timaeus222

Two major issues arise for me: fullness and development. Your levels seem fine for the most part, though the lead at 0:48 - 1:02 seems pretty thick and is covering up the details on your C64-esque arp and the meatiness of the bass (you're left with its boominess). 1:04 is missing a transition of some sort; a reverse cymbal perhaps, or a rising sweep, followed by a regular cymbal or sweep. It's already somewhere there, but I can barely hear it. Additionally, it would be nice if the drums changed there (at least the snare) simply because it switched meters to halftime. The clappy snare seems to fit less and less the more I hear it in the halftime context. The 2:10 fake-out was kinda odd to me, and can be smoother somehow. Also, it might be fairly obvious, but what is with that big hit at 2:51? It's so random. Lastly, the piano portion after 2:10 felt overly long as it is right now (with little development), and can use some textural development or less "plainness" by the time you get to 2:34 or something. Overall, the weakest portion of this arrangement is easily after 2:10. Lots of what came before that was pretty good already, and isn't quite as problematic. Whatcha got in store for that?

Man, those harmonies are just tastefully done, especially at 1:20 - 1:36. The bass is pretty spot-on too at 2:24. <3 The 12-hour shoot was wayyyyyy worth it.

Aw yeah. Vinnie's right. This is totally catchy, and not just in the subjective sense either. There's just something inherent in the way the notes written that makes it so accessible. It's Beast. Or Legendary. Or something.

I'm all over dis.

Yeah, there's somehow a lot of reverb on the kicks, and the toms are muddying things up a lot. The mixing overall sounds a little overcompressed and overboosted in the bass. o.o

No. Remember FF6? How it's a five-disc album? https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/ocremix/an-epic-5-disc-ff6-fan-album-from-oc-remix-take-tw

It'd help to listen for if what you are doing is actually noticeably different. If it isn't, perhaps reconsider it.

Yeah, it's hard to notice it. When you change key abruptly, the 'jazz' mentality is to change again, and then eventually return back to the original key or stay in the new key.

Nah, I mean 1:24 (though it seems the key change at 1:31 was awkward too; I didn't look at that earlier, and it seems you went up a half step overall).

Is it at 1:18? I can imagine that working now, and I think it's really close. It's just one of those situations where you accidentally did something cool, but made it about halfway through the coolness. I would be expecting another "key change" at 1:24. I'm thinking of something like .

Don't forget to import your OWN vocal samples, pitch them down, and sound LOW! It's going to sound wicked next to your sick, tasty beats!

Is it weird that I thought Argle was saying you're not good-lookin'?

For some reason, at 0:25 - 0:42, the harp seems to be playing notes that feel disjointed and looplike, and at 0:42 - 1:22, the instruments' rhythms are hard to pin down (i.e. it's hard to tell when to expect their emphases on each measure; they feel awkward). The same goes for 1:32 - 1:48 as it was at 0:42 - 1:22, especially in the brass. It just feels like something in the rhythm is making it "too human" or "overly loose", and some notes just don't make sense IMO. Overall I'm just getting this feeling that this is too repetitive, and the awkward rhythms are distracting. The harp is also really, really busy compared to a normal harp part in an orchestral piece. You have a nice concept going in terms of using a thunderstorm sound effect with this, and the general arrangement idea has potential. I'd try working on fixing the rhythms of the non-harp orchestral elements and the flow of the harp notes. It would take a fair amount of work to up the realism of the other instruments.

Well... you could always try recreating the MIDI I suppose, though that would defeat the purpose of trying to import it. =P You have everything except the drums, right? Can you write the drums by ear? (It's better than writing all the tracks by ear )

I love the chill take on this, and dat Archtop geetar. The lead guitar tone was a tad sharp, and it seems a little loud in volume, but it's no big deal. The emulation of The Doors is pretty spot-on. Even the thunderstorm SFX sounded really similar in tone. Heck, I think you made me like this more than Riders on the Storm. You didn't have an extreme rapid tremolo effect on the backing guitars---it was just right. Seemed to be some dispute on the YouTubes about hearing the source, so I did a rough breakdown: 0:24 - 0:41 0:41 - 0:51 0:51 - 1:18 1:37 - 2:13 2:24 - 2:30 2:30 - 2:48 2:48 - 3:05 = 131/202 secs = at least 65% source, likely more, and I'm only looking for the most evident source usage, so... yeah, I think it's good. I mean, I even left out some timestamps that could've counted, so...

I was referring to this: https://www.image-line.com/support/FLHelp/html/pianoroll_menu.htm So yes, it was where I was thinking, it seems. Upper-left arrow in the piano roll, first option (File), or just Ctrl+M once the piano roll is opened (F7). And then it should give a window that asks you which tracks to import once you choose the MIDI file. Does that work? If not, then it seems like you may have managed to get the percussion to import into MidiSheetMusic. Is it possible for you to export just the percussion off of there, and import, in the same way as above within FL's piano roll, the percussion track separately from the other tracks? I don't see an Export function in the MidiSheetMusic program.

This is so good. :3 Have you ever thought about doing a ghost notes glissando script for this (playing a silent note, then setting the destination note, for a slide)?

Indeed. I would prefer to tune toms more so than I would prefer to tune snares because toms are often more pitched (though some synthesized snares may have a clearly pitched layer where, if you take off the noise-generation layer, it's more tom-like).

I listened to the demo, and I think yeah, it's actually pretty good compared to most free orch samples. I'd recommend you figure out what's up with how your SFZ player is handling your samples.

There sort of is. It's not so precise as you may want, but the knobs that normally correspond to volume and panning change for automation clips, and IIRC, they correspond to parameter range. Try looking at the 'tooltip' that shows up when you hover over the knobs.

I tune my drums to the same pitch as the layer that sounds best without any retuning (full; strong fundamental). So if the meatiest layer of my layered snares has a pitch that sounds like a D, then I might tune the other layers to D. Sometimes the tuning on the other layers are just so far off by default that tuning ruins the thickness of the original tone and it gets up sounding either thin (too high-pitched) or lofi/dated (too low-pitched). That's a clear indication to pick a different layer Sometimes I'm OK with the layers being a fifth apart instead of just in unison. With the kick in particular, I do the same thing, but instead of looking at the frequency balance on the fundamental near ~200Hz (when looking for the 'best' layer), I look at it near ~100Hz. Usually it's the one with the longest tail that interacts more with a bassline. EDIT: I would actually rather not tune it if the 'best' layer already sounds more or less unpitched, and I agree with zircon that a kick with an audible pitch can clash with a changing bassline. If I can't tell what the pitch is, then I try playing it in different octaves to get a clearer pitch to listen for. Usually a higher pitch on a drum sound is easier to distinguish. It's like how if you have a bass sound and you go down low (like, lower than C3), it starts to fail in the pitch and wobble around because all the harmonics are bunching together. In higher pitches, the harmonics are more spread out and the pitch is more distinguished. It may be hard to see this unless you have a visual EQ plugin (which is why I love FL).

A is easy. B is not possible. Orchestral music is really hard to compose well without saving up money and getting sample libraries to use with a sampler. If anything, I'd try Squidfont Orchestral and FluidR3 (obviously coming reverbless). But you really need to find a nice reverb to glue it all together too. Maybe Glaceverb? If you get the money, I think you should try to get ArtsAcoustic Reverb.

Personally I find FL straightforward, so I think if you take the time to learn FL, it'll come easier than it may seem. I literally can write stuff in the piano roll that I wouldn't think of writing on sheet music, and that encourages me to write more complex music. Weird, but cool to be able to do. Instead of understanding note intervals as circles on a staff, you'd be understanding note separation in the piano roll as these note intervals. And the pattern-based stuff is just self-explanatory. Line up blocks that you can double click to zoom in and edit more, and it plays all layers indiscriminately, left to right, like in a movie editor or what would be called a 'timeline'. I'd check out what Skrypnyk is suggesting, but I just use a Korg Microkey 37key, and I get by just fine. But then again, I don't go off and do pieces with multi-octave piano scores, so... Bass guitar? Skrypnyk was on track with what I would have picked. Actually, Trilian is substantially better than its predecessor Trilogy, and I can vouch for its excellence. The basses are all EQed perfectly. No flaws. Easy to play. Automatable. All that good stuff. Only drawback is you need a fair amount of memory to load the samples. If you have that settled, then you really should get this.As for sax, I would just direct you to collaboration. I don't know of any good sax libraries yet. http://ocremix.org/workshop/skill/saxophone-soprano http://ocremix.org/workshop/skill/saxophone-alto

Did you try loading up the piano roll in a new, unused instrument channel and going to the upper-left arrow? It was Ctrl+M to import a MIDI, I believe. Should be under the first menu option from the arrow. Then you can select which track to import. Hopefully it's under there. If not, I dunno at the moment, I'm just typing this from memory

Sounds cool. It has kind of a techy, techno (oh noez), demon-battle-esque vibe, sorta. I don't think the intro fits though; it implies a film score take, but it shifts to this more EDM-oriented take. Otherwise there's some nice cohesion to this and a distinct style to the choices made in the arrangement and sounds.