Chimpazilla

The Evolve bundle is great, I had that already, but I also just got the Gamelan library, and I went ahead and got Action Strings this time too (was on the fence last time). They sound amazing out of the box and I think there must be 200 patterns in there, in every time signature imaginable. Now, to write something worthy of them...

Ok now just stop that, Argle. Some of us are older than that! Happy, happy Pretzelday!

Meteo, pictures will help, I'm really confused on your last round of questions... I'm still willing to do Teamviewer if you want. T - wait, you didn't upgrade to FL11? This may present some problems...

I'm working my way through these tracks... there's a lot of fun stuff in here, lots of talent. Great album!

It sounds good to me so far. I agree with what T said.

Great ear as usual, T! Ok I'll explain that section better. The backing structure is what I described before, but what you mostly hear is the high and low strings and the organ. The high brass is only adding some bite to the high strings, and the low brass is only one voice, providing support for the lowest end. (initially I had the organ part written in low brass but it sounded muddy. Gary my orchestral friend suggested the swap-out for the organ) That French Horn is what I mentioned as "mid brass" (name of the patch), and I used that for the response countermelody to the flute. That's the brass that's easiest to hear. Also, you're hearing pizzicato strings and a bell playing the Popcorn melody, and the triangle hits and chime-y effects are indeed from Damage, and the drums that start up at 2:50 (before the snare pattern) are from Evolve (so much good stuff in that library!). I have a very soft kick playing there too, and the shakers. And T, I forgot to mention that wind, I used your Sirocco preset, it is awesome! Oh and there is tons of stereo separation going on in this song, but not much in the orchestral section. I generally don't stereo separate the orchestral samples as they are already well positioned. The only widening I did on the orchestral section was to the very high bells, that Evolve drum loop, and Sirocco.

Thanks T! The orchestral part took me the longest because of the detail required to make the instruments sound somewhat natural. That is something I've been trying to practice getting better at. That part is high and low strings, high and low brass (with mid brass playing the response part), and a church organ, and the lead is that layered flute I mentioned (Kontakt flute plus Zebra "singing flute" preset). I'm glad you liked that section. My personal favorite parts of this mix are the section with the piano harmony, and the epic solo before the outro. And of course, the cheesy outro.

Thanks Chris! Glad you liked it!

I use Omnisphere quite a bit, and Kontakt for sample stuff. But I pretty much use Zebra for everything else. It's so versatile. How could anyone hate it?

Fresh Popcorn - Chimpazilla remix A friend of mine recently reminded me of this old tune, " " written by Gershon Kingsley in 1969 and remixed disco-style in the 70's. Once I heard it again (after so many years), I couldn't get it out of my head for days... so I decided to remix it again, but couldn't decide on a genre, so I just tried them all. Enjoy!

Track sounds quite nice. Maybe some additional drum elements could be brought in around 0:56 or so. Wow, that video is amazing, too. Love those pictures!

Argle says the mixing is ok. I say there are issues. And even if it was "ok" it could certainly be better. I can hear this song in my head with the issues fixed and improvements made and it sounds amazing. I'm being tough on this one because I really do like the writing.

Well I really do like your arrangement and writing, quite a lot. I listened to this four times in a row yesterday. And I didn't mean to be insulting, I realize some mixing decisions are personal taste (selection of chippy synths). But I must say this would probably get a "resub" vote on OCR just due to the mixing. Most of your instruments are fighting each other for space. Too many things are playing in the lower ranges, clashing with the bass. (personally, I HP every single thing in my mix, and I make sure NOTHING is playing in the same low frequencies as my bass, except my kick, and I eq those surgically so they don't clash, and I usually sidechain kick to bass also, to help with this issue). The bass itself is way too loud and needs eq and compression, as some of the bass notes were so loud that they nearly popped my speaker cones out. So, I suggest starting with balancing the instruments much better, first, then attacking each thing with eq so each instrument plays in its optimal range without doubling the frequencies of other things. You'll be amazed how much cleaner your mix is after you do this process, and you'll be able to get it louder overall too, as a result. Then, time to play with reverb to get some more feeling into the mix and also tell the listener how close or far away the instruments are. Also, please look into stereo separation, the mix will come alive with a few things placed wider in the stereo field. After all that, we can talk about special effects! Good luck! I'm looking forward to hearing this one again!

Ok so I love the writing here, all the way through. Really nice arrangement, very detailed and emotive. However... there are issues. The intro string pad sounds noticeably fake in the articulations. It sounds just real enough to require some smoothing and realistic swells. The synths are almost entirely too loud, with no dynamic range at all, and they are very plain and vanilla, no expressiveness on anything (no vibrato or modulation of anything). Everything is dry as a bone. You'll need to start by balancing the instruments so not everything is the same volume. What things should be in front? What is supportive and should be pushed back with lower volume and more reverb? Then you'll need to do some eq work, to get each thing playing in its optimal range without overlapping the other instruments playing. For example, if the lead is strong at 2k Hz, make a dip in your pad and other instrumentation at 2k Hz to accommodate the lead. The bass is really muddy and lacking definition and whoa too loud. I'd recommend a high pass at at least 50Hz and then experiment with removing some frequencies around 250Hz to clear some mud. Your snare has way too many lows, as does your tom. You could do tons of improvement to this track also, using strategic stereo separation. So, still some work to do here, but what a lovely arrangement!

Limbo. Short game (five hours), but excellent.

Me too, T. Me too.

Total awesomeness PT. You really are a chiptune god!!! Loving this.

Hey guys, great mix! First, you adapted it to 4/4 from the 3/4 source, and I love that. And you definitely captured the feel from the original in ambiance and sfx. I'm not familiar with this original so I'm trying to get up to speed. Like Aaron, I'm struggling a bit to pick out the source, but I know you Timaeus and I'm sure your breakdown is correct! Hopefully the judges won't struggle too hard to hear the source usage. Chris, those guitars sound amazing. The only problem production-wise that I'm having is that occasionally, the leads are a bit buried. From 0:45 all the way until 1:13, that lead is really soft. The lead that begins right after, at 1:14, is a better volume. Lead at 1:49 sounds great. At 2:36, that lead is very soft and hard to focus on. I have the feeling that isn't supposed to be a real lead there, but a background arp, but from 2:36 to 2:51 it seems like it should be a lead (at least, my ears want that!). At 2:52 the lead seems really buried as there's much more stuff going on there. At 3:10, the pianoish thing is a perfect volume imo (so don't change that), but seems odd following the softer lead. So I'd say bring those softer leads out somehow, and the production is perfect. Really, I'm nitpicking here. Drums are up to your usual standard of awesomeness, T. Nice job guys. Wishing you luck when you sub!

Well I can see how that would be tremendously useful when using the old fashioned white pattern blocks, where you can't tell them apart by looking at them and where they must be in their own track lanes. Using the playlist in a freeform way, you wouldn't need that kind of feature. You *could* of course put your patterns on separate track lanes, and you could name them accordingly if you wanted to, and you can color the track lanes to make it even easier to see. Or some people put all drums on one lane, all bass on another, leads on yet another, and so forth, and label the track lanes as such ("bass," or "leads," or "drums"). But I would guess that a lot of people, myself included, make use of the freeform nature of the playlist to put midi, sound clips, and automations anywhere they happen to fit. This is one of the best features of FL if you ask me, and why I will stick with FL instead of giving Cubase a try. I can see how this will take you some getting used to, though... so maybe you could start by just labeling the track lanes, and coloring them, so you can clearly recognize what you've got there, whether it's a repeating pattern or just all bass or all drums or something like that. As for copying patterns, that is a great feature. To clone a pattern in the playlist, just click on it and either click somewhere else to paste it there, or use the paintbrush and just paint it across as many times as you like. The patterns will be identical. To alter a pattern, make it unique. Rename it something meaningful to you. Then, change it all you like. You can then paint that one across, too, if you want more of them. Quite convenient, actually. If you ever want to see any of this in realtime and ask questions, I'd be glad to do a Teamviewer session with you.

Ok Meteo, I think I need some clarification. 1. You said "no longer highlights the channel in the sequencer playlist." I'm a bit confused. The "channels" appear in the "channel window" (which includes the "step sequencer") but not the "playlist." Do you just mean the channel window? I'm assuming you do. There is an option you can turn on and off, and you can control whether the channel window highlights the channel you're working on, or not. (I prefer "not" since it messes me up when working with midi-outs) The option is under settings-general, and it is called "auto select linked modules." Try that, see if that is it. If not, and I misunderstood, clarify for me. 2. "copy whole channels" do you mean clone an instrument instance, in the channel window? You can do that with a simple right-click on the channel, and select "clone." You said "channel in the playlist" and this confuses me, as channels do not appear in the playlist. 3. "letters to keys" I assume means in the piano roll. FL defaults to the text option with labeled pitches. You can switch it to keyboard by clicking on that "abc" tab in the piano roll. I don't know if you can change that by default. Ok I just looked and can't see that option, but someone on the IL forums may know. edit: For "copying channels" for chords and fills, maybe you just mean copying a pattern and making it unique. Just click on that pattern in the playlist, then click somewhere else to put that same pattern somewhere... then on that copied pattern, click (left or right) in the upper left corner (you'll get a little hand thingy), and select "make unique." It will give it the same name plus "#2." (you can rename it, also by clicking in the upper left corner). Do this, and edit away!

Sounds awesome, great guitar work with Shreddage! I think the drums sound great too, perfect for the style.

Nice track! Tagging fraud indeed!

Sorry you're feeling pain! What horizontal scrolling box? You can just drag the scrolling bar (above the playlist) longer or shorter and you can see more or less of your playlist. Is that what you meant? The blocks thing, huh? Do you mean the template that resembles the legacy blocks, like in the video I linked? Zebra2 is indeed the best synth there is I think. That and Omnisphere. I haven't tried Effector yet, nor GMS. I like Bassdrum a lot, though. Your i7 should handle your stuff like a boss. But yeah, experiment with turning those multithreaded options on and off. You'll have to trade off between cpu usage and crackling, depending on the size of your file. I only ever have to worry about that on huge files. Play with those two options on a big track and see what works best for you. edit: remember, bridging is automatic when you use a 64bit version of your plugin. This should only be necessary with big plugins like Kontakt or Omnisphere, no need for a Zebra instance, 32 is fine there.

Hey Mr. Auracle! I think we were (at least I was) a little put off by your unusual introduction. Many of us here have Twitter feeds and Soundcloud accounts, and we are all working very hard on our skills. Most of us are actively trying to get our songs posted here on OCR. When you post a song in this WIP forum, it is assumed that you want to submit your song to OCR for judging, so we will dive in and offer criticism intended to help get you there. Sometimes the criticism can sound harsh. Timaeus can give particularly intense crits, but generally his advice is spot-on. I felt intimidated at first by the direct and specific criticism I received in this forum... but ultimately it helped me develop to the point of getting a mix passed by the judging panel and into the queue for posting. So, sorry if we jumped on you! Please accept our welcome, and please keep posting. Let us know if you're just sharing your song or if you're working towards getting posted here, and we will reply accordingly. And please take any critiques given as helpful, developing a thick skin is job #1 if you really want to improve.

Yes, I'd be interested to learn more about this.