timaeus222

Let's compile the gist of what just went on... (do still read it all though, for the sake of taking it all in) tl;dr: The point of comparing oneself to others is continual pursuit of the best that you can do at each particular moment. Timing is key to how motivated you are, but not ever committing to comparing with other people ever is a hindrance. Even though you can never be absolutely perfect at musical endeavours, the least you can do is go on that journey and pursue it (well, really, the most), because the preferences of the members in your musical audience are not random.

I can spot the difference between Copper and Aluminum by smell. *ba dum tshhh*

Every time I try to introduce OCR to people, they forget about it, or just don't "get" it. "Here's some awesome VGM. Doesn't sound like VGM, right?" > "It's okay." "Any additional response?" > "No, I just don't like electronic music." *facepalm*

If you list what it is you intended your source usage to be, it'll help us evaluate (or try to evaluate) what could count and what might not count. Just the time stamps from the ReMix would be fine, as the source tune is fairly straightforward. Generally over 50% is recommended, but just saying that it "feels like it's enough" wouldn't be enough, though. It'd help to actually check.

There's more detail in this than meets the eye. It's more of a subtle progressive track than it is an obviously progressive one. Takes a while to get going, but ultimately, it still makes some sufficient and substantial additions before it gets to the higher-energy parts. The bass is pretty slammin', too. I think it's a fair structure that works. Instead of calling the heavier parts the "main" parts, I would actually call them the climactic parts to a subtle, undulating, dubsteppish, atmospheric arrangement. Also, just for educational purposes, there's a click at 3:11.

Ooh, that E. Piano is suuuuper warm. Showing off the arrangement process as per yoozh™. Really gorgeous bass writing, clever harmonic progressions, and the comping is pretty inspired.

Damn, there's some nice and gritty textures in here. Heavy drums, pumpin' bass, crisp production, and some subtle variation make this pretty accessible. There's some welcome drop-offs, and even a little bit of a classical influence to the descending scales (EX: the rondo-esque part at 2:48 ), which is surprising, and in my opinion, this ReMix just makes it even clearer why you call yourself the dropper of beats. Probably your best yet.

ooh so is it like Beatdrop and Jivemaster quit, then rejoined? Sweet. =o And big welcome, you four. Legs go! =D

B is more of a positive possibility than A, and it seems that you're thinking more about the A side than about the B side (>50% A, <50% . B is just something that you need to do in order to understand what it is you have in you that has room for improvement. Without looking at others who you know are better, you don't have an idea of what it is you can work on. Again, I don't consider it to be as much on how much better they are than you, but rather, what you can learn from them to improve your own abilities. I personally don't really need to win competitions, though it would be nice as a side result. Meeting my own standards though, is a fair thing. My 50% this year is probably close to my 90% last year, and is maybe 4 times better than my 100% 3 years ago (EDIT: in terms of effort, not success), so my standards rose. It's OK. And if I keep evaluating myself like this (not while I write, but after I finish writing), I'll just keep improving until I've reached my peak---and even that isn't enough. I don't just say outright though that "I improved aw yeah etc." I just get happy when I accomplish something I've never done as well before. It's really just like approaching the Good in Philosophy; you can never really reach it, but you can continue to inquire and pester people until your questions are answered like a gadfly on a horse, and you can continually improve your soul. Looking up to people is like admitting your ignorance and working to improve your soul. If you don't, it's like a double ignorance, where you claim you can't improve anymore because you think you already know enough, even if your reasoning is that you don't want to oppress your own potential; you'd be ignorant of your ignorance, philosophically, you'd still oppress your own potential, and you'll never go further, because you don't want to keep inquiring. Levels aren't really just in your head, just not extremely accessible to that many people. It's objective. Some people know how to write a better hook than others. Some people hear more detail than others. Some people learn faster than others. etc. Once you get it (if you get it), then I would personally just keep it in mind but not say it out loud who's better than who, so as to not offend people. That's my take on it.

Yes, but it would still have to have enough source usage as usual, and it is compared to the original remix to examine the differences in addition all the other criteria for a typical remix. If it's not different enough from both the original remix or the source tune, it's still not going to be posted. So you can, but it's not typically encouraged because you're basically making it harder on yourself.

Well, let me clarify this too: Even though I compare myself with others, I'm not the type of guy that gets stressed over someone being better. I actually simply admire the other person, and give them praise for being that good. I guess I kinda ignore the bad parts of comparing oneself to someone else, so I don't really feel bad in any noticeable way when I do it. As for exploring new niches, yeah, I do that a lot. Thus far, I've tried and was happy with these genres: Ambient (one of my favorites) Atmospheric (kinda falls in line with Ambient a lot) Big Beat (I should do more of this) Comedy/Open Mic Night (I have no idea how to classify this one ) Complextro (I do this a lot) Dance Downtempo Drum & Bass (I try not to do this too much since I've done this a lot but I'm not against it) Dubstep (fun) Electro Electro House Glitch & various Glitch fusions (I do this a lot) Horror / Horror-like (nice experiment, will do more) Jazz (I do this a lot in my harmonies) Metal (would do more) Middle-Eastern (would do more) Orchestral / Film Score / Cinematic (definitely will do more) Retro So yup, I think that's about as experimental as you can get. Buuuuut, I've narrowed down some favorites, for sure. I'm an ambient/atmospheric/dubstep/glitch/complextro kind of guy, but definitely willing to do other genres. (a field recorder, I don't have though)

Jason Covenant, but it was very close.

timaeus222 bcuz

I'm just gonna say my major concerns, because any nitpicks I have are pretty minor compared to the major stuff. You've also heard these before. - feels repetitive, almost loop-like because it's essentially one groove throughout - mechanical sequencing - uses soundfonts, like you mentioned, which means the arrangement would have to be super good to sort of balance it out. EDIT: second half of reason is independent of this specific arrangement

Well, there's a lot of niches to "proper" composition, and I'm not uber-pro at music theory. Sure, I could say "write thoughtful melodies and logical harmonies", but that's vague. There are loads of logical harmonies one could write, and loads of melodies one could thoughtfully write. Other than doing something that follows theory, it gets to be subjective as to who likes what melodic contours and what harmonies and why, assuming it follows theory already. By that claim, this remix can be liked (which it can), but it's really hard to try to like it at normal volumes, IMO. It's essentially what your example is---harsh distorted noise plus some (nice) dubstep and some sine beeps (literally). Obviously no hate to Clem, just putting out an example. I just don't like music that hurts my ears. I think that's fair. No one purposely harms themselves except for a higher overall gain, such as injuring your leg for an alibi to commit a crime, assuming the alibi is worth more than your leg (extreme but it's something I saw in a detective show, so it's been done). Not really. Understated much? I'm not saying make boring music with perfect production. Elevator music is simple by definition, and played as background music. All I said was that if certain music follows that criteria and does it as well as it can, then the most people that would want to listen to it will listen to it for as long as they are interested in the arrangement itself. In other words, it's a case of near-perfect production and however-you-want-to-do-it arrangement. Of course, I don't consider production a chore, so I don't have an issue with pursuing great production in my own music. I'm also not OCD, so I'm ruling that out. I don't think it's a waste of time. Here's an example. I claim that this is universally better than , with the criteria of a more meaningfully-written arrangement and cleaner and fuller production. Yes, meaningfulness is subjective to an extent, but there's a way to write something that appeals to many people without trying too hard to appeal to them on an individual basis. If that isn't evident, then I'm confused as to how you view musical enjoyment. It's not all subjective by the time you're a few years into practicing music production and composition. If you don't compare yourself to someone else, you might not know what it is that you don't yet know, and you won't know to pursue it. Paradox of Learning. This simple quote says it all: "If you don't know something, then you haven't learned it yet."In other words, saying it's "different" is an oversimplification to avoid the objectivity. Let's not become subjective relativists, now. Surely, we have some objectivity. Sure, everyone has different tastes. That's true, but it's a simplified way of looking at it. Even if you're confident in what you do, it definitely doesn't mean it's good. Fundamentally, it means that you, yourself, like it. You might find someone who likes it, but who knows if they're about as experienced as you, or if they are just a regular/normal/common listener (or if they're just being too nice). And you will generally second guess yourself if you compare yourself directly to someone else and focus on how much better they are than you. If you focus on what you can improve on and what analyzing the other, better person's music can do for you specifically, and not saying anything about how that better person is better than you, then you'll be looking at your own improvement, relative to yourself, not relative to that other guy. That's less depressing. Second guessing yourself a lot can lead to depression, and that's not what SnappleMan really wants to focus on, afaik.

Things universally accepted as "right" don't correspond to trends, or whatever similar idea you want to call it. What's "right" is underlying what's trending, but is not the trend itself. They correspond to what's universally accepted as sensible. i.e.: Avoid overcompression. Avoid muddiness. Avoid excessively piercing qualities in your music. Strive for the most clarity that you can manage between instruments. Strive for realistically sequenced sampled instruments or well-placed live-recorded instruments in sensible contexts. Strive for something that keeps people's interest. and so on. In other words, the "right" is what many people shouldn't complain about if it's done as perfectly as you can manage it, and that's part of what SnappleMan means by holding yourself to the highest standards. Don't compromise your output by assuming that you don't have any room for improvement simply because you aren't sure how you can improve. You're going to find someone that's better than you because it's inevitable, and you also don't have to be commercially successful to be considered the "best" at something (unless you want to call that something "networking").

Just wanted to note something: Snare Ensemble seems to be marked not available in Essentials on the site while Ride Cymbal Stick is marked available, but in the list of available patches in the Essentials manual, Snare Ensemble is listed while Ride Cymbal Stick is not.

I agree with Will that 1:05 felt empty due to the sorta low amount of sustained bass and that the mixing was a little bit muddy. Melodically, this was pretty hard to reinterpret, it would seem, because it's so atonal, but this worked quite well. Great job, guys!

I didn't mind the mallets, though the piano felt a little out of place and the mixing was overcompressed. Other than that, this really does conjure a feeling of malice, and a little chaos.

Reminds me of some stuff that's done in Neurofunk sorta.

Make sure the link doesn't have ellipses on it.

There's mainly a problem with how these instruments are handled. The bass that goes on throughout is pretty boomy, and can use some cutting in the EQ in the low-mids. It might also be too loud, but it could just be the EQ. The pad at 0:50 just has too much EQ below 200Hz. It needs to be high-passed at about 200Hz, and the reverb should have a low cut close to 200Hz to prevent low end ambience on frequencies that would then not reach down there. There's also too much reverb. When we do finally get to Spark Mandrill's theme at 1:14, the melody is just too low in pitch to stand up to the backing elements without muddying things up more. It's hard to tell what instrument it actually is. I would recommend raising it an octave and using an instrument with more expressiveness. Also, the lead is very similar to the one from the original. The low arp and snare are getting buried under all the excessive reverb. The snare has quite a bit of reverb too, and the kick should be sidechained to the bass if it hasn't been already. The toms are good. The SFX at the end is a touch loud. Overall, too much reverb on the pad, snare, and maybe lead, too much low end clutter in the EQ of the bass, pad, and kick, the arrangement should be reworked to make sure the instruments are playing at reasonable octaves, and some instruments could be changed to make it sound less conservative (i.e. more differentiated from the source tune).

I signed the consent a few days ago.

Looking forward to seeing what you guys have to offer! I'll do my best to give y'all some feedback when you get a WIP posted on the subforums!

Very relaxing, ethereal atmosphere. I love the piano and airy pads.