Michael_Lochlann

what a surprising take on this song, very interesting. It really works as a prog-metal song. It's odd that there aren't more prog rock fans in OCR considering how much influence prog has on video game music.

Flawless playing & mixing, and an arrangement that makes me like one of the few FF6 songs I never liked. I salute you, who keep the OC Metal alive! The drums sound amazing in particular, if I'm reading the post right it's a real drummer on a real drumset, and you can tell. You don't get that "fake" drum sound you hear on so many bedroom producers' output.

If you want to hear more of this type of stuff (I do a lot of piano and rock/metal stuff) feel free to subscribe to my youtue channel by clicking this link: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCE0swoFG1-iBP7QRGbeHsgg?sub_confirmation=1 i already subbed to yours. thanks for the feedback! it's funny, most people just say "I like it." You have to talk to someone who makes music seriously to get real feedback. haha. yeah my best instrument is piano. it's a great instrument to learn composition and theory on because you can very easily change chords and see how the chords interplay with the melody. i agree, bass and guitar tone is a challenge for me, i get better every time i record, but it's surprisingly difficult to get a good sound! I blame the knobs! too many knobs and i want to turn them all! the lufia soundtrack is good all around if you like rpg music.

Ah, cool, fooled me. Good samples and use thereof. Good job dude

nice. i saw them live here and one of the best shows i've ever seen. it's stupid that their music is so hard yet they can play it perfectly live. especially the drums. jesus.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nuItul-D0PA used this as a pro melodic metal reference track to compare. you can hear how "uncompressed" or "free" the drums sound and how they are as loud as the guitars in the mix, the guitars "fit in" with the drums volume wise. compare that to yours and let me know what you think in reply to your previous post, i think you are doing alright. just be careful to be able to hear every instrument equally (or equal to its importance) in the mix. as guitarist we always want our guitar sound to be loud and ballsy but at the same time a track with weak sounding drums (and weak is just low volume relative to the rest of the mix) will usually decrease how ballsy the whole track sounds.

the guitar playing is pretty solid, way better than mine lol. i would say going forward in your practice focus on the phrasing & getting emotion out of the parts and sounding as clean as possible, you are at the level where what you have left are tweaks. i'm on laptop speakers right now so... keep that in mind: the guitar tone is pretty good. i wonder if you would benefit from a bit of room reverb on the rhythm guitars. they sound a bit dry. obviously you have to be careful with that since it's metal riffing but a little might not hurt. it sounds like the guitars are on top of the drums...like the drums are a separate part of the track almost. i would try bringing the drums up a bit in level, adding some more low to the kick and a bit of brightness to the cymbals so they have their own sonic place, and this might help the most, use or tweak your master bus compression to glue the entire track together. maybe use a bit of the same reverb you use on the rhythm guitars on the drums to make them sound like they're in the same space. i also get the feeling like you MAY be rushing the guitar parts a bit over the drum track...but on a closer listen, i think your playing is pretty on time. i think the problem is you can't really hear the "attack" of the drums. you may have overcompressed the track or the drum bus because the drums do sound a bit squashed dynamics wise. either that or maybe the attacks on the drums aren't "clicky" or bright enough for me to really hear them. you can try adding a transient shaper to the kick and snare, or some 8k-9k on eq to bring out the snap/attack on the drums more. here is a good melodic metal reference track i used to check myself here. the track sounds good, and maybe it's just my laptop speakers screwing it up. but i do think guitar guys have this problem where they focus on the guitars so much that the drums (especially since they're programmed) and bass don't get as much attention mix-wise. on that note i didn't even notice the bass until i went to listen to it. normal for metal i know. but there are tricks. try sending your bass to a distortion or saturation effect on another channel, cutting all but the highs out of that and mix it into the regular signal to taste. that will give your bass some overtones so it shows up on laptop speakers. you can also try boosting let's say 70-100 because the guitar starts about 125 and the kick sits around 50-70 so you can give your bass some more bass that way without having it be over the guitars. i do like how bright and clear you mix is though also i would say the ending is ok, but a bit sudden. i think it's a good idea to add a climax at the end of the song (hopefully with some sort of cadential chord progression like a IV - I or V-I) so the song really sounds finished and not like it just stopped. that's a common problem with rock and metal writing in general as people don't typical study songwriting and chord progressions when going into that kind of music. perhaps you'd be kind enough to give my recent rock remix of a Lufia song a listen? https://ocremix.org/community/topic/47677-progressive-rock-lufia-medley-3-songs-deliverance/

i keep fighting on the veldt but i can never seem to get your Piano ability. dammit!!! screw the playing, just listen to how on time all 4 parts are. that is MUCH HARDER than it seems and you are playing crazy technical stuff. this is tight. forget that, this is amazing. i aspire to be amazing, but you actually are. thanks for sharing and inspiring! you got a hard sub on this one buddy uematsu would be proud ps put out an album of this and it'd sell. Kiara Comparetto is doing one and it's not even her own arrangements. Love her to death don't get me wrong, just saying you have something marketable here

as someone who repeatedly tries to get into EDM but can only stand Boards of Canada, I like this. I think the drum timbre is fine but the drums need to be louder so you really feel them. Maybe 1-2 db louder. either that or some eq. i want to feel the bass of the kick. i want the snare to punch me more and i want those hi hats to be brighter or more audible. i'm pretty sure it's just an overall volume issue but if that doesn't work or feels too "Loud" mix wise then try eq'ing some 50 into the kick, 200 into the snare and 10hz shelf into the hi hats. i'm sure if you listen to 808 state or something sort of old you will get that. (oh yeah I like 808 state. lol) maybe add some sort of climax songwise as it kind of just stops. i know EDM isn't huge on songwriting/arrangement and is more about repeating things, but always good form to have a climax thanks for sharing! Ps subbed to ya to support.

Did you buy this thing or get it from somewhere? Looks like it. If you made the music box or mp3 yourself, then you are a boss. But cool sharing...I would kill to have one of these. It sounds amazing in real life. I would absolutely not add another instrument, that's not how music box songs work lol

I saw mass effect then i saw post rock. Shepard sez "I'M GOING IN!!!" this is cool, the guitar timbre reminds me of Tears Run Rings guitar playing is very nice, which i was that good nice heavy part, wasn't expecting metal in my shoegaze drums sound nice, maybe a bit too simple, but this is post rock...some of the fills sound a bit weak velocity wise, like a real drummer would normally play louder on fills but your programming seems to have the fills be quieter in a lot of places. i think the fact that it's obviously programmed takes a bit out, in terms of velocity, when it repeats with exactly the same volume each time, it sucks a bit of the life out of it. I have a cheat code, normally i play with electronic drums via MIDI and quantize the shit out of it, if you don't mind tons of editing maybe invest in a $400 midi drumset; alternatively, try using humanization in your DAW, Studio One has a MIDI humanizer that can slightly vary the velocity and timing of MIDI events to sound more human and it's great applied in small doses. you can also try sending your drum bus to a saturation plugin or distortion and mix in just a smidge of that to make it sound dirtier and realer. the arrangement is really cool. i haven't played the game in a while but i assume the song is from the end part where my favorite character feckin dies because i suck at FPS the guitar tone is amazing and the mixing is very clear and everything sounds good, so good for you there! i would say this is a real band if i didn't know otherwise i think the problem with the piano is perhaps it's too dry, it sounds fine tone wise but it does sound a bit dry to me especially with such a sustain-filled song. i had to listen closely to hear it though based on the other guy's post, since it's a very quiet part of the arrangement it by no means ruins it. that's more of a tweak than a problem. I subbed ya to support ya

Hi peeps This is a completed arrangement of 3 songs from Lufia and the Fortress of Doom, completely reharmonized and partwritten by hand over 6-7 months, to fit the theme of "Deliverance" from pain. Also a nod to the fact that these are "Door of Journey", "Departures" and,"To A New World". It is a sad but also hopeful tune. Yes, life is tough, but it can get better, and we can find small victories in the immense shadows. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rGUb_K-Uac4&feature=youtu.be If you like please subscribe to my youtube channel as I'll be posting more remixes, music theory analysis, maybe some break downs of video game songs theory wise, maybe some game reviews and such, and some original music. I am going to be submitting this to OCRemix later as I'm quite proud of the COMPOSITION. however, I'm not going to submit this version because I want to practice guitar and bass more and re record next year so I get a professional sound. I did my best, but I just want this to be jaw droppingly good with the playing. At that point I will also be re-engineering it too, but I think the mix is pretty decent, for me at least XD. The different changes in dynamics between instruments and parts forced me to learn automation, so that was good lol

This here's an arrangement of, I think, "Four Mad Gods" from Lufia. Did it a couple years ago and remixed it this week.

thanks for sharing. the parts need more velocity variation, especially the guitar part that sticks out at the beginning. it doesn't sound real without that. the cymbals i feel are a little too loud. i like the flute part/sample.

Thanks for listening guys!

lol, Mitsuda would approve. as you may know, he's such a fan of sleigh bells that his personal label is named that. i also approve, because this song kicks ass. i hope you have heard the Myth version of this song that he made with the orchestra. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E_uF_1MAJaY again, the production is very clear. the mixing is fantastic, everything is at the right level and sounds good. i am a fan of the samples used here. the thing i've found is...when you're taking the original and trying to change it up, it's a little...hard to do that. at that point, any deviation from the original sounds like you are doing something wrong. it may be easier to become very familiar with all the parts of the song, then start from scratch and throw parts in as if writing a completely new song. as a cover though, it's fantastic.

Thanks for listening, and for the feedback!

probably my favorite VGMix I've done. Did it 3 years ago or so, remixed it this week https://soundcloud.com/christophercollins-3/kill-cloud-strife-2015

https://soundcloud.com/christophercollins-3/final-fantasy-mystic-quest-forest-shrine-remix-2015 been re-mixing some of my old remixes for mixing practice. "I remixed a remix. It went back to normal." -Mitch Hedberg

why is it so moving? because it's the idea that moves us, not its complexity. in fact, the more simple the idea, the easier it is for the average guy to make it really good. the more notes you write, the greater chance the note will be bad or "average" the production sounds pretty good. everything is balanced and sounds pretty good. It feels a little bit dry to me, like perhaps a little extra reverb would have made it sound more realistic. It also sounds clear, though, which I like. As usual, the orchestra samples don't sound convincingly realistic, but they do sound GOOD, so you have that going for you. i wonder if there is a way for you to add more sample changes, phrasing type stuff to it. Samples are difficult. I would like the second part of the arrangement to be more dramatic. I would love some big bass drums and cymbal/timpani buildups. The second part sounds too much like the first to me. Especially if you are trying to get it on OC Remix--you'll have to be more unique and less cover-ey with the arrangement. i wonder if the harp needs to be so in your face. especially with it being so plucky. and probably the least effective of your samples. i would turn it down a db or two maybe. at least in the solo parts it seems too loud. Also I wonder if there is more you can do with velocity changes to make it sound more realistic. i hear ACCENTS, but i don't hear human-sounding performance with getting quieter and louder. Especially in the harp part, which sticks out, it feels too MIDI. Try not to copy-paste your performance for that, and vary the midi up. Most sequencers have a Humanizer if you don't feel like spending too much time on it. consider dropping some money on East West symphonic orchestra. it was like, what 400 bucks or something and I've been pretty happy with it, timbre-wise, although still not skilled enough at it to get something really realistic. Here's an example of one of my songs that used it...for the symphonic elements https://soundcloud.com/christophercollins-3/premonitions Cool track and nice taste in song. you got a follow out of me for it

i was happy with interstellar because it had a huge organ, i identified with the movie in that regard. i agree interstellar was a bit forced on the emotions but it still got to me. gravity was totally amazing. blood pressure went up by 10,000 points watching it the martian was great but got a little boring towards the end i thought going back and forth, when you know by then he's going to be saved, it's not like they can have him die at any point. to me it was more interesting seeing him survive than seeing the NASA people...although I liked that section too. sci fi needs to be more about the people than the spaceships, i'm in a sci fi writers group and almost all of it is tropes for the sake of tropes without saying anything real about human experience, which is why so many people look down on sci fi

Listen to it and buy it. It's freaking stellar. Covering all the "HITS" with great instrumentation, singing, arrangement, and mixing. Sorry if posting this breaks any rules. I don't come here a lot. http://vgmdb.net/album/54006

Yo Pros very cool choice of song good guitar playing Cons The drums sound very fake to me, both the samples and the performance. -Find some different samples. I use and love the Steven Slate Drums. -Alternatively, study drum mixing, you may be able to make them sound better with a little better production. -For example, your hats and cymbals are a bit too loud, I think. Definitely too bright and nasty on the high end. -It's obviously MIDI programming, there is no difference between the hits. You can really tell in the part where the snare plays by itself. "Humanize" it or go in and manually edit the velocities. That's a chore honestly, which is why it's easier to play it on keyboard or e drums and quantize it. Overall mix is distorting the whole time, sounds like. It may be too loud overall so it's clipping, or one of the instruments may be clipping or too distorted. Mix is also too bright. Sounds like there is too much 1K-5K in there on the whole thing, so it's tiring on the ears. -Compare to a pro song that sounds good often when mixing, this is essential if you are new to mixing. Nice try with the changed repeat, however, it felt a little boring to me...needs more variation, besides a key change and some strings. A lot of guitar noise in there, which sounds like it was left on purpose. It doesn't work for me, it sounds like you messed up. Ex:amples, 0:39, 3:50 -Use your software to take those parts out, I usually just go through and shorten the ends of the audio clips. I agree that I hate to change the original song too much, however, I found it can be kind of fun too. You don't have to write new stuff all the time...just find new ways to put the pieces of the original song together.

another thing you can do is use a clipper. T-Racks Clipper is good or you can look for a free one on google. Software clipper VST The clipper "clips" transients, rather than compressing the whole signal, so it can help you turn your mix up without affecting the sound too much. here's what i do normally..now this is for rock stuff, not classical... on the Master bus, in order from start to finish -EQ rolling off below 30hz and above 20khz with lo pass and hi pass -bus compressor with 4:1 compression, just barely compressing (like less than 1 db). this just handles the peaks a bit -bus compressor with 4:1 compression, compressing about 2db (this compresses the whole track at its highest moments and "glues" the mixing together) -clipper that barely clips, about 1db or less. -limiter that limits 0-2 dbs i'm no expert but that will get you up to the point where the meters start telling you you're in the danger zone for loudness, without hearing audible distortion or compressing (audible to n00b me anyway) that will just increase your track's overall volume though, if an individual section is too quiet alter your MIDI dynamics or automate the master bus fader. I like your arrangement btw. cool

how are you playing drums and piano at the same time are there two of you and you are twins but one is a piano player and one is a drum player omg that is so cool!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! seriously though pretty cool. it could use a bit of mixing, the drums sound like they are underwater, particularly the snare. like i would throw a +3dbs of hi shelf at like 4000 or something on the whole drum bus. (the hi hats sound pretty good at the end although still a tiny bit dull) i also don't hear a lot of bass either in your kick drum or, any bass instruments/synths. so it sounds a little weak there. performance, and arrangement wise, knock it out of the park. pick up a mixing book or two, or watch some mixing videos, as that's your point to improve right now. pretty bomb shit brother.