MindWanderer

If everyone names their files properly, tagging should only take a few minutes no matter how many there are. You shouldn't be tagging files individually anyway. MP3Tag or the equivalent is essential for any compo organizer (not using ThaSauce, anyway).

I'm excited! I'll see if I can get a mix ready to post in the new Workshop by the time it goes live.

You could write some code that parses one of the site's feeds and pulls out the number of the most recent remix on the list. Wouldn't be that hard.

This is for ages 10 and up. I wouldn't recommend it for younger kids just because they wouldn't appreciate it.

Or to be more modern: Settlers of Catan, Carcasonne, Dominion, Forbidden Island, Tsuro of the Seas, etc., etc.Brandon actually has a good, if tongue-in-cheek point, that "violence solves everything" is a problem even in cartoony games. It's less a problem than in realistic ones, and less likely to generalize to reality, but a healthy dose of cooperative games, and story-rich ones where your protagonist is genuinely good-hearted, can only be a good thing. You can't really be a gamer parent and avoid cartoon violence, though--the games are just so darn good! Classic Mario and Zelda need to be on the list (at least one 2D and 3D of each). Pokemon probably doesn't have to be mentioned, but it should be in their repertoire. I'd also include Super Metroid, Myst, Portal 1 & 2, Plants vs. Zombies, and Final Fantasy IV, VI, VII, and X.

Nothing from me this week after all. I could have worked on it, but instead I chose to: - Assemble a crib - Replace a window screen - Watch all of No Game No Life - Play through almost all of Papers, Please I may still do the remix I had in mind at some point, but I really have to start questioning whether it's the best use of my time.

When I heard this previewed (from Patreon), I thought maybe whoever uploaded it somehow failed to upload the rest of the song, and they'd catch it when the post went live. Great stuff, but way too short, I would have loved another 3-4 minutes of this.

Was the Production class really useful? It seems like the technical stuff is pretty basic, but how you use it might be good. I don't really have 6 hours a week to sink into it, though.

A semitone is a difference of one note on the keyboard. So, for instance, C natural and D# are three semitones apart. Just take the theremin part and just drag it all three notes down on the piano roll.

I hadn't been planning on doing a Fallen mix, but Black Dream calls to me.... I'd intended to rework Gades vs. Dark King into two separate mixes anyway, and this could work out nicely. There's no real reason why I have to write a 100% new mix, since this is bonus anyway.

Jamming to the Patreon-only OCR previews from this morning's email. All you non-backers have some great music to look forward to!

Super Mario 3D World now makes my list. That last bonus world is a bitch. The Captain Toad level was fine, but the challenge house and the standard level are just insane. Not impossible, but the relentless, perfection-demanding pressure is no longer my idea of fun.

Much of Tetris Battle Gaiden works:

This has been on my playlist since the 2011 WCRG. Will's synth solo still ends a little shrill for my tastes, but it's a minor point in an otherwise amazing remix. There still needs to be more MM4/5/6 remixes out there!

Mostly I'm frustrated with my own work. I know it's not very good; I feel like I have a ton of ideas that I don't have the chops to execute the way it sounds in my head. I have no dreams of every becoming pro-quality; I just want to get to a point where I can take my ideas and put them into a form good enough for other people to appreciate. And getting something past the OCR judges' panel seems like a good goal to shoot for on that front. Do be aware that:1) People do often say this kind of thing because they think it's polite. It takes a lot of guts to tell an artist you know as a friend that you don't like their work. 2) These people are looking at your work in a specific context. This is people who you told you dabble in music, so they were looking at in that light. They weren't expecting pro quality. They probably weren't even expecting "people will actually pay me some money if I put this on BandCamp" quality. So by that measure, they'd be impressed by a level of quality you're not pleased at in yourself. I don't mean to be harsh, just keep in mind what someone's praise actually means.

Mine is in. Production should be an improvement over last time, although I'm sure there's still a lot of room for improvement still.

Hit some writer's block for a while, and ended up making a couple of choices I'm not 100% happy with, but can't think of anything better right now. On the last section of the arrangement now. Once again, tomorrow is production day; hopefully I won't get sick this time.

At those specific points, I certainly agree (and the last is really striking, if the dB levels are really the same). That's almost as bad an example as mine. Human perception is best between 1kHz and 5kHz; at equal energy levels, the 200Hz sound will seem much quieter than the 2kHz one. No, that's good, I need to hear more of this! Besides, what better example of a mix done badly (which was my point) than my own? Granted, mine definitely appears to be mastered quieter, but if your spectrum analyzer got different RMS than mine did, then SPAN (which I use) may not be as great as everyone thinks it is. Using that number alone, mine by rights should be louder. His use of the sonic spectrum makes a huge difference, as I'm sure appropriate compression does. The "better job with balancing" is pretty darn important.I'm not sure how you can overkill a brickwall 0 dB limiter when you aren't hitting 0 dB. I believe you, I just don't get it.

It's not a 1:1 correlation. They're closely related, sure, but it's not a direct relationship. Again, to take an extreme example, a 25kHz sound wave at 150 dBSPL is barely audible to some and inaudible to others, whereas a 2kHz soundwave at 150 dBSPL will be painful in the extreme.Oh, and sound volume is a log base 10 system. 10 dBA SPL is a doubling. I believe you may be correct that the actual energy level (dB SPL), which uses a different scale, doubles at between 5 and 5 dB. A few articles that do a decent breakdown of why dB of energy is not dB of perception: http://www.sengpielaudio.com/calculator-dba-spl.htm http://www.acousticsbydesign.com/acoustics-blog/perception-vs-reality.htm http://trace.wisc.edu/docs/2004-About-dB/ Download the rRPC Villains round 1. Listen to my mix and Jason Covenant's. Mine is way quieter, right? Even without changing your speaker volume? Mine has a peak RMS of about -11. Jason's has a peak RMS of of about -12, and even in parts where it's over -16, it sounds much, much louder. And obviously, both are hitting 0dB (although, again, Jason's sounds louder even when it isn't).Yes, obviously the most important thing in loudness is how you have your hardware volume set. But no one's going to say a mix is "too loud" or "too quiet" in isolation; they mean it in comparison to other music. To be honest, I'm not entirely sure how the physics of this works--I just know I've made mixes that are balls-to-the-limiter in sections, not just the transients but clearly flatlined, and they don't sound as loud as a well-mastered mix with much more of a dynamic range. @timaeus: Actually, Darkness and Fiberoptics sound almost exactly equal in loudness to me. Maybe not the best example.

Well... yes and no. Traditionally, the decibel is calibrated to human hearing (1dB = minimum a human can hear). Computers are calibrated differently (0db = maximum the computer can output). Either way, the decibel is a measure of energy, not sensation. Something can reach the maximum output of your computer--which is when it clips--and still sound quiet. The actual peak energy is high, but the sensation of loudness is low. For something to sound loud, the sustained energy needs to be high, which is where things like RMS and crest factor come in. Also, pitch matters: a really high-energy sub-bass will output a lot of dB's but still sound quiet, because our ears are bad at detecting those frequencies. This is why high-pass filters can give you more mastering headroom without changing the sensation of loudness.(Incidentally, I just learned the hard way: RMS and crest are useless in and of themselves. They can be useful as an objective measure of comparison, but my last compo entry should have been moderately loud "by the numbers," but it was actually really quiet. Again, energy != sensation. There's no substitute for using your ears and understanding the theory.)

This is actually an aspect of physics. Without getting too much into the math, basically, when you add two sounds together, you get a sound that's twice as loud. In actuality, it won't be fully twice as loud unless it's the exact same instrument at the same note or a full number of octaves higher or lower, but there will be transients that are twice as loud--and those will cause clipping. So yeah, when you add lots of instruments, you'll need to lower the volume of each. If you don't, and just rely on the compressor, you'll end up overcompressing (with its characteristic "pumping" sound).

I didn't even think of this as metal until you mentioned it. Sure, it has the power guitar, but it's so melodic and with so many other (very cool) elements, that it's really nothing like what I think of as metal.Of course, this being Castlevania, I expect metal, so this is somewhat less metal just by comparison. I don't mind not being able to understand the voices--I think that's the point--but the sibilants are a little harsh. Otherwise, yeah, a little dirty, but that's par for the course. The second half is just lovely.

Related question: have there been any recent changes in number of submissions, or number of resubmissions? I'm wondering if the ease and proliferation of self-publishing (both free via Youtube and Soundcloud, and paid via iTunes/Amazon/Bandcamp/etc.) is having an impact on this community. From my usual haunt, the Competitions, it seems like activity has nosedived for close to a year now, but I'm not sure whether that's reflected elsewhere in the site. (Yes, I know self-publishing to the Workshop is on the to-do list--hopefully even if the Patreon goal is never met.)

Re-emphasis: This mix goes way beyond just adding drum loops. Using the original audio isn't explicitly prohibited; historically such mixes almost never pass for other reasons. The modifications made to the original source are substantial here: lots of added instruments that significantly change the sound, feel, and genre.I agree that the judges all seem to have missed this--it should have gotten a mention in the judgment thread--but it's not an autofail on those grounds IMHO.

I think I finally manhandled Pokey's theme into something usable. It's so short, and the melody only uses 3 notes (one of which is bound to be an accidental), that the hard part is keeping it recognizable--it's not nearly as iconic as, say, Elec Man's theme, so small deviations make a big difference. Now, if I could only figure out how to transcribe the B part (0:14-0:18)....