XPRTNovice

I love this arrangement and it is so close, but I think that there are some production elements that could be improved to really make it shine. What I really want to hear is more of the low end throughout, particularly the kick drum and the bass guitar (I’m talking like 80-100hz). Reference mixing with some Dropkick Murphy’s or something like that - or even the band you reference in your submission - will help you zero in on how a full mix might sound with this instrumentation. Celtic rock is so much fun, but you also have some prog metal elements hear that would benefit from making that kick a little more snappy – try some high-ratio compression on that kick and experiment to your taste, but it definitely needs some more low end. Arrangement wise, there was only one thing that really bothered me - by 2:01, my ears are getting really fatigued from repetition of the main theme. I think that also has to do with me just not having enough depth in the production, because it was the high-end part of my ears that was tired . When it breaks down at 2:30 ish, I get a nice break and I start to feel interested in the tune again. The piece is long enough to stand on its own; it might actually benefit from simply cutting one of the repeated sections of the main theme in the beginning. Maybe I’m waxing philosophical here, but this happens a lot during Celtic pieces because of the way the flutes/tin whistles have all these mordents that make it seem like every note is the same note because you can never find the center. I love the source and I love the arrangement; it’s really fun, and you can absolutely bring this to passable with just a few tweaks. Some suggestions to help with both the ear fatigue and the production, which also may help the arrangement sound more complete if the ear isn't tired: I hear the tin whistle off to the right; since the guitars seem to be hardpanned, you could bring the tin whistle to center, especially since it is the main melody. At that point it would require that you bring it down, though, because now it'll be right dead center in your face. The cymbals (crash/splash) are also really crackly and high-end ish and could use some EQ. NO (resub)

This is really tightly produced, and I honestly can’t give any feedback on the mechanical side of things. You found a pocket and hit it dead on; there’s a great little mix of new age and 80’s synthwavy stuff going on here. If I were to offer some feedback, I would maybe say that the weird synthy panflute melody or whatever could probably stand to be more in front starting at :55 or whatever, and that continues to the cello (somewhat, the cello has dynamic variation and could benefit from some automation to just kind of make sure it's up front). I am just such a fan of the lead guitar playing, and it's a LIIIITTTLEEE too warm in the mix? But man I just attributed that to the style, it sounds like it's from the 80s. A touch more drum variation might help the piece, but overall I think it's solid. The arrangement is beautifully written, incorporates the source in a creative and interesting manner, and creates some really fun soundscapes with the varying use of virtual instruments. The guitar “performance” is really well done with little flourishes that keep my ear interested in what’s going on. Great job! YES

Let’s be honest – nobody has any idea what Dragonball is about. But that didn’t stop you from making a good arrangement of the music. It’s not quite ready for the site though – but it can be with just a fix of the ending. The smash cut at 4:05 needs to be smoothed out. It extremely abruptly transitions back to the A section of the piece without any transition, almost as though it was cut/paste. The same voice files were even used, and then the track sort of suddenly stops at the very end – and you didn’t let the effects bleed out before you set the rightmost export gate, resulting in reverb getting sliced off. Returning to the A section is a natural way to bring the tune home, but the transition to it needs to be smoothed out. Drop out the bass and let it breathe for a second and re-build it into the A. A fade-out might even work at the end (these are just suggestions – your taste will supersede mine.) I don’t have any issues with the production or source usage. Everything is really tightly EQed, and you have good control across all your sidechain compression. The panning is effective and clean, and your instrumentation is varied and fun to listen to. All this needs is for you to end the piece! You’re almost there. YES CONDITONAL (fix the ending)

The arrangement takes a source that doesn't have that much material and weaves it back and forth with some nice breaks in there to create some breathing room. The switching of the melody back and forth between vocals and other instruments creates variety, and there are some nice interpretations. I think there was room for more - with such a short source, it would have been easy to deviate from the melody and create some variations rather than use it verbatim each time it is used, especially considering you have a vocal as the main melody, but I'm not evaluating based on missed potential. Vocal embellishments are easy to incorporate, and would have helped solve one of my major problems with the arrangement, which is just that it's too long; I felt like the piece came to its conclusion with the fade out at 4:19, but then we came back in for another minute of essentially the same thing we have been hearing for the first 4 minutes of the track. The source is very, very repetitive on its own, so having it extend for 5 and a half minutes made it easy to lose interest in the track. Production wise, the elements are well mixed and balanced. The instrumentation is good, and so is the overall EQ. I think the vocals need to come back in the mix a little bit, and could maybe even use a little touch of reverb; it's very dry in comparison to the other elements you have going on, which tend to be very wet. I had a considerably hard time understanding the vocals, but that could be turned into a positive rather than a negative by using the vocals as an instrument rather than a lyrical device (see groups like Massive Attack for examples on that sort of use of voice-as-instrument). This part is purely an idea that you can take or leave, but I do think the vocals need to mesh better with the rest of the instrumentation. NO (resubmit)

Hell yeah! This is great! The complex timing you’ve got going on the drums is really amazing, the bass line is killer, and the organ really is the jelly in this PB&J of jazz. Your piano performance is stellar, the instruments are mixed well and appropriately, and the arrangement maintains a healthy addiction to the source while being varied enough to keep the ear interested, even at a 5 minute jazz arrangement. It’s like Soulive put on a red cap with an M on it and jumped off a cliff yelling WAHOO. Great job on this – I don’t have any other feedback! YES

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MOD REVIEW Hey there! So this is a really unique take on this tune with some really interesting sound choices. Taste wise, you might split the room a bit, but these are your choices and you should stick to them! It's a very unique sound. I enjoy the broken rhythms and the drums. My major nitpick is that sometimes I couldn't quite catch what the melody was supposed to be, particularly at 1:30 ish. There's the pumping pad in the back, and I think that needs to come back in the mix and have the melody ride more in the forefront. That happens again at about 2:10, where your wubbing bass kind of drowns out the interesting spooky lead you've got going on. Honestly, I think that's probably more of a personal taste kind of thing, and this could be ready for the judges without it. I'm marking it as complete; you can make the changes or tweaks, or submit it as is! Good luck /MOD REVIEW

MOD REVIEW Hey there. In the future, you can change the tag of your workshop post for READY FOR REVIEW and a mod will come and review it for you. While I will immediately admit that this style music is not the stuff I generally write or listen to, I can tell that this mix took a lot of care and feeding. You did a great job overall on it. A couple of things for feedback. - The mis-timed echo at the beginning and again at 3:30 is a little jarring; the background echo isn't in time with the foreground music, and while that might have been the intended effect, I just wanted to say that it made my musician ears kind of twitch a bit. If that's what you're going for good job. If not, I might reconsider making that background stuff be more in time with the foreground stuff. - Levels and panning all sound really good. There wasn't anything that stood out to me as too heavy or too light. Great job there. - Taking a short theme like this and making it interesting enough to listen to for 6 straight minutes is a hell of a feat and you should be proud of it. I was expecting it to drag on and make my ears really tired, but it did neither of those things. Bravo. - the drop at 5:20 could use some more oomph if you ask me. It sounded almost like it dropped out for a second, almost like it was a mistake; take a listen to that and see if there's something else you can do with it. Honestly, most of the above are nitpicks, and I think this is likely ready for the judges. Good luck! /MOD REVIEW

Thank you!

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Link not found.

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I'll be totally honest, I'm loving this stuff, but I don't think it's for OCR. What I'm hearing is the original OST track with some great hip hop vocals on top and maybe a little bit of a changed beat. It's really cool, and I enjoy it, but I don't think this is the right place for this. I've asked other staff to see what they think.

Can you please post a link to the source before review?

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Hi there. Did you mark this as READY FOR REVIEW because you are trying to submit this to the OCR judges panel and want a moderator to review the piece? This seems like an advertisement for your short film, not an invitation for feedback.

Hey there - welcome to the workshop. Please read the workshop introduction rules so you understand what this place is for and what marking something "ready for review" means. This doesn't fall into something that you'd use this workshop for - we'd review one track at a time.

[This is an automatically generated message] I've reviewed your remix and have returned it to Work-in-Progress status, indicating that I think there are some things you still need to work on. After you work on your track and feel that it's ready for submission to OCR, please change the prefix back to Ready for Review and someone will review it again. Good luck!

Can you post links to the source and the Danny mix as well before I take a look?

*MOD REVIEW* Hey there Argentina! Welcome to the workshop. Okay. The intro - I think the drums need to come back in the mix and let the guitars shine a bit here, since the guitars are doing the movement and need the attention. When :30 hits, though, it really falls into place. It sounds great. Driving, the guitars sound awesome and are well performed and recorded. BUT I still think you can bring them more to the front, especially since the drums are sequenced and are of lesser quality than the guitars. You're clearly a great guitar player, so let it shine! Obviously don't bury the drums, but I think the guitars can come up in the mix without making it sound messy. 1:45 the drums drop out and give the guitars some room, and it's very satisfying. So I'd say bring that to the rest of the piece. I was disappointed when the piece sort of suddenly ended at 2:15 though. I feel like there's a lot more that can be done with it, and you clearly have the skill to write more. I'm not sure what I would suggest, but maybe since the arrangement you have right now is very true to the original, take the theme and do a variation on it. Mess with the timing, the key, or take that synth and bring it to the forefront for a while. You've got plenty of room to add some more meat to this mix, especially since the source is just about as long as the mix (which you hardly ever get in the NES era, so use it!). I'm marking as WIP mostly for the reason that the mix feels incomplete, but I'd take the opportunity to mess with the drum/guitar balance a little bit as well. It sounds great so far! *MOD REVIEW* I've reviewed your remix and have returned it to Work-in-Progress status, indicating that I think there are some things you still need to work on. After you work on your track and feel that it's ready for submission to OCR, please change the prefix back to Ready for Review and someone will review it again. Good luck!

*MOD REVIEW* Hey. I think I'll disagree with Gario on this one about the conservativism being too much. Is it conservative? Yes, I think it is. Do I think there's more you can do with it? I do. Trust me, I'm all for being minimalist in music sometimes, but I think with a source like this there's a lot you can do with it. Then again, you may not WANT to do anything with it, which is an artistic choice you're free to make, especially with this being a sort of horror genre piece of music. I'm going to mark as complete, and you can roll the dice with the judges on whether or not this is enough of a new take on the piece to pass. I'm more optimistic than Gario, but I still see his point. *MR OUT* I've reviewed your remix and have set it to Completed status, indicating that I think your remix is ready to be submitted to the Judges Panel. Congratulations! If you feel like you still need to work on your track and want more feedback, you can change the prefix back to Work-in-Progress and we'll go through the review process again. If you decide to submit your track, please change the prefix to Submitted after sending your email. Thank you!

[This is an automatically generated message] I've reviewed your remix and have set it to Completed status, indicating that I think your remix is ready to be submitted to the Judges Panel. Congratulations! If you feel like you still need to work on your track and want more feedback, you can change the prefix back to Work-in-Progress and we'll go through the review process again. If you decide to submit your track, please change the prefix to Submitted after sending your email. Thank you! *MOD REVIEW* Man, I am absolutely loving the vibe of this. That cheesy 80s reverb snare is just beautiful. The drums, IMO, could still use some filling out (particularly, the kick sounds not deep enough to me) there's an opportunity for it to really fill out the mix, and right now it's just not doing the job. I didn't get a real sense of low end until about 1:45, after which it sounds a lot more complete to my ears. It drops out again after that section, though, and my ears are really thirsty for some lower end freqs by the end of the piece. I think you've done a lot to add dimension, but a little more couldn't hurt. There's that sort of low pad you have going on underneath, I think, and maybe getting that to come out a bit more would round it out. Those are obviously suggestions, not comments, and you can do with those what you will. Do I think this would stand a chance in front of the judges? Yes, I do, which is why I'm marking complete. But I think that with a little bit more attention, you can make this feel really round and warm. Good luck with it and great job! *MOD REVIEW*

[This is an automatically generated message] I've reviewed your remix and have returned it to Work-in-Progress status, indicating that I think there are some things you still need to work on. After you work on your track and feel that it's ready for submission to OCR, please change the prefix back to Ready for Review and someone will review it again. Good luck! *MOD REVIEW* Hey there, welcome to the forums. Here's your mod review of this piece. I really like a lot of what's going on here, BUT, the piece is effectively ruined by the current kick drum sample you have going on here. It's loud and overcompressed, and makes it physically difficult to hear the excellent guitar work you have going on. The sequencing isn't humanized, so I get a metronome-like regularity to it, and the sample itself doesn't seem to be a round-robin style, so I'm getting literally the same noise several times a second in some places. The kick overshadows the rest of the piece and makes it difficult to enjoy. In general, I think this is a REALLY good remix. If I shut out the kick drum, I can hear the great work you're putting into the guitars, which sound natural, balanced, and well performed. The drums, particularly the kick drum, really need some work before this can go in front of judges. I might suggest collaborating with someone who is an actual drummer, which would make this mix really stand out in an amazing away. Barring that, take some time to step back and take a look at your samples and how you are sequencing the drums. The kick drum is by far the most detrimental part of the mix, but the rest of the drums could use some realism work as well; the crashes get buried, and some almost sound like bell-taps. A good drum track here will really take this to the next level. *MOD REVIEW*

Then it's not ready for review - if the mix isn't fully performed, mixed, and produced, with all the final instrument tracks, it's not ready for a moderator to listen to and tell you whether or not you're ready for the judges. I encourage you to review

Again, this doesn't seem to be a final version that would be included on OCR's site after passing judge evaluation. I'm hearing what appears to be basic midi, not performed by any VST or human. "Ready for Review" means the mix sounds on-par with the quality of OCR's posted mixes.