timaeus222   Members

Much better on the drums, esp. the snare. The soundscape is also more filled in by the rhythm guitar, which is welcome. The panning is a bit awkward, though. I question why the rhythm guitar would be left and a synth would be on the right, rather than the rhythm guitar double-tracked (two takes, 100% panned left and right), with the synth in the center but mixed towards the back of the soundscape using a lower predelay on the reverb (so that the instrument feels closer to a wall behind it) and a slight, slight decrease on the dry mix/signal to attenuate the higher frequencies a little bit. Something like that. Just a convention comment, I would say. It actually also sounds less copy-paste and more swagger-like. You might want to also play new rhythm guitar parts with longer notes (rather than copy and paste the take from earlier on) for 2:10, since it sounds like a breakdown section, which naturally has lower energy, dynamically. Speaking of breakdown sections, you also have more structure. Good work, keep it up. Sounds like it could keep going for another half minute or so.

You got posted in 2012, so I'm kinda surprised at the sound quality here. But that's going to be a moot point in a moment. It's not annoying for me, actually. However, I do think this is very fake. How detrimental is it? Well, enough to be a NO on the judges panel (sorry), but it's not going to be primarily due to the arrangement. No way. The creative harmonies are really helping the interpretation level. It's not too close to the original at all. It diverges at 0:37 very nicely while retaining some DDD chord work. 0:56 still sounds like DDD but definitely sounds more solo-like than the original melody. 1:11 has some impressive chord progression work going on for a pretty climactic section. Note-wise, this is really, really, good. No doubt the source usage is above 50% too. The first thing I would consider though, is the runtime. You have a 2:05 mix, so the question is, does it develop enough in that amount of time to warrant that runtime? I would say yes. It's more of a gut feeling than a true evaluation, but yes, I do think it develops quickly enough in that amount of time. It doesn't feel too short. Check in my book. The secondary thing I would take another look at is the mechanical piano and e. piano, followed by the bass presence (which is a little loud). The piano is stiff and needs more velocity variation, mainly in magnitude, since its hard tone makes it sound robotic. This would be an easy fix if you had a better sample with more velocity layers and a more drastic velocity response. Maybe someone else who has a better piano sample could collab (for instance, I could, if you want). The same idea with the e. piano. As for the bass, it's not too far off. It's about... 0.8~1.6 dB too loud. The strings are something else I would look at too. They work as a climactic element, and in such a short piece, they need to be on point. Seems like they might be somewhat dry (but it could just be a long predelay on the reverb). I think after lowering the bass and fixing the piano and e. piano tonal hardness, it'll expose the strings more, and at that point checking the reverb would be a good idea to hide the fakeness a bit. Fake spiccato or staccato strings are pretty simple to work with, IMO, more so than, say, legato violins. So, overall, I would look at these things: - Piano and e. piano velocities to fix the tonal hardness issue as much as possible - Bass volume, by about 0.8~1.6 dB downwards - Possibly the strings reverb, maybe a sample upgrade if you can manage it, or layering more strings to thicken the timbre and hide the fakeness - General loudness (which might be fixed as you fix the piano, e. piano, and bass, but check it anyways). Should be about 0.4~0.8 dB quieter overall, more or less. It's short, but that's not necessarily grounds for rejection. I think a piece with a runtime of about 1:46, or something like that, has passed before.

Consider this: You get a USB port with the headphones. The DJJ-ERGO has mic and aux input, and runs on USB power. Unless I'm mistaken, if you want both, you should get a USB splitter. If you have one with two female ports and one male port, you can plug the male into the controller and have the two females, one for the headphones and one for the power cable.

Pfft, sounds realistic to me @ you and Meteo. Honestly, I would say 2, 5, 6, and 7 are totally doable in a year, but who said resolutions had to be a sure thing?

Sorry for the delay on Mak's mixing. Got some other mixing things thrown at me too. EDIT: Need. More. Time. Gah. Gonna try to make it by Saturday, noon.

Well, something it does affect is when you have strong transients in your singing (i.e. from aspirated or bilabial plosives), like if you say "POW!" (P) or "BAM!" (, or simply beatbox, it reduces the spike in the audio you'd get if you didn't have a pop filter. Sibilances (S) are something a "de-esser" was made for, but mainly, you'll just have to try to be more aware of how loud your s sounds are. It helps to be able to see and understand waveforms if you don't easily notice the loudness issues. Something like the smexoscope VST/AU lets you view them in your DAW. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pop_filter http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/De-essing

You can definitely use mine if you wish, too! Anything up on OCR is totally fine with me. http://ocremix.org/artist/13147/timaeus222

haha, sounds like funky disco rock or something. =P

Oops, looks like it disappeared from the topic =P

The reverb in the snare in the beginning is the reverb it has the whole way through, right? It has too much midrange reflection. I can tell the decay time was intended, but the midrange reverberations get lost later on. If at all possible, the midrange reflections should be reduced; if you can't hear the characteristic parts of the reverb later on, they're just mudding up the mix (like at 1:05). I think the main bass is a little loud. Just volume, most noticeably, by about 0.6 dB. The kick, for me, has a little bit too much bass. Not by much, just a little, below 100 Hz. Most importantly though, there is a lot of cut and paste. 0:09 - 0:44 is basically identical to 0:44 - 1:27, 1:27 - 2:09, and 2:09 - 2:51. I really only hear very minor new things, and they don't change much at all; mainly I just hear lead swaps. The drums don't even change significantly between those four instances. The vibe works, the swing/reggae-like 12/8(?) feel sounds intentional, and the overall mood has potential for expansion; it just needs that expansion, variation, and just more interpretation across the board. Cutting and pasting temporarily is fine, but just doing that with 40-something seconds and calling it a remix is like looping a 1-minute VGM track a few times and calling it a full song. I think you can pump more effort into this!

- Yes-ish - Got six done, all previously unfinished but not recently started, as well as five others that were started and finished in a few months. Aw yeah! - I'd count getting an A- on the Physical Chemistry final as surviving college. If I can survive that, I can probably survive anything (well, maybe not a full-metal-jacketed bullet, but...). #Mythbusters - I did work on these things, so... yes.

Haha, this track is just silly. Well, and pretty excellent too. This is one of the more interpretive OC ReMixes I've heard to date, and this is such a creative and transformative take on Umaro! Didn't anticipate it, but definitely one for the record books.

Well, I finished 3 out of 4 (but only because the fourth isn't to 'finish', it was to 'work on'; I said that I wanted to work on the novel, textbook, synthesis tutorial, and music album, not finish; that'd be wicked fast). I did talk more, finished plenty of previously-unfinished remix WIPs (six, and I can happily say they're all crazy!), and survived college (especially Physical Chemistry. Got an A- on the final! <3). New resolutions: 1. Give more compliments in workshop feedback 2. Get more efficient in managing my time in college (it's getting crazier each year!) 3. Practice my martial arts more. Can't forget it now that I finally got my black belt last week!

Keywords are bass-enhancing and consumer-oriented. Bass enhancement tends to favor the experience of the casual listener (or gamer, perhaps) more than of the music producer (if you examine the frequency response graphs of these 'bass boosting' headphones, they look pretty bloated in the bass---a 6-14 dB boost below 100Hz...). Consumer-oriented headphones are rather self-explanatory; they're not for producers at all, but for the average gamer, listener, etc. Also, not all Sony headphones break easily. Some of them are pretty bad (MDR-7502 was way too band-passed; never broke though for me), but he's probably referring to the higher-end ones, like MDR-7506 or MDR-V6, which have better luck.

1. Roll (Mega Man) 2. Boo (Mario) 3. Eevee (OH YOU KNOW WHERE IT'S FROM)

Yeah, you got it!

Well, I think the arrangement is very close to the source tune. Too close, actually. The notes and main instrumentation are really similar. So similar, that I can predict almost the exact notes that'll come next. Even similar tonal metallic percussion from "Forest Interude" is in here somewhere. In other words, it's not so surprisingly interpretive that I'd go "woah, that's some creativity there." So, if you're looking to get onto OCR, this is the biggest problem with the make-up of the remix. It's too conservative. Other issues that are almost as major: - The piano is very mechanical; it sounds like it either has no more than one velocity layer, its velocity response is flat, or the velocities here have too little variation. - Finally, at 2:51 I hear something in the piano notes differentiating from the source tune. That kind of interpretation could have come earlier, and it would have helped a little on the arrangement side of things. - The mix as a whole, besides the piano, has lots of instruments that feel too quantized (and so they also sound mechanical). - Sudden ending, and note decay (it just cuts off without a full fade). So overall, for OCR at least, this would need more substantial interpretation of "Forest Interude" through new harmonies, instruments, melodic contour, etc., more rhythmic error to make the instruments sound more realistic, and a slightly tweaked ending. In isolation it does sound great though. The mixing seems pretty sufficient, though a little much on the bass.

I think it's an inviting arrangement. It's kind of conservative seeing how the original has a similar, watery, ambient feel, and you also have water, a flute, and a similar bass sound, but I think the guitar helps to personalize it some more since it covers pretty much the whole length of the remix. The main thing I would take another look at is the timing and volume on your guitar playing. Here are the timestamps where I find the guitar to be too late on the beat (only one or two strums at a time): 0:33, 0:37, 0:48, 2:22, 2:28, 3:01, 3:10, 3:15, 3:21 And here is where I thought it was too loud (for only about a second at the first timestamp): 1:07, 2:04 - 2:55 Also, the soundscape as a whole sounds rather washy, even for an organic, ambient remix like this. It starts being like that at 1:02 when that pad comes in; I think it'd help if you scooped the mids a bit (or a bit more) to let the flute or guitar lead come through. That way the lead doesn't have to be so loud, and it'll be easier to hear the bells in the background. Maybe slightly lower the reverb on everything, too, or raise the low cut (if possible) on the reverb so less low end is being reverberated, and so the bass can be better heard. I think it's most noticeable that the bass is hiding at 1:33 - 2:00. Great arrangement! I'd say, the mixing is the main thing to look into.

I think one is in the works. Super Cartography Bros.

Thanks. I'm just asking what he has listed there; so far it seems like HoboKa's said that he installed HPSE at C:\Program Files\VstPlugins, but he hasn't mentioned looking at the File settings folder.

Have you checked out the File settings window (Options > File settings)? http://www.image-line.com/support/FLHelp/html/envsettings_files.htm That lists the places FL searches for files like samples and such, but below that there's a spot for VST searching. Is the folder C:\Program Files\VstPlugins listed there? You might also want to take a gander at this too; it's pretty comprehensive: http://www.image-line.com/support/FLHelp/html/basics_externalplugins.htm

Piano roll that's easy to use? I'll refer you to FL Studio. http://www.image-line.com/support/FLHelp/html/pianoroll.htm I personally find it very intuitive and fluid.

Well, HPSE (I believe) installs like any other VST effects plugin. I do use FL, but it's been a while since I installed HPSE; try installing it again and write down the installation destination. I remember several times having a weird issue installing each new version of Guitar Rig where it kept saying an FL Studio 1 folder existed (even after changing the directory choice), and then it created it. Anything like that happening? i.e. Are you having issues with finding where it installed? Or, is it just an issue with registration? (That I don't really remember either) Is it not showing up in the list of VSTs that you own?