Brandon Strader

i'll take it lol

The results are coming out today after the main concerts! Don't be discouraged by your placement.. that's the main piece of advice I can give anyone. Because for one thing most of my entries end up becoming DPs on OCR, or at least they pass. Not a gloat. I'm just telling YOU as an artist, not to put that much value into your numerical placement. The DoD crowd wants a specific type of straightforward metal, and the in-person votes during MAG are worth more than online votes, and most of the people are drunk and being goofy instead of taking it seriously. The in-person votes are worth more because (1) there's more of them usually, and (2) they're much more unfairly cast. Many 0s, many max scores. It's like Amazon reviews. It's not valuable to you as an artist. Not even scratching the surface of debate on production or arrangement quality, it's less important on DoD than it is at OCR. That's just a fact, and you will see examples of that when the results come out. No disrespect, I mean it has caused me to not enter DoD quite so often, because the feedback isn't quite as valuable as it should be. But you can still use feedback you get from there if it seems reasonable. But the fact that you have to question whether it is reasonable makes it less valuable. On OCR you will get valuable feedback. Sorry if I offended anyone.

The only way to save Street Fighter is with Street Fighter 6, and they will do that by hiring OCR to do the music again, and actually making all of the modes people expect, making online functional, and basically not trying to wring you out for money like a wet rag

but djp would do it Did you even send in the music yet? I'd say focus on the information, artist notes, director notes, websites for each artist.. send that to djp and hopefully the music has already been evaluated.. might be the difference between this coming out in 2016 instead of 2017 if you do this and stop stalling. Sorry for being upset with you but damn.

People say they forgive, but they never forget I'd like to add that as #11 to the above list

Did you want DJP to come to your house and be like "OH PLEASE LET ME DO IT" Besides that I'm pretty damn sure I've told you months and months ago how cool djp was/is about making the website for the FF projects. I'm pretty DANG sure I recommended to you that you just let him do it. I'm pretty GOSH DARN FLIPPIN' sure that I want djp to hostile-takeover the website right now

Damn it Meteo nobody gives a damn about how fancy the website is. It'll look better and be more functional if DJP does it. And I'd really prefer my music not sit for 10 years, over 5 years is already more than enough. Out of respect for the music and the artists, just let djp handle the site, which generally speaking he said he can do. Do you realize what you're even suggesting with this Wordpress template stuff? What you're asking is for OCR to set up the configs, create a SQL database and install all that shit just for ONE album. The site doesn't need perpetual updates. They don't need to publish A BLOG for this album's website. AND YOU DON'T EVEN HAVE THE CONTENT DONE YET FOR THE SITE. THE ONLY THING YOU NEEDED TO DO. I'm leaving before I get mad

You're more than welcome at the Anti-MAGfest. It's going really great. I'm actually making a short list of themes and events present at the show: Personal couch, personal recliner, etc (varies by person) Easy-access beverages, water cooler (again varies by person) Special musical guest my cat No crippling anxiety No armpit stench for 3 damn days from people who don't know how to bathe Quality time with the person you look up to (yourself) The only drama is that which is on our over-sized TVs, which we also get to ourselves Easily drive out to get party food or drink, gas is $1.63 a gallon, lowest it's ever been here All the phonies, sycophants, and assholes are not allowed at your party, unless you are that People don't judge you when you want to get away from their noisy ass, because nobody's there All in all it's pretty ok Oh yeah, I forgot to add, saving roughly $1,000. That's good stuff.

Hopefully I can answer with everyone being at MAG, they can correct me if they need to when they get back. It wouldn't infringe on your "copyrights" but would infringe on the publisher of the original composition, so for everything to be above-board you would need to license the composition from the original publisher. OCR releases the remixes for free in a non-exclusive way, for use in media that is not monetized. To monetize a remix as part of a product (either by OCR or by another entity) without appropriately licensing the material, would infringe on the publisher's rights and they would be entitled to take action against the product. So in short OCR doesn't do it, and you probably shouldn't either, without licensing. Ask that dev if they'll cover the licensing fee in addition to giving you your payment (not take it from your cut). But if they're trying to get remixes of existing music over twitter that they can just use in their game, they're probably not being too ethical about it. Tho it's not for me to judge.

Site-wide mutiny, take-over.. let's do it, though I am American, so I hope that doesn't mean you're excluding me from the fun. We should schedule the Anti-MAG party each year for those of us who can't go or don't go anymore. In fact we should have our own thread. Only problem is I'm almost 100% sure the negative nellies would have it closed and deleted, despite not even supposed-to-being-here while they're at MAG.

What's really interesting is that the idea to master the whole album was shot down by G-Mixer because he didn't want anyone messing with his limiter It's a great album anyway.

Hey! The sample quality leaves a bit to be desired. The intro section doesn't work too well with the changed lead writing, no bass accompaniment.. The samples are dry which really accentuates that quiet part at 0:42 -- No atmosphere. The drums sound cool, but the reverb should be on everything but the kick. This is backwards. You have a reverb kick and the other pieces are dry. The overall mixture of sounds gets better at 1:32 -- although there's a really weird drumfill at this point. The amount of instrumental accompaniment here is the best in the whole WIP. The drum writing is absolutely ridiculous. At 2:21 are you trying to write Fragments of Memories, or "Decimated Fragments of a Satanic Winter Moon"? Did you accidentally trip over the death metal switch on the drum machine? There's some cool ideas in here,but in general the writing needs to be made more enjoyable and accessible, and most importantly, consistent. Changing up the lead melody isn't even all that necessary if you do a good enough job of expanding the supporting instrumentation. The intro goes on for too long with sparse writing, the drums are produced oddly, and the structure needs a lot of work. There's no additional original structure writing to go along with the original source, so it's like a cover with crazy drums and some weird notes in the lead right now.

I comment on a mix, I don't remember when, either yesterday or the day before... but I can't even find the thread now.. Which I guess is a good thing, it's so active here.. but Dang, I can't find anything.

I still remember the time I opened a Dimmu Borgir song in Adobe Audition and looked at the waveform... there was a part with just the guitar by itself and it filled up the entire audio spectrum, like it had been limited and was at max volume.. despite ONLY being heavy guitar by itself. Crazy stuff, to this date I've never done that with a rhythm guitar. Pretty excessive. I'd be interested in hearing, however, from people who have done that kind of thing, and what the experience was like (limiting heavy guitars for max volume)

Wow... really what a surprise.. 23 entries. Isn't it usually closer to 50? I guess since people had to collab, half of them became collab partners, haha.. That's pretty funny. But cool at the same time.

Wow pretty cool, how does 20k sound for 90 minute film?

That's pretty awesome. Are you guys available for any other work? You seem very productive. I've got a secret thing going on if you guys are up to it

I can agree about checking the RMS numbers. I try to hit -10 or so myself (I don't pee myself if it dips into -9 or -8 a bit) usually say a beginner can generally avoid RMS issue if they do not push their mix quite up to professional loudness. With practice though, go for it, but keep that meter on. though a a master I just did hit -6 but it's really transparent. It's too loud, obviously, but doesn't pump or clip so I didn't realize it was too loud. I had a meter on but I was on a deadline and couldn't figure out how to lower the RMS quickly. For my specific chain I figure it will require extensive updates to the multiband compressor i do target around -6 RMS for electronic music though. Personal taste. But not acoustic/metal

Yeaah I mean I admitted in the original post there was stuff I didn't know and was experimenting with, but I was specifically trying to talk about it in layman's terms so your average beginner or basically anyone could get something out of it. All the arguing about CALM dbSTD and dbTRS and DB-LGBTQ isn't really helping anyone here with the basics of using limiters. I didn't tag this as a tutorial and input is encouraged especially to correct me cause I was wrong. I'm just not too satisfied with how that went down. And i apologize for saying the song got louder from limiting the way I put it, I was limiting as part of a chain, so I did have auto gain going.

Guys? Please remember the intent of the thread is to help people figure out how to use a limiter, not to correct each other on semantics

Don't sidechain the drums, just fix the mix Raise the drum levels, and lower the strings a little bit. And like NPC said, rolling off the highs on some of those strings would be a good idea, though it might just be a volume issue more than anything. The bass is very low as well -- more focus on the bass and drums would be ideal. The vocal could come up slightly, but when you make the appropriate mixing tweaks, you may not need to adjust them at all. I'd focus on leveling the strings / drum/bass to get things to a more appropriate level first. The woodwinds, brass, and strings all sound pretty cool. Yes, the master is a little quiet, but address those leveling issues before boosting it back up. If you limit your master, make sure you don't go too far and cause pumping or clipping. Adjust the limiter after you fix the mixing. If you're worried about volume, try comparing it to a song of a similar style / genre and match its volume or at least come close to doing so. It doesn't have to be as loud as a professional piece, but if you can manage to do so cleanly, it'd be a good thing.

That's pretty cool! The definition of remix is a bit lost on this one concerning OCR (though I'm not implying your intent was to submit it to OCR). As a stand alone cover of the theme with some new drums, it's pretty cool.

I am kinda bothered that the labeling system is gone... There used to be a labeling system where you knew what was a WIP, what was awaiting moderation, what was finished etc. This made it really easy to know which songs needed some feedback and which didn't. That kind of system would be great to have back in the workshop. I'm trying not to sound incredibly lazy, but I want to be as helpful as possible when I come here, so I'd like to really tackle the WIPs that need it and not so much the ones that are finished or already mod-approved. Though really I guess this is a criticism that can't be addressed by the mod team. So I don't know what the heck could be done apart from people adding (WIP) or whatnot to their thread titles.

There's a lot of people who don't know how to use a limiter. It's a tricky thing, even for people who are pretty familiar with mastering... so I thought I'd share a couple thoughts here. What a limiter does is basically cuts off the peaks of the song -- the lower you set the threshold, the lower into your song's peaks the limiter will cut. Meanwhile, there's also usually a ceiling that you can set as well. This ceiling sets the maximum output level for your song. Basically, you think they do the same thing, right? Well, sort of. What this basically allows you to do is set the limiting on your song with the threshold (the level at which your peaks will be cut) while the ceiling sets the max output level for your song. So for example, this guy in this picture set his ceiling at -0.8db which means the volume of his song will never go above -0.8db That's a bit silly, I've always set my output to -0.1db just to prevent clipping from the audio level going above 0db. See, even I'm not completely sure why you would want it as low as -0.8db I ran into a fiasco yesterday while working on a song because I had set the ceiling to something like -4db to compensate for a loud mix, but what that did was set the volume of the WAV I exported to -4db -- it made the mix too quiet, which is a bad thing. So yeah, even I wasn't sure how it worked, I hadn't really used a limiter that had a ceiling option before. As you turn the threshold lower and lower, you'll hear the song get louder and start clipping and pumping dramatically. The end goal is to hit a level of volume that doesn't clip or pump (or does so in the most transparent way that people don't notice it) while not being too loud. There's not an easy answer of what your threshold should be in a limiter. You've got to use your ears and choose what is best for your mix. You can also look at the red bar to see how much limiting is being done on your sound. That's a good indicator of how much limiting is going on, too. Not sure if any of this information is helpful, but hopefully there's a beginner out there who gets a tiny bit of understanding about limiters from this.

So you're getting the street fighter experience everyone expected.. I don't get why people are complaining. One of my friends on facebook was like "Did you hear about Street fighter!? Missing modes!! All it has is online!" and I'm like... surely it has couch play too. And he's like "Well yeah, online and couch play, but--!" And I am all like it's street fighter, that's fine, what do you expect? "B-but it... it..." No it's a fighting game, you bought exactly what is in the title, street fighter 5 QQ as a side note you can STILL get Fatal Fury on the Genesis, only fighting game that was ever worth its weight