zircon

Bela D Media's Lyrical Distortion partially amped through Guitar Rig 2. Hoping to get Sixto or Fishy to hook it up with the real thing though. Thanks for the comments, still working on this.

Mastering here is iffy. The piano is really top-heavy and somewhat thin sounding, and on the louder sax notes as well as the string stabs, there is noticeably distortion from the compression/limiting. This happens elsewhere in the mix as well. Yet despite all this compression/limiting, the overall volume is somehow quiet. Needs to be remastered for sure. I also recommend specifically turning down the strings and eqing them a bit differently so they don't spike the volume as much. At 2:43, the piano is way too quiet - almost inaudible. The jazzy guitar playing the melody is somewhat lackluster IMO. The reverb simply doesn't fit the rest of the song; it sounds rather wet, while most of the other instruments are dry. This makes for an unusual soundscape that doesn't exactly work. The guitar itself sounds out of tune at times and the performance is not confident. I would EQ the guitar to be less bassy too. In general, it does not sound like it fits in the mix at all. The piano solo at 2:43 is a bit out of place. It takes up roughly 20% of the entire song with NO other accompaniment. Really sounds thrown in, especially considering the volume drop. If you were going for a realistic jazzy feel, this is not likely how the piano solo would be done. AFter the other instruments come back in, there is some harmony repetition (same piano chords over and over) before a fade-out ending. For a 5+ minute mix, I think you could come up with a better ending. I also think the drums are not really where they need to be. They have a sort of awkward, jerky-feel. They are very repetitive with little humanization and don't have much of a groove at all. I think you could get away with all the repetition if they were 'grounded' better, but as is I think they are pretty weak and need to be re-written and expanded. From a sample standpoint, I would have chosen a lighter brushed snare or rim hit; I can't even tell what you have now, it sounds like some sort of bad clap, and either way, it's no good. To me, this remix does not feel 'together' or polished at all. Certainly, the mastering needs a lot of work. Structurally, there is an unusual amount of repetition and a jarring, free-tempo piano solo for an entire minute that is stuck more or less randomly in there with no accompaniment. The entire end part of the mix after the piano solo relies on the same basic chord(s), dropping what variation there was in the first part. While the interpretation is good, I feel like the source material was in some ways a bit simplified and replaced with more aimless parts. The original had a more dynamic chord progression than what I was hearing in the remix for the majority of it. I do not think this meets our bar yet. NO

I think this is a fairly interpretive mix, though I wasn't exactly blown away, for the reason BGC described. It's like a watered-down version of the original. Similar in emotional delivery, tempo, etc. Personalized, but not all that creative from a RE-arrangement standpoint. To me this is more of an adaptation of the original to a different set of instruments, with a limited amount of variation and embellishment. I have to agree with Jon and Jesse that the lack of textural changes and the static mood brings this down. There are dynamics in terms of volume, but you need more than that. The lack of change in rhythms, key, tempo and/or time signature also hurts the overall musicality of this. The piano being somewhat exposed and mechanical does not help either (could stand to have some additional high end EQ.) If this were performed live, I feel it would have a much better shot, provided the arrangement and structure were improved and reworked as well. Not quite there yet, but I'd like to hear a resub. NO

Sorry bro, I only got Discovery two years ago and I never read the liners. I also don't think it's "stupid" to think a band is less creative than you initially thought for sampling instead of writing a riff from scratch. I'm not saying they're Timbaland or anything here, and I don't think anyone in this thread is. Just saying they would have earned more respect & admiration from me had they created those riffs instead of sampling them, even if the sampling was creative.

I am posting this on behalf of Thin Crust. If you have a solution to this please AIM him at TennisHero1988 (or I can try to relay the message if he's not on.) TC was changing the ink cartridge for his printer, dropped something and apparently something hit the back of his computer and turned it off. After rebooting, his internet seemed to have died. No web pages load for him, and he is getting the error that a network cable is unplugged in the system tray. However, inexplicably, he can talk over AIM and retrieve album info in Windows Media Player (something that requires a connection.) His modem is functioning, the activity light is blinking, and it is directly connected to his computer. No wireless involved. This has been going on for over a week. Any ideas?

Updated. The orch to main beat transition should be a bit more cohesive now.. I'm not 100% on it yet, but this is more in the direction I want.

Thanks for the comments everyone! Especially you Harmony, as you don't post a lot Hyperion: I never really think of other remixes as 'competition'. "Ascenion to Cosmo Canyon" is completely different than this. We weren't trying to make a souped-up anime soundtrack-esque cover of the theme at all. I suppose if we were, we very well would pale in comparison to Reuben Kee's take, but we were trying to do something more like the Black Mages. I think multiple remixes of the same theme can co-exist peacefully and be enjoyed in different ways, personally.

I don't hear the forest theme at all.

If you're gonna bust someone's chops about repeating a ~9-10 second phrase that is pretty cool to begin with, you're being too harsh with regards to our standards, and you're just not correct. Period. This mix was a pretty easy pass.

Updated a bit, also was updated within the first 24 hours or so.

The difference is that a limiter DOESN'T clip the signal. It reduces the volume. There's a huge difference. Reducing the volume = makes the waveform smaller in the spot where it normally would clip. Testing with a sine wave is kind of pointless. Test it with something like a drumloop in your sequencer and you will understand much better. Don't confuse limiting with normalization... they are really unrelated.. don't even try to make a comparison. Normalization is an OFFLINE process (eg. cannot be done in real time) that analyzes an entire waveforms and increases the volume of it uniformly until the loudest part is just under clipping (0db).

Yeah, but it's not really 'keeping us in line' when we didn't evaluate it to begin with. Not to mention that objectively speaking, it's not a MIDI rip with vocals on top, so those would be two reasons why it doesn't defeat my statement that you can't sub a MIDI rip with vocals and have it pass. I would have backed him up if he was hatin' on AmberTrance though.

Ah yes, another display of cunningly site (staff) criticism from Dhsu. He really could have picked a better example, as we've passed more coverish things.

You're just about correct, but nearly all limiters are 'brickwall' - they simply do not allow sound past the threshold. In other words, attack is more a characteristic of compressors than limiters, which are sort of pointless without that very fast attack to clamp down on clipping.

Yahtzee doesn't seem to go on "pointless" rants, as whatever he's talking about is always at least closely related to the game in question. I know it's cool to dislike things that other people like, but you're not giving him enough credit.

Yeah, I can't really visualize how that would work either.. at least in FL, if you want to run channel audio through something, you have to run the processor as an effect. I imagine it's like this for a number of hosts, given that NI releases multiple versions of their plugins one version for VSTi, one version for VST effect (Pro-53 FX, FM8 FX, Reaktor5 FX and so on.) Then again, FL is also better than most sequencers in that it doesn't need to automate midi CC data but can directly automate VST parameters at a very high resolution.

Yes, it is.

That's correct. "Limits the amplitude" btw means "applies a reduction in volume to a certain threshold level". So the release time impacts how long that reduction will continue after the initial trigger. Ever watched the news with really loud wind or storm noises, and the reporter will say something and it seems like all the other stuff is cut out? That's compression in action, which is simply a less severe form of limiting. And typically, they use LONG release times so that all the wind noise doesn't come back in just because the reporter was breathing in. Important thing to note; even with compression and limiting, you CAN encounter distortion. If you 'drive' a compressor/limiter too hard, especially with cheaper/free plugins, you will often get nasty-sounding artifacts and distortion. Sometimes it actually sounds like clipping. So be careful!

Nah, GR2 is applied as an effect on a channel.

Can't think of any good examples in the last few years. The closest thing might be "Memories Frozen in Time", but that had a decent amount of interpretation if you listened for it. There were variations and additions.

Lyrics/vocals constitute original addition, which is perfectly fine and encouraged. It is unlikely a mix will pass where that is the ONLY addition, though. For example, if you simply took a source tune, MIDI ripped it, and added vocals on top, you'd have a hard time passing. As for this mix being too repetitive, I don't think so. Given the genre there is a bit more stylistic leeway. The source is definitely explored and expanded. We've let on more repetitive electronic mixes, for sure.

0:00 to 0:08 = Riff from source, slightly modified 0:08 to 0:13 = Same riff w/ added harmony (variation good) 0:13 to 0:17 = Harmonies removed 0:17 to 0:34 = Chord progression is right from the original (i, VII, VI, V-VII) except the thirds are generally removed. Some shredding over them within each chord, which is acceptable. 0:34 to 0:51 = More of the same chord progression, presented a bit differently each time. 0:52 to 1:08 or so = Like the intro, though when he adds the harmonies on the first repeat of the source riff the chords are voiced a bit differently 1:10 and on = Again, going off the chord progression of the original. 1:42 = Source riffs more 1:59 = original material 2:15 = Straight from the source, with added harmony and some melodic variation too So yeah, you get the idea. I don't think you were picking up on the chord progression from the original, and you weren't giving Dennis enough credit for the variations therein.

He's referring to HM2. It's just very liberally arranged. :27 in the original has a guitar melody that goes "D, D#, F#, D". In the remix, he does that same melody one key down. "C, C#, E, C". However, the rhythm is definitely different. The mixer also adds two extraneous notes not present in the source, which really confuses things. Much of the other material surrounding this riff (eg. chord structure, bassline) is different than the original as well. You could interpret the other melodies in the remix as being heavy variations, but I wasn't hearing that. The entire second part of the melody of HM2 was left out (the one that starts at :46) - you said in your timestamps you arranged it from :35 to :59 in your mix, but I heard 0 evidence of it. www.soundtempest.net/ra2melo2.mp3 Didn't hear that melody or that rhythm anywhere in the remix. As for the main riff, here's a side-by-side; the original riff repeated once, followed by the remix riff repeated once. www.soundtempest.net/ra2comp.mp3 Simply put, this is too liberal. There is a wealth of source material, and the remix just doesn't connect to it enough. I think you went way overboard in making your mix "OCR-friendly" - don't be afraid to just straight up use the source melodies with no variation. We have NO RULE against that. I do it all the time, actually. You just need to do a decent degree of embellishment and addition as well. Here, you've gone so far from the original that you've basically made a new track that, while stylistically similar to HM2, is at best influenced by it. Production is good overall at least. No major problems there; I think the bass is too distorted though. I would cut that back and octave it so you can hear it a little more clearly. The guitars later also sound pretty thin, maybe because everything in the mix is pretty distorted, so they don't cut through like they should. I would boost their bass to low-mid and cut the mid/high-mid. Boosting the stereo would help too. Of course these are secondary issues compared to the arrangement one. If you're willing to go back to this and really make the source connection MUCH more clear, I recommend a resub. NO

Well, you're also not a film/TV/game composer getting paid $1000 per minute of music (or more.) You're not exactly the target audience. This is VERY high-end software, not meant for casual hobbyists. The only choir libraries that compare are Symphony of Voices (also nearly $500) which doesn't have the word-builder, but just SOUNDS amazing and has soloists + children's choir + Gregorian choir, and Voices of the Apocalypse which is still hundreds. The PRIMARY differences between Silver and Gold would be that Silver is not chromatically sampled (eg. every other note or so is stretched) - not a huge deal though - and no release samples, which you may or may not prefer. It does have fewer articulations, but still has a formidable amount. There should be a comparison chart on Soundsonline if you want to see. If you're looking for simpler orch stuff like sustains, marcato, pizzicato, and traditional instruments, go with Silver. If you really need 8x round robins and bartok pizzicatos (or whatever) then Gold might be a better choice.

I'd hesitate about 'officially' endorsing this project with any of my own CT remixes, personally, because I am incredibly skeptical as to the quality of the project. I can count the number of authors who I think produce well-written fantasy works on one hand. And yes, that means I'm discarding a whole lot of popular authors, too.