Eidenlux

I apologize for the necrobump, but I've noticed there are a couple useful tips which hasn't been mentioned, yet. I'm gonna give my two cents, from the sound design department, but oriented to conventional music writing, both as to make available these tips for a broader public and as to not skew the thread off (plus I could be talking about dark ambient for hours ). First, it is imperative to know which kind of evil you want to portray. What makes whoever (or whatever) you wanna portray evil in the first place? It's their nature? It's their intentions? It's clear and outright malicious? Or it's perhaps mysterious and machiavellian? What methods does them employ for their schemes? I know, all this sounds a little far-fetched. But the better you define your ideas, the better you can exploit them and craft them accordingly. For mysterious characters, a primal and useful resource to accompany your preferred mode and/or chords is Vibrato. Examples in videogames are plenty, a pair of them are Scrap Brain Zone from the original Sonic, Inside the Caverns from Tiny Toon's adventures. Outside videogames, John Carpenter's music features vibrato in a way or another for many of his villains and/or "evil" situations. If you want to incite anxiety, you could try using a fast paced stutter (or beats, if production is not your thing). It's good to mix it with contrasted slow paced chords or deep ambience. I don't remember good examples in videogame's soundtrack right now, but this piece should describe exactly what I mean (it starts at 0:15). It's not that broadly used for these purposes, but it's still effective. Perhaps Gill's theme from SFIII could be a good demonstration for the effect of a fast-paced instrument on top of a careful use of chords. Silence is always a good resource to induce discomfort. Hellnight soundtrack relies heavily on silence between short patterns of music for their ambience (see this and this). I know those are too basic and minor tips, but I believe sometimes that small info can make a difference - specially in a beginner.

This is a great way to start experimenting with stereo guitars. Alternatively, you could use a single synth, link it to two different channels, add a very subtle chorus (preferably before the distortion and/or amp), and tune slightly different their values (gain/tone/drive). That way you'll broaden the variables, thus reducing the chance of stereo nulling. I don't know which DAW do you use, Seth, but you could try the free Boss SD-1 and JCM9000 sims from SimulAnalog. I use them just after a generic DAW chorus, with the exact same instrument I/O (linked to two different mixer channels), and I get great results - special for fast and/or very technical riffs.

Hello everyone! I'm Eidenlux, and this is my first post - so I deeply apologize for any mistake I could incur into. I'm gonna share with you a tune I've submitted yesterday. Being my first submission to the OCRemix community, I just realized it could've been a better idea to post it here first, so I could have some outside feedback before bring it directly to the jury. I'm not sure whenever this style is widespread, hence the question mark in the title. Basically, it's a blend of Symphonic metal, Cyber metal and Synthwave - Replacing the vocals with lead, "retro"-style synths. So, for that manner, I'm gonna give some background info about this track. I apologize if it's too long, that's why I'm gonna post the story part in spoilers, so you can skip it if you're not interested in the details (although they could be useful to understand the context of the production and arrangements): So, after many years, I thought: "I love this track. I have now mastered the production style I want. Now it's the time to make my own version". For that manner, I tried to leave some reminiscences of the original CPS instruments, like that synth used in the middle part of the original track, using my own synthesis (ironically based on those classic sounds). I would love to read any kind of opinion on any aspect of the tune, both musical and/or production-wise. As for my part, I'm comfortable with the overall production, which is basically what I had in mind. I didn't deviate too much from the original source track, except for a few details, new instruments like distorted guitars, stronger drum presence and the addition of my personal middle part in the second round of the track. Perhaps I like this tune too much to change it to the extreme hahaha But I'm quite satisfied with the final results; otherwise, I don't think I would have had the guts to submit it in the first place Anyway, here I'll leave the link on Bandcamp, it should have an acceptable, good streaming quality: https://eidenlux.bandcamp.com/track/royal-flush-bgp-groove Thank you a lot for this space and your time. We'll be reading each other