BKM

Thanks for having me once more! It's an honor!

Ah too bad! Maybe you can EQ the leads and the cymbals around each other a bit, by low-passing the leads more aggressively and cutting some high mids in the overheads? Just throwing out ideas.

Not gonna lie, your "junk kit" actually sounds pretty tight. I'm not a gearhead (I noticed that the more options I have, the less music I get done), and examples like this just confirm my opinion that gear is indeed secondary when you're a good musician. Glad that my comments were helpful to you and didn't just come off as nitpicky. Smart decision to record XY to open up different options! We've just started recording drums for a band project I'm involved in as a bassist, and we went for a spread out pair of Rhodes fairly close to the cymbals and an XY pair of Behringers above the drummer's head. Turns out, this gives two very distinct but complementary views of the kit and we liked the result a lot, especially when blended. If you're serious about collaborating, hit me up at bjoernkmusic(at)gmail.com. I can send you the drum stem for inspiration, and I can convert the drum MIDI into a guitar pro file (if you use that software) as a jumping-off point. I didn't submit this remix back in 2015 - I think there would be a good chance to get it onto OCR this time around.

This is lovely! Really digging the minimalistic and cheerful vibe here. The ending is the best thing, where it almost turns sour / creepy all of a sudden. Very captivating listen, beginning to end. I agree with Garrett, I don't think this needs much. If I had to be nit picky, I'd say that the fast tremolo parts in the synth during the first minute sound a bit artificial. Maybe you could play around with the velocities there to make it a bit more organic sounding? Mixing wise, the only comment I have is that the top end feels a bit closed, I'm missing some air in the overall soundscape (if that term makes any sense whatsoever lol). I'm hesitant to say this though because I don't have a good suggestion how to fix this (aside from boosting highs into everything, which might turn things harsh real quick). Maybe one super esoteric idea: adding a room tone track could add some dimension and just enough high frequency noise to make it feel a bit more lively and less sterile. This might be complete bull**** though, I don't know. Just food for thought. Anyways, this is super cool! Excited to hear the final version.

Really enjoyed your composition! Super interesting harmonic work on the lead guitars in particular. And it's really, REALLY cool to hear an actual drum kit instead of MIDI. I do however see some room for improvement in the mixing. The low end is a bit overpowering and soupy, separation between kick, bass, and guitar low end could be better. Also, did you record the overheads mono or was it a mixing decision to have them dead center? By having them center, I feel they're fighting the bright lead guitars a lot - I think you could have achieved a much wider and more open and less dark sounding mix by having them as a stereo pair. You know, I read your signature, and I would be super interested in collaborating. Your drumming, even though it is a bit buried in the mix (which is a shame ) seems to be pretty tight. I'm in the process of re-doing a Half-Life 2 remix I made back in 2015. It got good numbers and people seem to like it, but let's face it - the entire production and mixing is pretty abysmal. I've already re-recorded the bass and will do guitars as soon as I have cured my tennis elbow, which has been haunting me for weeks on end at this point. Would you be interested in getting in on that? The original remix could serve as a guideline for the drums, but you'd of course be free (and encouraged) to put your own spin on it.

A while ago, I self-published my debut album, ORACLE. I don't think I ever shared it on here, so here's a link to one of the tracks, 'Exordium': https://bjoernkmusic.bandcamp.com/track/exordium-2 Genre-wise, this is a modern, guitar-centric metal album, with particular focus on riffs and atmosphere rather than wild leads and crazy technique. Think of Metallica's instrumental songs but with a djent-y soundscape and a pinch of prog. I'm also heavily (ha! pun!) influenced by other metal musicians from the YouTube space, such as Keith Merrow (Merrow, Conquering Dystopia, Alluvial) or Ola Englund (Feared, The Haunted). 'Exordium' is the single of the album, and I think it's a good way to start into it. It's fairly straight forward, in-you-face metal. The album gets a bit more progressive than that on tracks like Of Guilt and Catharsis. If you feel drawn to acts like Meshuggah or Periphery / Haunted Shores, you might want to give these a go as well. This whole project was a one-nerd-effort, from conception to final mixdown. Except for mastering, for which I was lucky enough to get Ermin Hamidovic from Systematic Productions (Architects, Periphery, Devin Townsend) on board. Conceptually, the album tackles themes of insecurity and depression, but also of struggle and overcoming. The album as a whole looks at the process of working through a life-altering event, with all its ups and downs. The individual tracks dig into the different stages of this process, as well as the emotions attached to that. To give you an idea, 'Premonitions' is informed by the looming feeling of something not being right that you sometimes get way before you consciously notice any actual problems / changes, while 'Exordium' tries to capture the almost manic determination that sometimes grabs a hold of ya when you realize the inevitability of a big event that is heading your way. But enough rambling, at the end of the day, I'd be much more interested to hear what YOU hear in the album. Of course, any and all feedback regarding songwriting, mixing etc. would be much appreciated - while this is my first foray into the scene, I'm not planning to leave it at that and there's so much to do and to improve I hope you give Exordium---and maybe even the entire album---a spin. The link above leads to Bandcamp, but it's up on all major streaming platforms (Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube) as well. Cheers!

Hey Seth, thanks! Yeah, I'm not good at writing lead lines and solos, that's why I got one of my bandmates to contribute that ending solo. Maybe something I oughta work on in the future. Shameless plug: if you're interested in hearing music that I'm involved in that also features vocals, check out Remember Your Scars on Spotify, which is a Nu-Metal / Metalcore band I play bass with

Thanks! Glad you enjoyed it.

Sharing my latest metal remix of a track called "We've Got Hostiles" (link) from the original 2012 Black Mesa soundtrack. After the Black Mesa devs recently announced that the Xen Beta would go live soon (which it did a couple of days ago) I was super exited and wanted to celebrate this with a remix. When I planned it out, I unfortunately was not aware that the release of the dedicated (and absolutely gorgeous) soundtrack for Xen by Joel Nielsen was also immenent. Therefore, I picked a song from the original 2012 soundtrack. Wanted to share this here because I appreciate the OCR community a lot. Had some good discussions and feedback here in my early remixing days (aka. a couple of years back). But, to be honest with you, I'm not planning on submitting this one. Two reasons for this: Firstly, the remix contains a couple of voice lines from Half-Life 2, and this kind of stuff is always an issue from a copyright standpoint. Secondly, the last couple of remixes I submitted seem to have vanished into the nether, without any feedback / judge decision whatsoever. Totally understandable, from the "active judges" thread it is obvious that you are understaffed at the moment and while probably being flooded with submission more than ever. Anyways, enough rambling. Hope some of you stumble upon this thread and give this remix a listen. If you do, definitely let me know what you think! Imma go back to pondering if making a remix of "Shadows of Death" from the Xen soundtrack might be low-hanging fruit or not at this point.

Thanks for the kind words Yosh! Metallica were my biggest musical influence during my teen years, so you're absolutely on point there! Also thanks to the judges for the encouragement and for accepting the remix right away - I was almost sure I'd be rejected for being too conservative! Really happy that I was able to contribute to this amazing site

Gosh, that's one heck of a setup APZX!!!

Hi everyone, I just noticed that my metal remix of Pendulum's Blood Sugar received a copyright claim, presumably from their label (0:46 - 2:17 min, 5 different claimants, only one I was able to identify as some copyright management company from Berlin). No message from YT about this (meh!) - I noticed it by chance yesterday when I uploaded a new song. I'm quite aware that my "remix" is more like a cover version for 50% of the playtime, so it didn't surprise me too much that this happened. Maybe it has something to do with them announcing their reunion last December. I find it rather needy to claim a cover / remix with barely 150 views, but I guess that's how Youtubes automatic algorithms work and at the end of the day, it is technically illegal to publish a cover without paying royalties. So far, I just naively asssumed that no one cares as long as you don't monetize it. While this in particular doesn't bother me too much, it made me curious if some of you had similar experiences. Do actual, completely altered remixes get claimed as well? Apart from this, my other remixes never had issues. I hear Nintendo are super harsh when it comes to their stuff (at least in terms of video content). Would love to hear some stories.

Metal remix of CP Violation from the Half-Life 2 OST (source), originally composed by Kelly Bailey. I'm confident that production wise, it's a step forward for me - very slowly getting to where I want to be. Drums turned out pretty great this time I think. "Polizeitgeist" is something that Eric "NeinQuarterly" Jarosinski mentioned a couple of times on Twitter, usually in the context of police violence, so I deemed it a quite fitting title for this remix. It's a neologism of the two German words Polizei (police) and Zeitgeist. Musically, this remix is heavily inspired by Meshuggah's Koloss record, which, as it happens, deals with socio-political issues like the aforementioned as well. Have a listen to The Hurt That Finds You First - the ambient guitar towards the end of the track reminded me a lot of the melody in the beginning of CP Violation, so I made an effort to merge these two musical worlds. Who knows, maybe Fredrik Thordendal found some inspiration in the HL2 OST, which actually wouldn't be that surprising, considering his relatively recent musical contributions to Wolfenstein: The New Order's OST (Herr Faust). In particular, I took CP Violation's main riff, downtuned it and transformed it throughout the remix, even to the point of giving it a syncopated 7/8 vibe. I also inserted my own riffs to develop this short entry to HL2's OST into a full-length song and I expanded the background melody to the point where it shifts and evolves throughout the whole song in a hopefully entertaining fashion. Also had a lot of fun experimenting with ambient SFX stuff on this one. Hope some of you might like it. As always, all criticism is very much appreciated!

Interesting. EZDrummer and the various Cubase VST instruments I'm using don't seem to have issues in that regard but I'll keep that in mind if I ever use more complex libraries. When A/B'ing an offline vs. real time export I had the feeling that the real time printed mix felt a bit punchier. But that could just be my brain tricking me.

I never used the "real time export" option that Cubase offers, because I thought that the only reason why you would want to use that is external gear - which I do not own. Turns out, there is a discussion online on whether real time printing can affect the quality of a purely ITB print, especially when you have complex time effects and lots of automation. I was never even aware that this might make a difference. I A/B'ed a mix this afternoon and formed an opinion, but I'd be interested to hear what you have to say before I'll throw it out there.