Dextastic

Voted! Thanks to the participants for their submissions.

Feel free to join us over in the competitions subforum as well. Covers are generally welcome there and there's not a lot of pressure (other than the deadlines), plus you get to see how others approach the same tracks you're working on.

I'm not familiar with the sources but that kicked ***. Great punk/pop song and great vocal performance.

Quick review. Shido - Starts out silly and fun, although the detuning somewhat overstays its welcome. Then you take it in this awesome new direction. However the detuning reappears along with some dissonant chords, IMO to the track's detriment. Silverpool - Appropriate track title I'm not familiar enough with the source to tell if you added anything bit it sounds alright. Would have liked to hear the lead synths sound a little deeper and more pleasing to the ear though. hoboka - Liked the parts you added. Would have liked a little more of that. The tempo shifts were a good idea too but I think you took them a little too far. Nevertheless this stands out to me as the best of the three tracks.

That midi file would have been a bear to work with. I took one look at it and said noooope. Gonna listen to the submissions now.

4 is my favorite. I played it as a kid and it completely blew me away at the time. It's probably partly my nostalgia talking but I still think it's great.

Because you won last time!

Nice amount of participation this time! Looking forward to listening.

Not me this time. Don't have time.

Cool arrangement. Drums sound too stiff and mechanical. The drum pattern in the first part of the song feels quite unnatural to me. Mix sounds a bit off to me. (I'm not a great mixer but I can tell when something's not right even though I might not be able to fix it or say exactly what it is.) It feels like the guitar parts don't sound crisp enough.

Speaking as a complete outsider (I have never submitted anything), that thread is the only window into the judging process and workflow that I'm aware of, and reading in that thread that one piece from 2015 and a number from 2016 haven't been evaluated yet is extremely disheartening when I think about considering a submission. I'm very happy to hear from Gario that that thread is not an accurate representation of the actual situation and that the backlog has and is being dealt with in a timely fashion.

Did anyone listen to it? Hah. I wouldn't mind some feedback. I know the first 12 seconds or so wasn't mixed too well, but other than that I'm not sure exactly what to focus on to improve.

Not currently. I'm a past sufferer, and hopefully never again. Thanks though

Sorry to hear that, man. Depression suuuuucks

Yeah, I think you're getting caught up too much in the midi that's already there. Next time try writing your remix note-by-note starting with an empty session, using the midi only as a reference in a separate window. That might help open up the possibilities for you.

I'm not going to be able to participate in this one. Spent all my time on PRC this time. Hah.

Oooh, I've got an idea for this. Gonna try to track it tomorrow to see if it works. Edit: Submitted! I mixed and mastered the thing in one day so maybe it could still use some work. I'll see if I have time to come back to it before the round closes.

Thanks for your helpful posts, APZX! I'm playing around with Molot now. I grew up playing in rock bands and listening to more traditional rock/metal music, and that's still what I enjoy most. While I'm working on developing the skills needed to incorporate other elements into my songs I'm still going to be focused on writing rock/traditional instrument type stuff. I think that Suuns song is terrible in every way, hah. I agree the bass on Lick the Rainbow is pretty sick. Thanks for the link to the KVR Synth Challenge. That looks really interesting.

Thanks! Uploaded my final (for realsies this time) mix.

New remaster, completed start to finish in 20 minutes. I'm liking the spectral balance on this one a lot better. The one I submitted to thasauce was too harsh for my ears. If we had a little extension I could replace my entry on thasauce with the mp3 for this one (I don't like soundcloud compression). Thanks for the comments, @APZX! In truth I did none of the drum processing, but I've been meaning to learn a bit about drum processing eventually. The drums in my track are just a preset on Superior Drummer 2 for the heavier middle part and MTPDK (free), completely unprocessed, for the beginning and ending. For this part here: "Another way is to use a compressor and just crack down on that transient quite a bit and not really use much makeup gain, then apply some EQ (typically 4-8KHz) to bring the transient back." - I'm guessing the compressor should be set with a very fast attack, like 2ms or less, to catch the transient correctly? I'm still working out how to use compression. I've been wondering about how to make my rhythm guitars heavier. I tried quad-tracking them but it doesn't work too well with just one guitar VST. Hah. I'll get some compression on the rhythm guitars next time around. And yes I'll continue to work on separating my parts . Every competition I enter I try to focus on getting better at something. This time it was learning my way around synths. I think that was pretty successful, at least?

Changed the EQ on my mix and uploaded the new version. If I had another twenty minutes I could probably make it better but this is gonna be it for now. Blah, I'm so bad at getting the spectral balance right. I really need more practice on that.

Alright, submitted!

Still mixing my bonus track. Thought I was done with it yesterday then listened to it again today and...yeah. Need to fix a few things.

Ok NOW I have my composition done. Hopefully I can get started on mixing it tomorrow.

It usually takes me a while to get things done so I like to start early. For this one I started the day before the thread opened, and this is probably the fastest I've done the composition stage. And honestly that stage probably isn't quite done, as I'll probably make a few more tweaks tomorrow. It's a lot easier to hear what's "off" in your arrangement if you let it sit for a day and let your ears rest a bit, ya know?