timaeus222

Of course this'll make it.

Were there any plans, official or otherwise, for a listening party tomorrow?  If it's towards the evening I should be able to make it. 

Here's a jazz remix of the the Wily Stages 3/4 from Mega Man 3. I originally made this for the DoD Contest last month and it actually received some good feedback, so i thought why not submit it to OCR
 
Source: https://youtu.be/iNM7ydpIysE
 
ReMix: https://app.box.com/s/juozaj9qdbvqqqmckzce98z5ookxibyl
 
 

It didn't happen last week, but I've been sick a few times trying to do a track for a compo too. Whatever free time you had to spend on your track gets diverted into extra sleep and whatever else you need to do to get well. It really sucks. Hope you get better soon!

Quick question: who gets all the authorizations from the consent form for OCR Projects? And is it possible to get access to it, or to know who signed (and who didn't)? It'd be quite useful.
Thank you.

Eval has completed, album PASSED (woot! was there ever any doubt??), feedback was provided to Pieter...
 
It's going to be a bit before we can publish, because we've got FF9 and then a couple others (gonna be a busy 3rd & 4th quarter!), so I'm hoping some of the feedback can actually be used in the meantime to improve a couple of the tracks. It's optional - as mentioned, the album passed - but the third & final ass can be even badder if some tweaks are made here and there prior to the big day...

My Pokémon remix passed the panel, so that's one more mix in favor of the release. Hope we'll get some news soon-ish.

Overview   Shou Drum is a handcrafted, steel-tempered drum with a set of tuned tongues. Each tongue / note was recorded deeply with a variety of different mallets/tools and 5x RR variations. The pure tone is beautiful and inspiring, great for ambient + atmospheric music, subtle underscore, walls of arpeggios, textural and evolving sounds, etc. Each articulation (fingers, timpani mallets, rubber mallets, brushes + more) offers a unique attack, timbre, and character.   The instrument also includes 10 ambient 'designed' sounds, which composers will definitely enjoy. The Shou Drum script engine has even more creative possibilities including a poly arpeggiator, sequencer and gate, mic mixer, FX rack, and microtuning engine! The poly arp in particular is great for instant gratification... just add some reverb/delay, hold a nice wide chord, and get lost in a sea of emotional tones.   Features * Two intimate mic positions * Five round robin (RR) variations per note * Three types of mallets * Brushed & finger articulations included * Percussive strikes and noises * Suite of designed textures * Beautiful UI with polyphonic arp * Custom microtuning engine & presets * WAVs available for tweaking & design   Pricing & Availability   Shou Drum is available now for only $49 - full version of Kontakt 5.1+ is required. We also have some great bundles available!   Walkthrough Video     Audio Demos   https://soundcloud.com/isworks/sets/shou-drum-demos  
 

It's too late for the first round maybe, but how about a listening party for the second round?

I use that for my 3DS and WiiU accounts...
 
timaeus222 and k-wix have posted their first WIPs, and they're coming along nicely.
No hard cut-offs or anything like that for tomorrow, just make sure you're working on your remixes!

Yep, I've actually been thinking about that. It was originally like that because of the lack of any brass presence outside the lead trumpet, and it felt odd having a strong brass intro followed by a complete lack of brass. In hindsight I should have thought "Why not add more brass?" instead of "There's not enough brass for that to work". It'll probably be the next change. I think I'll go for a more bombastic intro.
 
 
 
 
Haha, yeah. I've been having a terrible idea with creativity and that's exactly what I did. Major over minor. While it clashes somewhat, I (at the time) enjoyed how it sounded and wanted to get a little feedback. I personally think it works to an extent and doesn't clash enough to harm the melody, but I'm open to feedback and realize It could still use some adjustments.
 
And yes, that is indeed a chanting choir. Still trying to blend it in and out, though. It was there before, just not prominent enough to be noticeable. I'm not sure how much I like it at this point. I feel it does add a certain amount of epic to that segment, but I get this feeling that it's still missing something.
 
 
 
 
Quite a few. Crescendos, flutes, mordents, graces, staccatos, valve flutters. You name it and it's probably there. I'm still getting down all the keyswitches though. That's always given me trouble. I should certainly put it all to more use, though. The most common articulation used in this mix is simply called "sustained warm". So far I've only used a few key switches in the song - Most notably the flute trills during the intro, and the more obvious staccatos throughout the song. I should be able to spice it up a bit more.
 
 
 
 
Indeed! I do love me some harp arps! Advanced Orchestra's harp sample is pretty awesome as well. And the Friedlander Violin is probably the best purchase I've made. The amount of detail and quality(when I use it right!) is insane for the price(and the Kontakt Player compatibility).

Now that the first round is complete and voting is underway, I'd like to remind everyone to review and adhere to the Competitions Code of Conduct. Keep the CCC in mind when you're discussing, reviewing, and voting on this week's remixes.
 
To answer a question that was posted earlier, yes, Google Drive is fine for providing me with your mix.
 
I apologize for not posting what to put for the gauntlet theme this week. I'll do that earlier this week.
 
I also want to thank everyone for adhering to submission and voting standards thusfar. There have been no bad file names, no 48kHz 24 bit WAV files, everyone is using the right format in the voting threads, etc. So far so good; let's keep things rolling smoothly for the rest of the competition!

Between a Nicolas Cage black metal track, an orchestra dubstep arrangement, and Eino's crazy rock remix, this album will be the weirdest OCR will ever release.

If you're not blessed with perfect pitch or whatever that is called, then your only way of getting better is by practicing. Listen to songs and try to guess what notes are playing (preferably by playing along as timaeus suggests). If you practice lots you'll eventually get good at it!

I think i prefer "Eino Keskitalo" for the signature, if that's not too much trouble!
I'm going first for Maverick Astley. Let's roll.

I would add more variation in the left hand so that you aren't doing the three-hit pattern (with one note with your pinkie and then two chords with your middle finger and thumb) as often. I've been hearing that throughout pretty much the entire piece. Maybe switch to arpeggios every now and then (wherever it makes sense), or switch up the overall rhythm.
 
I do hear that you've added your own chord alterations, which is a plus, and 3:07 - 3:15 was a good example of varying your pacing.
 
I don't know if 3:00 - 3:01 was intentional, but it feels out of the key.

Exactly. And that bolded part is how I roll.

Hey guys! rnn and I have been working on signatures for everyone, based on the basic design of my own SFRG sig.
 
Signatures are available here. Not everyone's is done yet, but these are the one's that are available right now. They rest of them should be available soon.
 
Please make sure you download your sig and upload it to your own image hosting. I don't think Google Drive plays nice with embedding images and remote linking. Thanks!

This so much.  A definite improvement in sound, but not in sequencing. I still don't feel much power from them. The kick and snare seem a bit quiet compared to the high-hat, which is still in machine-gun mode. Again, I'd suggest adjusting the velocity and adding some variance to the drums as a whole. More fills, frills and all of the wonderfully chaotic loudness a rock/metal-ish mix deserves. And I really do feel like you could do so much better with the drums, both in terms of quality and content. There are quite a few good free or cheap drum libraries out there. If I may make a suggestion, have you looked at Sennheiser's FREE Drummic'a library? It's quite good and runs in Kontakt Player. There's also the recently released Shreddage Drums for the really low price of $119, also for Kontakt Player. Both would be excellent choices, I think.
 
Here, I threw this together using DrumMic'a as an example of what I'm talking about. Mind you it's a rather sloppy example and doesn't even get into half the options DrumMic'a makes available, but I think it gets my point across. Ignore the instrumentation. I don't have anything even close to suitable for this style of music, so I just used a few pianos as it's mostly about the percussion.
 
https://soundcloud.com/tesonael/l2-sinistral-drum-demo/s-9cgAR
 
 
I'd also focus less on the EBU R 128 loudness guideline, less on loudness, less on less compression and more on what sounds good. If you feel said guidelines suit your music that's fine, but don't let them interfere with your creative drive. It's perfectly possible to achieve a great dynamic range at any (reasonable) volume if you know what you're doing(I sure don't!).

You need compression on the individual tracks in a recording or it will sound like an indistinct mess.  Especially guitar and bass, drums also need light compression.  Listen to 70's rock music and you can tell even then that the individual tracks have compression on them by how smooth the guitars sound.
Where people mess it up is by then applying an unnecessary and obnoxious extra layer of compression to the mixdown afterward to make it louder.
 
Of course this is only my opinion.

Something else that I almost forgot to mention is the reverb response of the headphones.
 
I proceeded through the following headphones:
 
Sony MDR-7502 (~$40) -> ??? (forgot)(~$60) -> Shure SRH240A (~$60) -> Grado SR-60i (~$80) -> Beyerdynamic DT-880 (250 ohm) (~$400, but 51% off, so ~$200)
 
How I would describe them is the following:
Sony MDR-7502 - Hugely lacking in bass and treble (honestly, above 1000 Hz was terrible); didn't pay attention to the reverb response here
Shure SRH240A - Rather washy (with reverb), lacking in bass and upper treble
Grado SR-60i - Less washy, clean bass, crisp treble (somewhat hard for bass mixing, though)
Beyerdynamic DT-880 - Just dry enough for some excellent clarity, well-defined bass (loving it for bass mixing), distinct treble (so I can tell the difference between 14000 Hz and 18000 Hz, for example)
 
So if you can, I think you should test the headphones you want to get on a song with a lot of reverb to see how much clarity you get. This aspect of headphones could change the amount of reverb you want to put in your music. If you can't test it... I wish you luck on that!

You can not mix without compression. Even relatively acoustic music uses compression on the elements to make them stand out more.
 
Compression does not "cut sound quality". It's not signal representation compression (bit/sample reduction), it's peak compression (modifying amplitude per threshold cross). Amplitude modulation doesn't degrade information. You can uncompress a signal if you painstakingly do the math (there aren't many tools that do this because the math is obnoxious). If information is not lost, you are not cutting sound quality.
 
Btw, Timaeus, you asked this earlier; gain reduction corresponds to ratio, they are different representations of the same thing. Ratio is what you set as the ratio you want to drop, gain reduction tells you the actual dB dropped as a result of the application of that ratio (basically just converting that ratio over to a dB value per a specific loudness over the threshold). That's what those meters are (like the big center one in TLs). GR is not a parameter you can adjust directly, it's a description of the end effect, but you can check how much GR your ratio is applying and appropriately adjust your ratio to change the GR.
 
I suppose crudely speaking, if you lowered the threshold, it also increases your GR because the ratio applies to more signal. So in that case, it's actually both; a general descriptor of the "total effect" your compressor is doing.

Compression does not "destroy" the sound in most use cases. Without compression, we wouldn't have the classic sounds of Pink Floyd, the Beatles, or literally any other major band of the last 70 years. It changes the character of the sound, yes--duh, that's also what EQ, delay, reverb, and literally every other effect out there does. It's incredibly useful as a mix tool--without it, you wouldn't be able to hear half of most vocalists in most music. The instruments would simply drown them out, even if they themselves were uncompressed. To throw away compression completely is asinine. Heck, distortion and overdrive are just extreme compression. Without those, say goodbye to electric guitars, among other things.
Enjoy your trip into theoretical la-la land: without compression, modern music sounds terrible (and 99.99% of listeners will agree). I'll be over here getting paid to do the job correctly, like I have been for years.

I'll give the same answer every time... before you start throwing money at the screen for brand names or specs.. consider that the most important thing is using a set of headphones that you're familiar with. The most important thing is to be intimately familiar with the sound you are hearing, know where the weaknesses are in your headphones, and be able to compensate for that.. like for example I know 2500KHz has a fall-off in the right speaker of my wireless sennheiser monitoring headphones.
 
Whether you pay $5 or $500 makes little difference, most of the work will be training yourself to listen with whatever headphones you get. Becoming familiar with how those headphones color the sound and how to compensate for that. Buying a super expensive pair is less important than many people will have you believe. 

I mean, its small, and kinda being thrown together all quickly. Much smaller than something like BadAss 3. And yes, that was the first thing to come to mind.