Fictionalhead

Thanks for the feedback. I've switched the status to Mod Review to see what the powers that be think of it to see if it's worth submitting to the site or not.

Thanks for the feedback (both times). After I finished my third album, I promised myself I wouldn't just dive into making a fourth, but do some remixes and stuff instead. It's been quite fun delving into other people's tunes.

Edit: Changed to Mod Review -- thanks for the feedback so far. This was my entry for the FFVI remix competition. I'd say it's finished, but if there's any feedback you guys have on it, I'm open to input. I tried to keep the playful nature of the original intact, while also updating it and making it a little more mysterious. I kept little nods to the original in it like the spin down to the timpani hit, and the filtered version of the original later in the tune. This is my first post in this forum too, so if I'm doing something wrong, let me know. I tried to read all the FAQs first. Source: Remix: http://soundcloud.com/fictionalhead/fictionalhead-in-the-zone

I'm not at all. I was referring to hypothetical situation of people voting without listening. Which, if that actually happened, would be disheartening in that "I've lost faith in humanity" way. It was phrased poorly.

There was an email problem getting mine submitted, so I think they got tacked on the end My only concern was that in being the dead last tracks not as many people would listen to them. I think the last time I checked (a week or so before the end of voting), the first song in the poll had like 250 listens, and my track (the last one) had like 100. So at bare minimum it would seem at least 150 people started the poll, and then stopped before getting to my track, or *gulp* voted for mine without actually listening to it. Which I sincerely hope no one would do (to me or anyone). Though the fact that both of my tracks which were dead last in the list scored exactly the same is a little disheartening. But oh well, the vote's the vote. I know for myself, I used the whole scale. Obviously all of the tracks had enough originality and production to push them into the 3-5 range. So that considered, if we followed your logic, you'd only have 2 points to fluctuate between 34 tracks. I know when I listened to them I had more opinion than that. There was definitely more than just 2 point differentiation between the ones I loved (#14 - Meccaneer was my fave, followed by #7 - Rexy, good job), and the ones I didn't care for. So for that reason, I weighted my scoring. I gave 1's to the tracks I liked least, and 5's to those I liked most. Yeah, it's kind of against what the rules said to judge on, but again, if we were only taking into account the quality of the track distanced from our own personal taste, there would be no reason for public voting at all really. And this too, is another reason it doesn't matter. If you inflate this effect to it's maximum impact, then the people like me who used the full scale (1 = least liked, 5 = most liked), we just influenced the scoring less than someone who used a scale like (3 = least liked, 5 = most liked), because over the course of our whole survey, we gave out fewer points towards the final total. The only way to avoid this would be to have a voting scale of 1-34, where you had to rank each song once, to make sure everyone doled out the same amount of points, and that's just ridiculous and unrealistic. And on a side note, to all us guys who scored in the middle (woo, #18 pride!), think of it this way -- You probably didn't have people saying they absolutely 5'ed it, but you didn't have people absolutely 1'ing it either. We are the "yeah, this is pretty good" tracks that didn't eclipse the stand-outs, or fall into obscurity. Or at least that's what I like to tell myself Kudos to everyone -- the full track zip file makes for a good playlist.

Thanks. Mine were #33 (Gogo) and #34 (Spacey Mog). Both ended up getting the same score apparently. Er, maybe that's backwards. I don't remember. They were the last 2. I think my fave from them all was #25, but I'm not sure I'm remembering that number correctly either. It has some pretty fast drums in it near the end.

All of the confirmations of confirmations... I feel like I should be a part of the Christian church by now. aka, I got mine.

Also, just an FYI to anyone going through and voting: My girlfriend left the survey open while she listened through all the tracks, and upon attempting to submit, the survey had timed out, and she lost all her scores. I would say at bare minimum keep them in a separate file, or be sure to do the "resume later" thing at the bottom to keep them saved.

Best of luck to everyone. I've got a full playlist to listen through, but from what little I've heard so far, there's some good stuff in here.

Seems like a 1-5 scale is going to produce a lot of 3-5 votes, which doesn't encompass much range -- though the same could be argued of a 1-10 scale since most people would vote between 5-10 since below 5 is probably beyond everyone involved. I supposed with 30+ entries being voted on, the possible combinations of votes will vary things enough. I'm curious about this as well, though doing a package request system would probably be a very high barrier of entry and probably deter a lot of people from voting.

I submitted mine back on Sunday -- with a comment asking for confirmation they got in here on the forum, and on Twitter, and I've gotten nothing in response, and I'm not seeing my name in the list of submitters. Edit: You confirmed you got it via email. Thanks.

Generally, yeah. I use piano a lot in the stuff I write, and I find myself always going back to the same couple ones I like as instruments because the sound of a piano can vary so much, it's rough finding one you think sounds best. To me, I'd say this piano is a little hollow/mid-range sounding, but like I said, the range of piano sounds I enjoy is very narrow. I work in Reason mainly, so I'm not sure how you're triggering your notes, but you'll find you can get a lot of variation by how hard you 'play' the note, and just how long you sustain it. Imagine someone playing this song for real on a piano. Are they going to actually hold the key down for as long as it sounds like there are here? Or would it be more of a percussive hit on the key, and then let the reverb/echo bleed down? You can/should also vary the volume of the notes a little so they all don't ring out at the same volume. A beautiful example of how to convey a ton of emotion with a simple piano melody would be something like this: Just watch how she hits the notes, what's loudest, what's quiet, and which notes get held and which ones don't. Really getting into the mindset of how it should be played will help tons when trying to make it sound natural. I didn't hear any particular glitches or distortion you need to worry about. I would say it's right in the normal range. It didn't blow me away, but I didn't have to seek out the volume knob to hear it either. Keep at it, sounds good so far,

I wasn't familiar with the original, so I looked that up first to compare against. While I do agree there are things you could do to improve the mixing and mastering (there always are), I like what you've done with it. It has more of a sense of urgency than the original did, and I think the guitar is a nice addition. I would encourage you to take some of the other advice already given, just be sure you don't go into death-by-tweakage mode, as once you've gotten to that point the work can suffer.

I like the take you put on it. The casual flair and meandering pace works great for the tune. I'd love a clean mp3 of it (if by some glory you recorded this other than on the video camera). Really nice.

This definitely feels like a good start to something. My initial reaction was that the beginning part (up til about 1:04) sounded almost too lo-fi for what came after it. It has a solid build up, and some good effects when it gets there, but it does seem like it would benefit from some additional flourishes and maybe a little more attention paid to the initial lead in.

I sent in my two submissions on Sunday before I saw there was an extension -- though I didn't get a confirmation email on either of them. Is there any way to find out if they were successfully received?