Dextastic

Really cool! Definitely sounds like something out of F-Zero.

Just a couple comments on the drum sequencing. It's not bad but it falls into a few common pitfalls. -It has a lot of double bass that doesn't really fit. -You need to vary your hi hat velocities. A good rule of thumb is have higher velocities on the snare and bass hits and lower velocities between. If in doubt watch a couple videos to see how a real drummer would play simple patterns. -You need to vary your fills. When sections repeat don't just copy and paste the drum parts. A real drummer wouldn't play the exact same fills every time.

Fun* fact: The whole time I was working on mixing my submission I had a terrible head cold that clogged up my ears and made everything sound muffled. Listening to my submission again now, the mix sounds pretty bad I put a lot of work into my track, though, probably more than I have for any other track I've made so far, and I wonder if it might be up to OCR's standards. I cleaned up the mix and made a couple of minor tweaks to the song itself, and I'm looking for comments in the Post Your Remixes forum, if anyone is interested: Another fun fact: This is my first piece of work to contain homemade samples! *Not actually fun for me

This is a cleaned up version of a remix I made for PRC 352. I put a lot of work into this track, probably more than I've done for any other track I've made so far, and I am considering submitting it to OCR. The source is a relatively unknown Genesis game called Warsong. I'd never heard of the game or the piece before, but it was so fun and energetic I just had to remix it. Original piece: My remix: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0Bw_yjC8gJmW5Mjl4Tm5TNW0tVkU/view?usp=sharing

@Bundeslang Now that all the entries are up at thasauce I went ahead and submitted my vote there as well.

@Estrang your requested remixes are available! Nice to see some good representation on this one. Due to the late submissions I guess we vote by messaging Bundeslang.

My submission is in!

Oh my gosh, I forgot to vote! Sorry about that. I agree with the outcome though. I really liked GCJ's orchestral remix. I also liked HoboKa's creative take during the last 30 seconds or so of his submission. Finally, I loved sggod's rock idea (although I didn't like the voice samples at the beginning) and would have loved to see it fleshed out further.

Really cool source. I'll do my best to get something together for this.

I would hope at least all the competitors take the time to vote!

@HoboKa Not sure why you submitted yours as a bonus mix. Anyway it's nice to see some good representation this round. I wonder if anyone else is working on something for this?

Are you humanizing velocities, timings, etc by hand? Do you not have a humanize function available to you in your DAW?

SURE, the one round I choose to experiment, so does everyone else I really liked the range of compositions this round, and I am quite surprised I came out on top in the end. NinjaPenguinDan, I *did* humanize the piano! Oh well, I guess it wasn't enough, and listening to my track again I can hear some parts that feel a little too stiff. Argh. Oh well, it's all part of the learning process, isn't it? RonaldPoe, I agree with the others who say that you need to turn up the bass lines in your work. There's something interesting going on there but it's really hard to hear. Maybe it sounds good to you but it's not translating - in other words, maybe there's something wrong with your audio monitoring setup. Personal story along those lines: for the first few months I did remixes people would always comment about the lack of low end in my work even though it sounded fine on my end. I was mixing with headphones with a nice and flat low-end frequency response, so what could the problem be? It turns out the problem was that I was plugging them into my speaker's headphone jack instead of directly into my computer's headphone jack, and the speakers were applying a bass boost before passing the signal along! I thought it was just a pass-through connection but I was wrong. So now I just plug my headphones directly into my computer and things are...well, not ideal, but at least much better.

I have had 0 time to work on my bonus mix I'm liking what's been submitted so far though!

Got my entry in with 12 hours to spare!

Why not both? The Battletoads deadline is a week before this one

This is screaming out for a rock remix, but I'm going to try to step out of my comfort zone a bit and take in a totally different direction.

Wow, close competition this time! @Trism There was a tone change in my second section! All guitars and drums got a tone change, but maybe some of them were too subtle. @APZX Thanks! For the finale I assume you mean 1:57-2:21. I like the drum part I wrote there but I didn't like the way it ended up sounding with the built-in drum panning. I tried to take your comment last time about layering the parts to make the song more interesting to listen to to heart this time, so I did a lot with panning the guitars, organ, trumpets, and sax this time around.

I'm not a judge and have no idea how the judges think so take my comments with a grain of salt. First it would be helpful to have a link to the source material for comparison. I've played DX a few times but I'm not very familiar with the source track. Overall I enjoyed the piece and only have a couple of criticisms. The piano at 0:30 and at the end sounds a little artificial and could use some velocity variations to make those parts sound more expressive. Also your hi hats and some synths (like 1:20-1:27) and the cymbals (from 3:46-4:00) are too harsh. This is a pretty consistent problem throughout the song. Please EQ them to fix this.

Voted!

Voted!

I'm glad to see the extension, as this was a fun one and I'm excited to hear what others come up with.

I admit that I missed that the bass part was original. Sorry! As a drummer I would say your track was definitely the most interesting percussion-wise. However, the cowbell you're using doesn't sound very good (maybe try replacing it with some deep bongos or toms if other cowbell samples don't fit the cave mood) and is a little too low in the mix. The hi hats are WAY too low in the mix. I had to listen again with headphones and turn it way up to even realize they were there.

It's not just about bass drum hits. X's are hits on the bass or snare drums that must be there. At the x's you can choose whether to hit the bass, snare, hi-hat, or none of them. For instance, if you choose a X-xX-x pattern, a single bar of 6/8 (high bpm) might look like hi hat O--O--- bass drum O-O--- snare ---O-O (O=hit, -=rest) Now loop that, but occasionally drop the second O on the bass drum and/or snare.

Haha, great source choice! My composition is done but I need to work on the mix.