zircon
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Posts posted by zircon
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Well.. I wouldn't say it's Zimmer, he'd have way more brass + taikos + huge snares
1:30 in I'm still not really hearing the theme - only somewhat vague allusions to it. 1:37 it intros for the first time quietly, which is a little worrisome given that the whole thing is only 4:00. The intro overall probably could be restructured to be a little more engaging.. same goes for the material around 2:00. Really basic orchestral texture going on until 2:30 which just brings back the same motifs we heard before. ~2:50 the theme comes back again, but again, it's quiet. Why is all the emphasis on harmony, and not melody? Finally, the brass is kind of ugly as a vehicle for the melody towards the end, because of the long attack times and the overly edgy sustains. Try a different sample or use a different instrument for it.
I'm normally not a stickler for advanced composition but I really think you have to work on that here. There's a lot of very basic stuff and nothing really to keep the listener occupied. You have a lot of instruments but somehow it sounds sparse. The structure is relatively repetitive, with the same rhythms and motifs, and little interesting variation of the melody. Also, the ending sounds rushed.
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The mixing here is kind of weird. The whole thing is very quiet and things that you would expect to have presence (like the snare, the crashes, and the brass) kind of don't. Overall I'm not sure if it works too well. The samples are a mixed bag, also; the snares + bass drum are really VERY VERY fake, in the sequencing and otherwise. The brass could be better too (it's a little too centered and mellow, with no edge or bite). The strings aren't so hot either, honestly. I KNOW there are better soundfonts than this for free - basically everything except the woodwinds really lacks warmth and brightness that you would expect, making everything quite subdued. The snare roll + crashes at 2:52 just sound terrible.
From the arrangement standpoint, nothing stood out as bad to me. However, the whole thing really didn't bring a lot to the table. Nothing struck me as particularly creative, and the ending was really quite lame - not much of a resolution. I guess in short, I felt that there was some creativity here, but it came across as amateurish and uninteresting.
I would like to hear a resubmit of this with some retooling of the arrangement and a possible sample upgrade (or crossgrade).
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Voice chat definitely improves the WoW experience, vastly.
I don't know... I was kind of excited to start raiding, but honestly I don't see how Blizzard expects people to fight through the same dungeons endlessly for fun. If the expansion comes out in the next month or two I might stick around long-term. I'm definitely not going to PvP. Guildies wait for 4 hours to even get into BG. I thought questing to 60 was great, and there are still areas I haven't seen yet (and I haven't experience the Horde side at all) but dang at 60 it seems to get a bit pointless unless you like posing in your epics standing around IF...
First of all, they're constantly adding new dungeons, and it takes an AWFUL lot of time to get it down to the point where it's trivial. By the time you do, there's a new one out, and all of them are different and fun.
Second of all, play on a different server. I've never waited more than 15 minutes in a BG queue. In fact, people BITCH if the queue is 5 minutes long, saying "is the queue broken or something? Why's it taking so long?" - most times, we get in in less than a few seconds!
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EMU, M-Audio, Terratec
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Nice! We got the crossbow last week. At the moment, we're still on Nef phase 1.. no one wants to spend time on him, sadly :/
AQ gates will probably open next week for us.
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Don't triple post.
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Yep. Think about it this way. A simple sine wave, played in time (or in "phase") with another sine wave, will double the amplitude. Now what happens if you start the second sine wave exactly at the halfway point of the first one? The positive amplitude sections of the first will coincide with the negative amplitude sections of the second, and vice versa. Result is "phase cancellation" - no sound!
So yes, if you have vocals, and instrumental w/ vocals, and they're based on the EXACT same recordings, you invert the phase of the vocal recording, play that inverted recording at the same time over the full track, you will get only the instrumental.
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Noteworthy Composer.
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I think Reason for the strings, QLSO for other stuff.
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Overall, I gotta say that the arrangement here is really quite good. Lots of variation and cool stuff going on. The percussive sequencing is also solid - very nice fills and subtle changes! However, unfortunately, I don't think I can pass this. I just don't think piano and drums really 'works' here. It feels like there should be more to fill out the soundfield. If this was piano only I think it would have worked pretty well, but adding the drums makes it feel incomplete.
On the production end, the drums are a little bland, and the piano sometimes spikes in volume unrealistically. But more importantly, there seems to be some weird stereo thing going on.. as if most of the sounds are a little panned to the right. It's disconcerting given the sparse soundfield.
I would say either drop the drums and tune the arrangement a little more around that, or add some other stuff as well. Also take a look at some of the production issues I mentioned. I like this a lot - please resubmit!
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Well.. this is better than a lot of your previous submissions. The Infected Mushroom influence is very obvious - you basically straight up COPIED their style. However, this isn't quite there yet. I think the arrangement is too far from the original; a lot of the original harmony and melody is just missing. For the amount of new/non-FF7 material in there, 3:09 is FAR too short. Also, I think you went overboard with the assorted sound effects, like the reversed orchestra hit, the sweeps, swooshes, etc. I also think the main snare is a little too overbearing and powerful. The synths that are actually playing the melody and harmony are not brought enough to really be noticeable. Finally, the ending is pretty lame.
Work on this more. Expand the arrangement, include more of the original, tweak your synth design, polish.
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Yeah.. I'm in the process of revising them and re-hosting them. First 3 are mirrored on my website with additions.
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why would you spend money on usb stuff? you are wasting those precious slots! If I were you I'd spend money and a good soundcard (specifically for composers? 1/4 in/out spdif, you know, the works?)
and then you have an unlimited selection.
like an emu 1212m for $200
BETTER YET, screw usb all together. Go get yourself a FIREWIRE pre-amp
STFU.
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SoV prebuilt phrase pitched down an octave.. umm... yeah. Could have done without that. At least use ahh/ohh, this sounds just out of place. A little more reverb/processing on the choir(s) would help the texture too, I think.
The guitar + drum combination is interesting, but something seems a little 'off' about it, and I can't quite place my finger on it. I think the drum pattern itself might be swung in an odd manner, or the samples aren't quite striking in sync with the guitar. Normally this isn't a bad thing, but I don't like the combination here. While I appreciate the percussive changeup at 1:44, it doesn't sound very good. No groove, and the "kick" sample (I know it's not a bass drum) is pitched which sort of throws things off. In fact, all the drum samples here sound somewhat out of place.
The synth stuff and 'real' instruments are nice, I suppose. But Larry is right; the whole thing needs more cohesion and balance. The arrangement wasn't bad for the most part, though it could have used some sort of direction as TO mentioned. Currently it doesn't really go anywhere.. and the ending is really not very good. No resolution.
Refine, resubmit.
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Chemical Brothers does a lot of stuff like this.. for instance, their song "Private Psychadelic Reel", the last track on "Dig Your Own Hole".
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I agree that the arrangement was on the short side, though we don't have an arbitrary limit on how short a song can be. I think, however, that you need to work on fixing some of the repetition that occurs towards the last 1/3 of the song or so. Vary it up more, change the texture, build up to a climax and then get to some sort of resolution. The production here isn't all that bad so I would just focus on the arrangement and structure for now.
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I have to agree with Larry. Everything is really messy here. From the mixing (MASSIVE bass drum that overrides everything else?) to the rhythm matching, to the overly-powerful bass, to the general mud of the soundfield, the execution as a whole needs a lot of tightening up and polish. I do agree that the arrangement is good - you have some creative ideas here, and the variations on the melody are interesting. But WTF is that ending? Come on, man..
Refine, resubmit.
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Pretty badass! The production is absolutely badass. Masterful drum/synth work. I think some of the orchestral feel a bit out of place at times (like the marcato strings towards the beginning) but that is really a small gripe. As vig said- VERY beefy, very unique style. A lot of this reminds me of BT of course, particularly the stuttering.
The arrangement is really good too considering the simplicity of the original. The ReMixers really took it in a whole new direction. One could argue that at times it's TOO far but there are enough cameos of the different motifs from the original that I think that argument would not work. Structurally, there's a lot of motion and the whole thing is arranged logically in terms of dynamics and "energy".
No brainer!
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Heh. Honestly, this game only gets more and more fun for me. Blackwing Lair is a blast. We're doing smaller groups for Onyxia to make it more challenging, and trying to speedrun Molten Core. I lay waste to hundreds of Alliance each day in BGs. Friday night drunken Arathi Basin over Vent keeps my in stitches all night. I love this game!
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Add Rellik, Unknown, Sadorf, Disco Dan, and TO to that list.
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I don't think it's possible currently to get any more variation out of repeated notes.. at least for the marcatos and pizzicatos. Not only am I using alternating velocities, but the singular velocity layers have round-robin up and down bow strokes as well as automatic randomization of formant - 3 different possible 'hits' per note, thanks to Kontakt 2. I thought I did a pretty good job in that regard
Of course, the legato/sustain stuff is much harder. -
I don't find them useful. They can control any MIDI parameter on any device that accepts MIDI - this includes just about every function on every DAW and VST out there. Same goes for sequencers like Reason.
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I use East West Quantam Leap Symphonic Orchestra (EWQLSO for short) It's a massive sample library (1 GB)
More like 15 GB
It's huge
anyway, Darth, channels>add>fruity soundfont player.
Not the Silver Edition. It's only 1 GB (hence why its only $140). The Platinum Edition is 15 GB (and its also like $2000. But obviously its got a hell of a lot more samples).
Not to nitpick, but the Silver edition is 2.4gb, the Gold edition is 15gb, and the Platinum edition is 68gb.
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Last post I'm going to make on the topic, since I don't want to clog the thread;
This mix IS doing stuff that hasn't been done before. There are a lot of things going on here that are unique and very far out of the ordinary. That is what experimental music is all about; unusual combinations of things, transcending genre limitations, and so forth and so on. I don't see how you could debate this.
However, no, it's not jazz. It's not even remotely close to jazz. I don't know how you could possibly label it as such.
*NO* One Must Fall 2097 'Freefall 2097'
in Judges Decisions
Posted
I gotta agree, the beatwork isn't as interesting as it could be. Some changeups would be really nice, and perhaps more emphasis on the kick / hats. However, it's really not THAT big of a deal. At 1:44, the piano is overly loud. Gotta tone that down. The lead around 1:58 is pretty cool but also a little too loud. I'd like to hear more harmony stuff. Otherwise I don't have any major issues. The synths could be a bit more varied (LFOs!) but their sequencing is good. Some of the leads like the one at the beginning, and the other at 2:22, could be a little brighter. I do like all the guitar stuff. You probably could bring that out more and put some nice delay/reverb on it so it really cuts through and stands out. You had some very cool textures here, I thought, but I thought that they were overshadowed a lot of the time. The intro/ending shined in that area. Try to incorporate more of what you did in those places.
In terms of arrangement, it's somewhat simple but gets the job done. In my mind it's not radically different from what people like blind do - the problem I suppose is that the original is in the exact same style. If you work on the ending/resolution more and add some breaks of some kind, I think that would help quite a bit. As is, just having the constant dance beat is a little repetitive after awhile. A key element to any good dance/trance song is something to relieve the stress from the listener's ears a bit - switch up the percussion/instruments, drop the beat entirely, change the progression for a minute, whatever. Anything to vary it up.
This is close to the bar. Some polish and I'll pass it.
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