zircon

ARRANGEMENT / INTERPRETATION [x] Too conservative - sticks too close to the source PRODUCTION [x] Low-quality samples [x] Unrealistic sequencing [x] Drums have no energy STRUCTURE [x] Pace too plodding PERSONAL COMMENTS (positive feedback, specifics on checklist criticisms, any other thoughts) Your piano and drums are really mechanical, and the sample quality is not very good. Regardless of what sort of keyboard setup you have, you should be able to edit velocities and timing in a piano roll, but I think the real issue (with the piano anyway) is that the playing is simply choppy. I don't know why you would ever play a passage like that. Wouldn't an electric piano be a better choice, anyway? Seems like more of an R&B staple. There's also a distinct lack of any effects, such as reverb/delay, which would be very useful for making this sound less dry. The drums are fine in terms of their sequencing. The issue is that they simply sound bad. You want a thick, meaty, nearly-unrealistic "thump" kick or even a drum machine. The snare should be more like a rim shot plus a hand clap/snap if you're going for an R&B feel. Listen to some of Joshua Morse's remixes, particularly his recent "Hamadatan" to hear an example of some great R&B-style production. I think the lack of effects again is hurting this.. a bit of overdrive and compression could really help, plus some kind of light room reverb on the snare. In terms of the arrangement, aside from some simple flourishes and embellishments, there really isn't a lot of interpretation here, just a sort of layering of a couple different themes. I hope you expand this aspect more.

I liked the arrangement here - nice amount of variation, interpretation, and original material. I'll skip straight to production. I thought the string voicing at the beginning was a little awkward. Try to avoid playing chords in the lower registers and space out your notes more - it will make things sound cleaner, generally. I disagree that the guitar sound lacks any frequencies, but the lead could definitely be louder and punch through more. For some reason the entire mix was not normalized... there's 1.1db of headroom that wasn't even used. Always normalize at the end of your process or slap a limiter like George Yohng's W1 Limiter or TLS Maximizer to squeeze out that last bit of volume. The synth break at 2:02 sounded awkward to me with a sort of plain drum rhythm and meandering notes. Why does everything sound so compressed, yet the song seems actually quiet? The lead also takes up a lot of sonic space somehow. Cut some of the low end off that and maybe brighten it up a bit. The piano following that section is definitely too quiet, while the synth lead is then too loud and should come way down. The kick is too rumbly; I think it could be tightened up or replaced. With all those fast patterns it just adds a lot of mud. For your synth and guitar leads I felt like the sustained notes were too plain and could have used some kind of vibrato to spice them up - particularly the synths. Melodies in general seemed to be barely louder than harmonies, and in many cases the harmony was actually louder to begin with. I noticed this in a lot of your WIPs. In denser parts of your songs you tend to under-emphasize the melody. Take another look at the mixing and I think you'll be pleased if you revisit it. I'd like to YES this because the arrangement is creative, but there are too many production problems right now for me to comfortably pass it. An hour or two of tweaks should yield a great result. Keep at it man. NO, resub

A few months ago, a guy by the name of Rich Whitehouse emailed me saying he was working on an FF7 spinoff game in the style of Devil May Cry, starring Tifa. The game, which is made with custom technology, existing FF7 graphics, processed FF graphics, and entirely new assets, uses a number of songs from Voices of the Lifestream for its soundtrack. I saw some pictures and a video in the initial email and was impressed, but had forgotten about it until a few days ago, when it was officially released. The game is titled AVALANCHE; you can read more about it and download it for FREE here: http://www.telefragged.com/thefatal/ava/ Don't be fooled by the simple website and seemingly-primitive graphics (after all, they are primarily FF7-era.) This game is - *gasp* - FUN! I'm not too far yet, but it's not just a simple demo or prototype. It looks to be a fully featured game with lots of content. The gameplay is the high point, of course. You control Tifa, using either keyboard, keyboard/mouse, or Xbox 360 controller (preferred, according to the developer) and fight your way through all sorts of enemies. You start off with a healthy list of attacks you can do using the games easy controls - punch, kick, jump, and move. You can string together various combos and special techniques right off the bat, and the combat is hectic & enjoyable. As you kill stuff, you get a form of points which are spent at your home base area to either advance your stats, purchase items (and there are a LOT of items of all sorts) or learn new abilities. There are a host of abilities available even at the start of the game, and more are unlocked as you go along. Examples include a "Thrust" attack which is a simple punch + directional combo, a wall jump, and an air-to-ground stomping attack. It's a bit addicting to kill enemies and build up your money to advance your character. Check out some gameplay footage here: Given that this is all being done by one guy, essentially from scratch (as it's not a mod of any kind), it's got a few rough spots. The framerate is a little slow considering the lower resolution and poly count, the environments aren't exactly eye-candy if you're used to next-gen games, and from time to time you'll encounter little things that aren't *quite* right. But as fan games go, this is easily the most successful I have ever seen or played especially considering how ambitious it is. Even compared with cult indie hits, AVALANCHE is great. So check out the website, read the manual, download, and spread the word. THIS is the kind of fan-created game I always hoped OC ReMixes would end up in, and I'm proud to have been involved!

Synthogy "Ivory" is a piano library considered to be one of the best out there. It's hundreds of dollars, however. For a little less, there's TruePianos (www.truepianos.com) which takes up MUCH less space, and sounds very good. For free, you could look for the "Yamaha Clavinova" soundfont.

Katalin, welcome to the community. I'm sorry the responses here have been less than friendly. Feel free to introduce yourself in this thread too: http://www.ocremix.org/forums/showthread.php?t=10835

20, gets more use than any of my consoles, but then again I hardly ever have time to play games. I mostly play Super Mario Galaxy or Wii Play with Jill. We're really enjoying SMG and we've gotten a lot of laughs out of Wii Play for sure. I like the VC also; it's nice to have access to games like DKC2.

We recorded Sitar Nation in "Studio A" here at Drexel University. Gear used included a Neve console, API pres, a Pro Tools HD system and a number of nice mics (I think Neumann was one of the brands.) We had an engineer for the sessions, so we didn't do the actual recording ourselves, but we oversaw the process and did all the editing and programming afterwards. Joshua Morse is a prominent ReMixer (just had a mix posted) and web designer. He designed the new site.

Exactly Many Logic users don't have other samplers, so we figured it would make sense to create a version for them too. However, in the meantime, any sampler that can load Kontakt 1 or Kontakt 2 formats (including Kontakt 3, which you said you might be getting) can load the library. It's not a closed player like QLSO; you get a set of patches and a set of WAV files read by the patches.

Sup guys, with the help of Joshua Morse, I'm proud to announce that the new website of Impact Soundworks is up and running, with a revised ordering system (Share-It), testimonials, and information on some upcoming projects. Check it out here: http://www.impactsoundworks.com/ This company is a joint venture between myself and Wilbert Roget, II (aka bustatunez), designer of the popular Impact: Steel metallic percussion library. As we are both working composers who often use samples, we have often found ourselves disappointed with existing tools, or unable to find certain kinds of sounds at all. Our goal with Impact Soundworks is to provide ergonomic sound libraries of the highest quality, keeping the composer (or remixer!) in mind at each step in development. Besides our new website, here's some info on our upcoming ethnic sample library Sitar Nation. This Kontakt-format library contains the most detailed samples of the sitar, tampura, tabla, and baya ever recorded! We went to great lengths, hiring expert performers and capturing the nuances of each instrument. The result is a virtual instrument that can be used in complete isolation and sound highly realistic, OR sit comfortably in a mix, adding flavor. We'll announce full details, including pricing, when the library is actually released, but we can tell you now that Sitar Nation will be significantly more affordable than other ethnic collections. We'd also like to mention that we are planning to port Impact: Steel over to the EXS-24 platform. It is currently available as a $79 download (with a physical CD option) in Kontakt 1, Kontakt 2, Halion 3, and Gigastudio 3 formats. Feel free to leave any comments... we'll be posting more as new products come out. A hint to something that's in the pipeline: it involves Sixto.

I don't use sheet music for my remixes. Once in a great while I use a MIDI but generally I just do it by ear.

Greyhound stops at 11th Street, but it's very very easy to get to 30th street from there. Here's how you do it. You are deposited in Market East station or thereabouts, which is about 1 minute from a Market-Frankford subway line (it's in the same general complex, you would just look for the signs.) You take it West and hop off at 30th street. No transfers.

Just in case some of you missed it, this is a Dragonball movie, not DBZ as the thread title says. Goku is going to be younger, in other words - apparently in high school.

I ended up with this album on my playlist weeks ago, as I had a small part in it, and I gotta say everyone here is in for a treat. It bears repeating that the genres here are quite varied, and both Tweek and the guest artists did a great job of making each of the different tracks unique. At the same time, it all sounds very cohesive, rather than merely a medley of different songs. I'm happy to have been able to contribute to Alter Ego, even if it was only a little, and am quite excited for the actual release.

At first I had to double check that I read the remixer's information right... this is very similar to pot hocket's style and technique. If you haven't heard of him, check out his ReMixes. It's uncanny. Let me start off with production. The recording is pretty good, though on the dull side frequency-wise. I don't mind the bassiness since it's a solo instrument but I do think the high frequencies could come out more. Additionally, Fishy is right that the volume is a bit too quiet. It could be normalized by 3.2db without using any compression at all, so at the very least I think that should be done first. I'd like to get the WAV of this and master it a bit, if you don't mind. On the arrangement end, I think this is great. I listened to the remix first and was surprised that the source was a regal fanfare: I was expecting something like an inn theme! The level of interpretation is impressive, and though it's a solo instrumental performance, it never feels empty or uninteresting. In fact, I was a bit disappointed when it ended, just because I was enjoying it so much. The execution is really very good, with basically flawless and emotive playing. An easy pass for me, but I would like to get that WAV first just to tweak a bit before we post. YES

Drexel is in University City; from the dorms, it's a 10 min leisurely walk to the train station, 20 minute train ride to Ardmore, and 5-10 minute walk to our apartment. Center City is the area ~1 mile west of Drexel's campus. You can take the subway from there directly to 30th Street (which goes to Ardmore, as it's the train transport hub) easily.

Hey shawn, aren't you forgetting someone? This is a great arrangement by Darke, to be sure, but Sixto was the one playing guitar + bass, as well as soloing, and doing production

Yes, it's an issue with the Kontakt engine actually. I had the same problem with my fairly powerful dual core computer - but only on very large projects. Just remember to turn multithreading off during render, not before, since it's quite useful while you're NOT rendering!

I only mentioned this briefly in my announcement, so some of you may not have caught that Jill, Lee, and Jon have all stepped down from the Judges Panel over the last six months. We've just been waiting to add the new judges to say so officially. All three of them deserve a hearty "thank you" for the time they put into helping OCR run smoothly, and hastening the speed at which the good stuff goes from our inbox to your hard drive. I say this as a fellow staff member, a ReMixer, and a listener. It's always sad to see judges go (and of course getting to be a judge couple was fun!) but as always, we leave our door open in case any of them decide to return to duty. Anyone that ends up becoming a judge gets the same speech from djp; that it's a pretty thankless job and you end up making more enemies than friends. That's pretty true, overall, but let's make an exception here and show these guys (and gal) that we appreciate the hard work they put into the site and this community.

This is definitely way too quiet, even for an orchestral piece. Using a plugin like TLS Maximizer you should be able to get at least a few more decibels out of the overall volume while keeping the actually compression very transparent - in other words, you won't hear any artifacts or "pumping". If you don't want to do this, upload the WAV and I can take care of it for you. I can hear the Mahler and Debussy influences here, though it's not quite as tonally ambiguous as Debussy sounds like to me - of course that's hard to do, given that you have to keep at least somewhat connected with Uematsu's highly melodic and straightforward source. The arrangement is lovely overall, with some great writing and well thought-out orchestration in general. My main complaint is the execution of the samples. Even though you're using QLSO, a lot of the attacks and releases don't quite sound realistic - there's a lack of legato, and it sounds like you're using velocity switching rather than modwheel/CC11 crossfading most of the time. While velocities are useful for percussive sounds or short attacks, I think you should use modwheel/CC11 more, especially for anything like the cello at 1:40. I also thought the production was a little on the muddy side, but that may have been a result of the orchestration, which tended to be heavier in the lower range anyway. I would have liked to hear more mid to upper range instrumentation to balance all of the dense lower stuff, but that's not a big deal. Ultimately the execution problems aren't enough for me to NO this, but I think your mixes will benefit a lot if you invest some time into more controller automation and fine-tuning of the sample playback. Your arrangements deserve it! YES (conditional) (volume fix)

Nope soc, it isn't. About half of it consists of PARTS of their other libraries, and definitely not ALL their libraries (nowhere even close.) The rest is recorded new for Colossus. Also, it's not arranged into GM format except for a single menu at the bottom, and imo that's one of the least useful features, since there are no articulation choices etc. You normally browse it by going to the instrument group and then a subcategory, if any. So for example, "Guitars, "Basses", "Drums".. IMO, Colossus is nice, and a good starting-off point if you don't already have a lot of good samples. The ethnic stuff is the high point, and the drums and pianos are good as well, but a lot of the other stuff ranges in quality. Some of the patches just don't sound all that great. The guitars are not as good as dedicated guitar plugins, the synths are not as good as dedicated synth plugins, and so on and so forth. However, the level of quality is high overall so I think it's worth getting. I'd wait for a sale though. East West does them ALL the time and you should be able to get Colossus for several hundred off list.

Nice beats, man! I disagree with Larry that the production was really off. The high bell/synth could be toned down, and the sub-bass was somewhat too loud (drove the limiter too hard), but I didn't think anything was truly grating or muddy. Those two issues should be quick tweaks. Texturally, I thought this might have been a bit on the sparse side, with the drums being at the forefront of the mix. The drums were certainly interesting, but the same kit/samples were used the entire way through. Since there were no new harmonic or melodic elements for most of the mix, I would have liked to hear some change in the drum timbre, at least. With regards to the source, there is definitely not enough of it. There's barely any source to begin with so if you're going to arrange it you need to be very careful to stick closely to what's there and not stray into completely original material for most of the time - Larry's breakdown covered it well. Looking forward to a resub. NO, resub

No, FL does clip. It runs at a higher resolution than normal CD audio, but if you drive the volume really hard, you will get clipping. You just have more headroom than in a WAV.

I doubt Kontakt will have internal VST fx hosting. It's easier for NI to simply grab modules from their other effects units, particularly Guitar Rig, which they did for FM8 also. I would love to see FM8's "PsycheDelay" in K4... K3 is planned to go 64bit sometime this year, as I understand it. It IS pretty dumb that it took this long to do. OP: Just assign your guitar instrument (or whatver) to its own output within Kontakt, and then in your host mixer, put Guitar Rig on that output only. Problem solved.

To be fair, it's not really good practice for a "real game" so to speak. 3v3 or 4v4 is tiny, and maps aren't even designed for matches that small. 6v6 or 8v8 are the tournament standards, AFAIK, and some people even complain about 6v6 being too small - the battle able to go either way if someone gets a lucky crit rocket. I don't buy that, but I can see the PoV that the game dynamics change drastically with smaller teams. I don't think we should ban people that build sentries in tiny matches but it's just a silly thing to do IMO since that strategy is less effective in bigger games, and it forces an already small team to change their strategy entirely to get past it - that wouldn't happen in a larger game.

As you may have noticed, the last few months have seen a significant decline in judging activity. This is because, aside from the typical host of RL issues (school, work, moving), three judges have actually stepped down over the last six months: JigginJonT, pixietricks, and The Orichalcon. Some major life-changing activities among the other judges had reduced our effective numbers to just a couple active judges, and so we decided to look for some new blood... Congratulations to Fishy and AnotherSoundscape, who made it through our rigorous testing process, and have officially joined the panel. After nearly demolishing the entire queue last year, I'm confident that with some new help we're going to get back there again before long.