Sir_NutS

I need a good e. piano, I used a couple that come with reason factory soundbank but they weren't any good for leads so I just used it for background harmonies. Where can I find this good and free soundfont?

It's laggy as hell. Also not worth it these days when a rock band drum kit goes for 300 bucks, and then you need the cymbals addons if you want to be authentic and play your own beats. I assigned some samples via midi in my DAW and recorded the drums just listening to the taps on the kit, and not on the actual result. Then I put my headphones on to see if it was any good. With a real electronic drum set (which isn't as laggy) you could just play as with a normal drum set.

Glad some people enjoyed it. Some fun facts about the track: -It started with me playing the beat of new order's "vanishing point" on my rock band drumkit connected as an electronic drumkit to my DAW. I thought it was pretty good so I played some variations, quantisized some parts and used it. -The bass has an striking but unintentional resemblance to Moroder+Donna Summer's "I feel love". I reckon it may have been a subconscious thing since I listen to a lot of Moroder's stuff. -This song was composed in the same round as Brandon's "She's a squirter". Also it didn't even reach the top 5 in the votes. I guess it was a good round. -Check out this year's Wily Castle Remix Gauntlet for more Mega Man awesomeness!

The c64 was a computer bro. One with a very powerful soud chip (the famous SID chip) that is used to this day on professional and amateur music. An important piece of videogame (and synth) music. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commodore_64#Sound

uh... C64 arps are meant to sound like that, it's the staple of the C64 sound.

Now you're just messing with my head.

You're missing the point here, because I never said that your intro mustn't be engaging or have a purpose. My point is that judging a song just by that will lead to a misjudgment sooner or later. As I said, it's true that most songs you can tell right away if they're going to be bad or good, however there are cases that the song will have a weak start and finish really really strong (as I explained was the case with one of the first round mixes). Since we're not just listening to song on their own, but comparing it to others to decide a vote, we need to have a complete understanding of the choice at hand, and as I said a song with a weak start CAN have a strong overall performance that can also trump other songs that may have a constant quality through the song's course. I feel you'd be doing a disservice to the creators and the competition as a whole not to asses an informed judgement.

This is different, as you're sampling the whole track, not just one section that may be unrelated to the rest of what the track has to offer (as is the case in many songs), so going like this is bound to result in much more accurate judgement.

I'm not blaming any audience for not liking a song because it's bad. I'm saying that judging something like a song in the basis of just a small part of it is something that will lead to a misjudgement. I don't think anyone would consider that fair judgement, anywhere. Be it OCR Judges, or music reviewers.

I can name several artists that make long-winded intros that have not much special, but that lead to legendary songs. A song is just not the intro. Just like a song is just not the outro, or the chorus. It's like judging the quality of a building by just looking at the doors.

Again, can you cast your honest opinion on something by just listening to 15% of it? As I mentioned early, the meat of the song could be farther down and that boring part you listened to may be trumped by the rest, and the rest may also trump most of the other songs. I can say that this applies not only to this compo but to a lot of music out there.

Liking or not liking them has nothing to do with it. As I said, its true that most of the time you can tell in the first minute if its going to be a song you will like or not. However I do recognize that the people (and specially novices) are putting their best effort and their time into making their songs. The least I can do is listen to the whole thing even if I don't like it and give feedback if they ask for it. Listening to only a small part of the song and dismissing it not only can lead to a wrong judgement (as with kingtiger's example) but also doesn't help anyone. It's not about lumping them all into a category of "I appreciate what they are doing", as I vote on the songs I like the most, after all.

I listen to all the entries in its entirety. Most of them you can tell if they're good or bad from the start, but sometimes you don't. Last round Kingtiger's mix was a good example, it started pretty weak but it got progressively better and ended up being one of my top 3. If I had listened to only the first part of the mix (which wasn't bad, but nothing impressive either), I would have missed what made the song great. I think it's a bit disrespectful too, people put time into this, the least I can do is set some time apart for them to listen to what they did.

Got my 3DS today. My body is ready. HYPE.

Voted. Impressive turnout, this round's mixes turned out to be more enjoyable than the last round. Keep it up guys.

Once the boomtiss guy, always the boomtiss guy.

That was some old fashioned dream trance. But for these compos so far I've done dubstep, spacesynth, italodisco, progressive breaks, trance, other weird shit i can't put in a definite genre (mostly because it was crap) and now Funk/Disco. I guess the tendency is electronic music in general

I'm always looking forwards to Dustin's stuff. I wonder what this tendency of mine is. I think I've branched out quite a lot in these compos (except for that GRMRB where all I did was spacesynth)

You stole my stone man, so you better do great. OR ELSE.

If you want a bit more insight, I'll go over my current process of doing things but be warned that mastering isnt something that can be put down as a set of rules, and it will vary from song to song. However there are some things that I've found to generally work for me. So it goes like this -I keep my Main Mix Bus levels at around -6 to -8 db. Sometimes I may get lazy and allow it to bounce around -10, but I always make sure my mix peaks around that range. -I make sure my mix sounds good before the mastering. Don't leave anything to be fixed in the mastering process. Fix your mix instead. -I export my mix (because I do mastering in Sonar, Reason mastering tools aren't satisfactory for me), Load it in sonar. -Load the mix in sonar, then I apply very small amounts of tube saturation. This is again personal preference as i like how it warms up the sound. Keep in mind that these are VERY tiny amounts. - I loop a loud section of my song, then watch for peaks. Adjust my compressor threshold for each compressor band (I usually use 4) so that it detects the loud peaks, then apply very gentle compression ratios so I get slight gain reduction levels. Then I adjust the make up gain to compensate accordingly. Try not to get rid of the very important drum transients while doing this. -At this point I may apply slight stereo separation on the high frequencies, and even smaller amounts on the mid-highs. I may also apply some kind of reeverb. Again, I'm talking about VERY small amounts. -I A/B my mix. at this point, all the small tuning should have produced a warmer, tighter sound. Finally, I limit to 0db and export. I never apply eq on my masters. It always leads to chasing my own tail. My track should be EQd correctly before the master. I mix low, master loud. Huge benefits to work this way. A few years ago, my mastering process was akin to me placing my song on an anvil and hammering it until it took shape. That shape was always messy. Nowadays, it's more like using a very small pencil to add detail and refinement to an already good looking painting.

I have been using less and less amounts of compression on my masters for a while, and it has been for the better, to the point where my master compressor rarely reaches more than 2db gain reduction. usually sits below 1. My masering process is very minimal nowadays, and it's more about adjusting very small values to tighten the mix up. Do most of the work on your mix instead of your master and stuff will sound 100 times better.

Source usage percentages.. source breakdowns... key compatibility and transposition... liberal interpretation levels... GUYS relax and just make good music. When you start thinking too much about it, it all goes to shit. Follow your ears and your heart.

This round is really really solid. Good work everyone. Lyrics: (Chorus) Use your powers to make things right Protecting all of us From the darkness into the light Lets get dangerous (Verse 1) Girl, you touch me right You take me from dark to light Feeling, my balls are steamin Gotta win the fight (of love) Can you feel the love, the love (yeah) (Verse 2) I got with you when the feeling was right Left with nothing you short changed my life Don't know what to do I've still got feelings for you But time has passed and the feeling is through

To be fair Darke, some of these keys from capcom games are pretty damn confusing.

As you said, this is a competition for who can do the best arrangement, and the "best" arrangement wont' be an objective thing. More often than not a simple yet effective arrangement will win over a very complex one on equal production values. For example, I thought Gravity Bandits was the best song of the past round. I didn't vote it first place because I think it was unfinished (abrupt ending, maybe it was intentional, but it sounded like the song was unfinished) was that your song? anyways, I talked about it to some people and they thought it was confusing and even off. So if that was your song I think not many people voted for it because it was way too complex for most people to get a grip on. I absolutely loved it though, and totally got it, but I don't think a bad sax sample was the problem. The point is that in my experience a simple and to the point arrangement will appease more people in these competitions, I don't think production in itself affects much of the voting unless the production is really, really poor.