a violin sample library (solo and ensemble), I would suggest "Friedlander Violin" for $125. It has controllable portamento speed, vibrato speed, vibrato mix, vibrato type (the latter three NOT available in most libraries), slur, bow switch legato, and tremolo, among other features. Info page: http://www.embertone.com/instruments/friedlanderviolinupgrade15.php Demos: https://soundcloud.com/embertone/sets/friedlander-violin

Yeah, the Avien lead was an accompaniment/countermelody. EDIT: Oh yeah, I used something from Xenos Soundworks's "Forever 80's" Zebra library (just $6!) called "LD Sunglasses" (the panning breakdown section lead).

One of them is the "Breakdown Lead" from zircon's soundset "Zebra Tetralogy", and the other, I think, was Space Runner or something from Zebranautic Revolution (Vol. 1 of 2!). They're slightly modified though, where the former layer now has vibrato, and the latter layer has vibrato adjusted to the same LFO rate (1/4 sync, Rate knob = 134) and a bit of an upper treble high shelf lowering. And thanks, APZX. I'll consider spicing up the 3o3 a little, though I might actually just replace the wind SFX, and possibly the 3o3, with a big-ish pad.

Acid 10 works with (or should work with) all VSTs and VSTis. http://www.sonycreativesoftware.com/musicstudio/techspec If you're looking for specific VST suggestions, I have a (currently incomplete) list here: http://tproductions.comeze.com/recommendations.php

Wow this is LOUD, and it's only the youtube video. The MP3 is probably louder. Yeah, I see your repetition crits, and I raise you some resonance and click/pop crits! Not bad. Generally produced well, and it has a likable flair to it. Does feel pretty copy-pasta and occasionally sparse, but what's there slightly edges by IMO.

Thanks! =) Sand Canyon is more of a small cameo; it's in the breakdown section, though a bit liberal. It shows up in the piano melody before the explicit Grass Land 2 melody in the breakdown section, and in the bass right before the breakdown section ends. Sounds like I could tweak it a bit to match the original notes some more. I wanted to adapt it to the new harmonies. Yeah, the bass is my favorite instrument here. Weather Report really made a fantastic decision when they asked Pastorius to join, so I'm using a Jaco bass to emulate him.

HOO-RAH! /10char

Yeah, he still has to filter through and find what he wants, but hey, it's all piano-related now.

Have you tried the tags? http://ocremix.org/forums/tags.php?tag=piano

Heavy, hard-hitting, slamming jam. My only small gripes are that it felt a little flooded in the lower bass (like at 3:37) in the actual audio file (the youtube video is quieter of course), and that I questioned the choked cymbals at 2:12 or so since there were so many of them that it felt to me like you had some bad luck with rendering glitches or something, but those are pretty minor things. Great contribution to the album. =)

I think with the resources you have, you can get even better results, so keep it up. You might also want to see if this library piques your interest. There's a whole lot of cinematic impacts, reverses, sweeps, textures, etc. in there, and all of them are incredibly well-polished (so much so that I try to EQ them very minimally), not to mention an incredibly versatile bass synthesis engine and drum processing engine with the same amount of polish. shows off the library rather well in my opinion.