zircon

Here you will find links to each of my "ReMixing tips" tutorials. I have recently added a fourth, which covers effects processing. Part five will be a followup to part four, covering EQ, compression, and filtering (I suppose this is closer to mastering than anything else). I hope these guides will be a resource to both inexperienced and skilled ReMixers alike, and I'm definitely open to suggestions on any of them. PART 1 - GROOVY DRUMS Explains how to create and process catchy drum grooves and fills, even with low-quality samples. PART 2 - WORKING WITH REAL INSTRUMENTS Explains how to breathe some life into sampled instruments like piano and strings. PART 3 - SYNTHESIZERS Covers the basics of subtractive synthesis, the important controls, and practical applications. PART 4 - EFFECTS PROCESSING Covers reverb, delays, chorusing, distortion, overdrive, phasing, and flanging. Lots of audio examples. PART 5 - PRODUCTION VALUES Covers methodology to producing a song; choosing sounds, processing them, mixing, and even mastering. I would like to emphasize that these are not be-all end-all resources. The synth and effects guides, for instance, are more like manuals than anything else. I know that it took me years to figure out what the controls on a synth did, and how to use most of the effects in FL. All the stuff I googled online was highly technical and not really helpful, when all I wanted to know were the practical applications. Above all things, while I may make recommendations of how to do certain things, and post audio examples, I am NOT TELLING YOU THE "BEST" WAY TO DO ANYTHING!!! I've only been writing and producing music for three years. I'm the first person to admit that there are lots of things I don't know about. All I'm trying to do here is summarize my knowledge on certain topics to give people a place to get started with mixing, refine their technique, and maybe learn a thing or two they didn't know before. That's all. Feel free to ask questions or discuss any of these guides here. Enjoy!

Sounds like lots of FL sounds were used in that track.. and I gotta admit, slayer doesn't sound too bad there. I mean, it's still very obviously slayer, and I'd take Steinberg's Real Guitar over it anyday, but wow. Nice.

Russ: ouch. I heard Broodlord isn't as hard as Vael though. Vael apparently is a huge bitch of a fight.. everyone else seems to breeze past the next few encounters up to Chromaggus.

This was a close one. The arrangement was great, no question about it. I was put off initially by the sort of muddy instruments right off the bad - everything, including the vox, was sort of mixed together and it was hard to tell anything apart. However, once the groove came in, the mix really began to shine. Lots of cool stuff happened after that, with the "mud" that I spoke of becoming a sort of musical pad, while the synths and such took over in the foreground. Do I think those guitar chops could have been brought out more? Yes. Do I think the EQing and effects processing could have helped to reduce the sonic clutter? Sure. But I'm not going to reject it based on that. This is a good mix by our standards. YES

Ouch.. sound quality here is AWFUL!! Please go and look for some better sounds. There are plenty of free ones. Also read my tutorials in the ReMixing forum (they are stickied, so they'll be right at the topic) on realistic instrumentation, making drum grooves, etc. This is very similar to the original in just about every way, except you added some sort of bland percussion. Why is it panned to the left later on? Don't do that. Also, try adding your own flavor to the mix. Original material, variations, new progressions.. just play with it and have fun, give it your OWN spin. For a first effort, it's about the same as my first effort, so don't feel bad. Keep at it. NO

Saxes are sounding pretty nice here. I would have gone a little easier on the reverb though, and perhaps toned down the volume of the low sax (which sounded kind of "blatty" and didn't really flow with everything else). I also hold to my previous comment that this is a little too bare and sparse. Arrangement/interpretation factor is there.. it just needs a little something more. NO

I'm pretty much in total agreement with Larry here. Some of the issues I brought up were addressed, and this is defintiely an improvement, but it's not quite to our bar yet. I felt that this had some good emotional energy to it that was ruined by the ridiculous over-compression and saturation. The strings were harsh and sharp, more like strings in a dramatic trailer than expressive, soft ones. The drums continue to be way out of place, being loud and abrasive, more like big beat drums than anything else. Everything has "punch" to it that shouldn't be there. You want punch in a dance mix, not something like this. This seems to be a consistent problem with you.. you really have to put more time into your execution. You can't approach every song the same way (saturate, compress, volume way up). NO

REALLY cool track here, as I told bLiNd. This guy knows his craft. His production is top-notch, with a great variety of sounds, tight mixing, and good encoding to boot. Structurally, while some would say this is on the long side, I think it's excellent. It manages to have enough material to fill the whole length without being repetitive, and does a whole lot with the source, really building on it and giving it a unique spin. I love it. YES

Yeah, we do use an assist chain (I think a Rogue is the MA) to get the sons down. It's just a matter of practicing gathering them up so they CAN be CCed.

Last night, we tried rag for the 4th and 5th time - serious attempts using greater fire pots and other consummables. The first time, we got him to about 65%, and barely got through the Sons. The second time, we got him to 46% - the sons went pretty well, but they took down a bunch of healers and rogues, and people were relatively drained by the time Rag came up. I think personally that we had way too much FR. I had 85 unbuffed with no Shaman totem giving me more, and I had NO trouble managing the fire damage (in fact, I used mana potions more). Some other casters had anywhere from 150 to over 250 unbuffed with IMO is completely ridiculous.

Eh. Most people here are in established, high-level guilds on other servers. Btw, PATCH DAY! Lots of cool new stuff. Can't wait.

nice. anyways i got my computer back up and running. grinding has become severely painful at level 47. and i officially hate ZF now after failing 3 times in a row at the executioner troll zerg. i think that whole encounter is bugged, because there is literally an endless supply of those damn trolls. we can hold em off for 10 minutes or so, but eventually all the NPCs will die and the trolls will break through and begin slaughtering us. no matter how many you kill, more spawn to take their place. we even killed one of the bosses (Nekrum Gutchewer or something he's called) and HE respawned seconds after. we also killed the shadowpriest and his corpse disappeared immediately afterwards so we couldn't loot it. bugged all to hell. It is a 10 minute encounter with about 100 trolls. But if the NPCs died, you fucked up. They can't die.

When I say we die before phase 2, I mean we die BEFORE the sons are spawned. People just get wiped out by the lava splashes. What we're doing is saying that all casters need 100+ FR unbuffed, rogues/non-MT warriors need 150 at a bare minimum, and the MT's shamans need 200+. Really, the MT has no trouble keeping aggro, and he doesn't die. It's simply that people are getting destroyed by the splashes over time. We haven't tried this with consumables yet - we want to see if we can get him down to about 40% before the second sons spawn. I haven't heard about the pissed thing. We just take him right then and there, pretty much. Also, the reason why I assume you are geared is because all the guilds on my server that killed him were quite geared when they did so. The people that hit every MC/onyxia in my guild have about 5-6 pieces each, for example. Savage Fury, who got the first Rag kill for Horde, had even more than that (per person). Of course, those players also have PVP epics, reputation epics, crafted epics, and so forth and so on.

We've tried it three times now with MTs having over 300 FR and we have failed miserably - wipe before phase 2 at 75% or so. It is a hard fight. It's easy to look back on it and say "oh, that was so easy" AFTER your entire raid is geared up with MC weapons and armor, and after you've collected tons of cores to get the DI stuff.

Eh. Maybe on your server. On mine, the first Horde rag kill was not even a month ago. Only three Horde guilds have done it to date, and my guild has been trying since we formed (a little over two months ago).

To set a snap... use the "snap" feature. It's in the FL manual, just do a search for it. It's a little menu right in the main FL gui.

A really beautiful remix. Very atmospheric and chill - between the sfx, the pads, the portamento squares, the jazzy chords, and the sax, this is absolutely amazing. One of my all time favorites. Rest in peace, Chris.

I really don't feel that there is anything outright wrong with this mix. The production is good, the execution/synth design is good (though lots of the sounds are quite generic and overused), the drums fit the style, and the arrangement is solid. However.. stepping back and looking at the entire package I just don't feel that it passes our guidelines. Yes, it's enjoyable. But it's also about as cliche as you can get in many ways. Detuned saw leads, very simple and repetitive structure, distorted 909/808 drum sounds, cheesy vocals. We have rejected stuff like this in the past, though they were usually not quite as strong as this one. I don't feel comfortable going with a yes vote here. NO

This was updated about 4:30PM EST, 9/30. I said he could do it because we hadn't voted yet.

Yeah.. but to some extent those fights are kind of dumb. In WoW, EVERY person in the 40 man raid has to be doing a job, at least until you are very skilled/geared up, at which point you can be a bit lax (until you get to the next boss, or next raid area, etc).

20 and 40-man instances? What? Maybe the system is simply that different, but...how do you coordinate 40 people? Coming from GW, where the maximum team size is 8, and it's hard enough coordinating just that few (what skills you have in comparison with others on the team, what specific classes do we need, what's our strategy, and all). But how on earth would you do that with 40 people? Or are characters in WoW that much more independent from one another? (note, this isn't a gw vs. wow post, I'm simply very curious to see what's on the other side of the fence) Obviously, it really only works if you have a full guild. When we are arranging a 40 man instance run, we post a signup and have a designated time. We also all get on Ventrilo. But 40 man is really nothing in the grand scheme of things.. if I recall, EverQuest had 100+ man raids.

Well.. 1.8 will introduce 4 more outdoor raid bosses as well as even more high end content. Soon enough we're getting another 20 man and another 40 man instance. So I think ultimately there will be a lot to do.

Nice. Several of my IRL friends are on Shattered Hand in that guild. Kind of makes me wish I had started with them rather on my own server.

At first, I thought this was going to be kinda lame, given the basic dance sounds and structure that I thought I heard right off the bat (plus that ridiculously overused E-MU Shakuhachi phrase). However, I was pleasantly surprised as the mix evolved and developed, especially at the halfway point. I have to say, this is quite an improvement over other stuff I've heard from you. It's got a nice interpretation factor, solid arrangement, and a variety of sounds that AREN'T JUST TRANCE SYNTHS!! Thank you! I have heard more than enough of those over the last few months and I'm quite sick of them. My main complaint would probably be that it's a little on the long side and it feels a bit stretched towards the end, but that's not even a big deal. No good reason for this not to pass, in my opinion. Good job all around. YES

This is an Earthbound remix. Lots of Earthbound SFX used too. The track is "Kraken of the Sea", mo2-097.spc from the mo2.rsn file available at snesmusic.org . "Kraken" is a very tough theme to remix because it only consists of a handful of notes. That said, while it was immediately obvious to me that this ReMix was of the "Kraken" theme, there are some major issues. The use of the Earthbound SFX is way over the top and it's not done in a musical way - stuff is just thrown in haphazardly. The same goes for the drums, which, in and of themselves, are pretty cool dnb/breakbeat drums, but are perhaps overly spastic when combined with all the SFX, stabs, and harmony parts. There seem to be a lot of clashing notes that I certainly can't make sense of, such as the passage starting at 1:00. The synths and 'real' instruments used are pretty bland and simplistic and definitely don't contribute to anything. The stabs at 1:53 are clipping (or coming very close to it). Again, way over the top. This reminds me of Shnabubula's stuff to some extent, but it lacks musicality. Even chaotic drums and synths need some form of structure to really 'work'. I don't think there's much you can do to make it pass our standards considering how 'far out' it is. NO