timaeus222   Members

Okay, now I'm actually listening to it (looks like it's an old one you've done before). Yeah, the flute is indeed mechanical, because the notes are detached. Whether you recorded it for real or not, it sounds too stilted as I mentioned earlier, and it's just how you chose to play it that makes it sound stiff. As for the bass, I do agree with Skrypnyk, it doesn't sound like it's contributing much to the soundscape, and it sounds plain with no distinct articulations. It's as if it's a sine wave, but not quite. At 0:40, I agree again with Skrypnyk that too many things are going on at once. I hear the piano on the right, the flute on the left, the piano on the left, the bass in the center, the metal percussion on the left, the hi hats, snare, kick... wow, that's a lot. I think the pianos need more rhythmic synergy in the partwriting to sound more cohesive and in agreement with each other, and the flute can be more centered at that point (automation?) to let the left piano come through more. At 1:36, by "sloppy" transition he probably meant the retuned metal percussion; it sounds too artificial. Also, I see what Skrypnyk means by breakbeat. The drum pattern at 1:39, for example, has a lot of snare fills in a row, and is in the style of breakbeat (not to mention it raises the energy of the track, even though there's ambience at that time as well). If you took those snare fills out and made it more plain, it could sound more downtempo and less conflicting in the amount of energy conveyed.

Though I can't listen to this right now, I think I can figure out what he meant, and maybe you can take another listen and see if you notice these issues this time. - I'm guessing the flute playing itself was just stiff, as in, it was stilted, or it could use more natural phrasing. If in fact it's actually a real recording, it's already realistic, but the performance was probably just too lacking in natural flow. Maybe find a youtube video of a solo flute performance and listen to how it sounds, paying close attention to slurs, pitch bends, hard/soft blowing, long phrases, etc. - I'll look into this some more later, but I'm guessing the dynamics didn't portray what you intended up until 0:40 and there is midrange clutter or something at 0:40. - As for the mix not knowing what it wants to be, that just means the remix is combining incompatible genres, or the structure is strange in that it shifts between an unexpected sequence of genres. Skrypnyk did mention a lack of direction in the arrangement flow.

I'll check this out later, but I think you should give yourself more credit. Seeing as how this is apparently cinematic in nature and I've been getting into that a lot lately, I think I can find for you what really stood out for me.

It's great and all, but can you just post a thumbnail that links to the full version? That's stretching the page.

How's this doing? My track's done, by the way. I'm just stashing it away for now. =P

This is pretty neat. I think it could have used a stronger melodic focus (maybe a little sparse here and there on the higher energy parts) and more of a low-mids presence in the bass, but otherwise this is really fun work here. We should collab sometime.

I mainly agree that this sounds texturally sparse, still, and incomplete. Timestamps: - 0:32 - 0:48 could use something to emphasize the chord play, like a pad or something. - 1:04 - 1:36 could use a more evident countermelody, since the arp that's there feels like it's playing too much of a backseat while the melody is carrying the track at that point. - 1:36 - 2:13 has the same problem as 0:32 - 0:48. I would try a very full pad. The one you have now isn't filling out the soundscape nearly as much as it could. - 2:09 - 2:17 is nice, but I think it could use three whole notes and two half notes to keep a melody going until the transition. - The kick at 2:51 still feels out of place. - The rising saw at 3:09 - 3:24 conflicts with the atmosphere the piano creates. I think it just feels too different to work as you may have imagined. - I agree, 4:00 felt like you just ran out of ideas. A club ending can work, if it's more gradual than this. I think you omitted too many elements too early. Also, there's a weird click on the cymbal at the end.

I thought it was pretty good and there were some good solos. I guess I would have liked more of a reprieve from just rocking out. Also, at 1:33 and similar spots onwards, the low bass hit was too loud and flooded the sound field, creating loads of overcompression.

Sorry, but the violin clearly sounds detached, too dry, and unrealistic. The low bassy drum is hard to hear. It just doesn't feel like the combination of instruments sounds cohesive in the stereo field here. It's too texturally sparse, too dry (too little reverb), too disjointed (incompatible note choices, unrelated melodic contours), and too unfocused (unclear arrangement direction) overall. This would need a lot of work to get to OCR standards. Being the type of person you are, I would suggest making a plan first by writing it out with sheet music so you can hear it before you try emulating real instruments at all.

After working extensively with vocals on a different album, I realized... I'm gonna go back and refine the mixing on my track.

http://www.newgrounds.com/bbs/topic/1200140 Huge free orchestral soundfont pack. I tried it. It's pretty good, actually.

Anyways, you might wanna check out Syllix's ambient music. It's not really VGM, but it's soothing, not busy or attention-grabbing (usually), and BGM-worthy. YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCPZamkASI4EUiFcLZKxxAKQ SoundCloud: https://soundcloud.com/syllix

In my experience, my high school AP english teacher was who taught me (out of an MLA formatting textbook) to use 's for proper nouns ending in s if they're not plural. So, Joneses' or Jones's would be how I would do it. I guess it depends on the format of choice (i.e. MLA, Chicago, APA, etc.)

Fixed in the sense that it doesn't sound muddy, but it's still too fake. The bagpipe-like keyed instrument just makes the arrangement feel dragged on, and this doesn't sound like it has a structure. It feels directionless. When you do play around with the source, the main motif seems repeated quite a bit.

Sorry that I can't be of more help, but I have some very dry-sounding headphones, and I can't understand the vocals either from 1:12 and on. That's just a problem with how they're mixed. I think they're either nonsensical, latin, or african, based on the atmosphere, but oh well.

I'm gonna take a wild guess and say it's this:

Hell yeah.

This was one of my favorites mix on the albums. Oh gosh, it's starting to make me pluralize the wrongs word. :v)

You might wanna check this out: https://www.dropbox.com/sh/devwt08nbfh82p2/AACSmfuzsM1hq0akrzr0R6mCa?dl=0 This is a set of free piano soundfonts. At one point in late August 2013, I tried each one I had and picked out the ones I thought had tones that were easiest to work with to EQ and still sounded pretty good in the end. Maybe one of those can sound... less hammered/slammed, I guess, is how I could say it. Try Steinway2.sf2. As for working with a sustain pedal, you'd need an actual connectable sustain pedal to let it work with MIDI CC (I think it was #64). Here's an example: https://www.sparkfun.com/products/11192?gclid=CIKouPf1lMMCFYWUfgoddkMAKw

I should also mention that most of the time for finalizing, I end up doing a slight dip in the low mids (near 300 Hz-ish, down about 0.4~0.8 dB) and high passing near 20~28 Hz or so, depending on the deepness of the samples I'm using. I wouldn't think many people need to or actually hear or feel anything below 30 Hz, and since so many instruments coincide at the low-mids, the combination of these two EQ edits should add a little extra headroom to the mix before the loudening processing (maybe about 0.8 dB or so, which is fairly helpful IMO) without actually reducing the heaviness of the mix all that much. It especially helps if you can see in a spectral analyzer that you have frequencies going below 20 Hz (which I often have to look for in synthesized sounds using comb filters, for example); in FL Studio, you can look at exactly 20 Hz, and if you see a somewhat bright vertical highlight directly on there, there's something there below 20 Hz that might be 'compressing' the final result enough to squish the waveform in some way. But that doesn't happen often, so hey, maybe nothing much will be different.

From my perspective, it has a LOT to do with the limiter you use and the "mastering" (more like finalizing, rather) you do to the final result. Some people like to do the approach where you mix at, say, -1 dB, and apply a transparent or gluing compression effect to bring it up to 0 dB (I prefer transparent usually). With that method, you can go "above" 0 dB in terms of the peaking dB on average and how it would have been greater than 0 dB had there not been a limiter. The gluing compression would be how I would suggest doing it if the loudness makes sense for the given context, though I personally mix near 0 dB already and don't often use gluing compression to even anything out too majorly. I think that if you try and mix at a peaking dB below -3, you might have to compress quite a bit to get near 0 dB, and that could bring out unwanted compression artifacts. You also never said in what way you compressed the result; maybe it's not that good of a compressor? Maybe you started too loud before compressing? Maybe your Master signal chain has an issue? What you should NOT do is raise the volume of everything WITHOUT using compression until you get it as loud as you want. That will begin to attenuate higher frequencies slightly and squash transients, reducing the crispness of the final result. There's also a greater chance of clipping from the limiter. The two limiters that I would suggest for this loudness approach due to their high tolerances are TLs-Pocket Limiter (free) and FabFilter Pro-L (commercial). This loud remix uses TLs, and this loud piece uses FabFilter, but I wouldn't consider either of these too loud. I would actually consider the loudest piece I would ever listen to, if you want a reference. (Madeon's 'Finale' is rather loud too, but on my system I think it's too loud.)I've gotten Fruity Limiter to act pretty decently tolerant, but I would still favor TLs over it. I think the difference between TLs and FabFilter is more subtle, but I would suggest you try both if you get the chance.

Well, it still sounds fake, and also disjointed. Sorry. The low strings are cutting off in between certain notes. Also, whatever stuff you have playing in the low end is cluttering with each other. It's quite difficult to distinguish their notes. The velocities mainly sounded like things were being hammered and slammed. The plucked harp-like instrument towards the second half sounded odd playing the double notes. It's as if it was a stutter rather than a repluck. Yeah. And I think it would be helpful if you wrote more than [insert link here] or some concise sentence that says nothing more than "Here's a remix".