Nekofrog

Yeah, Jon Shaffer of Iced Earth is my biggest influence on my guitar work, from a riff perspective. I like to think that my right hand is near his in ability, because rapid-fire and technical alternate picking just sounds so badass. In terms of production, I am a strict minimalist in every sense of the word. When I record, I make sure my initial recording sounds as clean, clear, and articulate as I possibly can. You can imagine how tough that can be when you quad-track a rhythm section (meaning, you record the same riff 4 seperate times, layer them over one another and pan them appropriately) -- they have to be SPOT ON EXACTLY THE SAME in terms of your playing, or it's going to sound very sloppy. I've been told by a LOT of people (both in person and online) that my right hand is ridiculously tight and synchronous, but that's probably due to trying to play Iced Earth songs day in and day out when I was learning guitar. Back to the production aspect, like I said, minimalist. Once the tracks are down and clean, I move on to bass. I don't utilize bass as an instrument for its own, it's almost always strictly used to round out the guitar's sound and give it that low end that the track needs. In terms of compression and equalization... well, I believe they can be helpful, but that they can also do more harm than good if you don't know what you're doing, so I rarely if ever compress things. Since I use a POD XT, it has a natural fizziness to its guitar tones that need to be EQ'ed out, but once you learn how to do that it's all you need to do EQ-wise.

Yeah, it's my favorite of the bunch, and I expected it would be for a lot of people as well (mainly due to a lack of vocals). I've actually got an updated version of it where the harmonized melodic parts are clearer and more focused, but that's on my production PC which I won't have access to for a while, so I had to go with this slightly muddier version for the preview. Interestingly enough, this was my first real venture outside of 4/4. I can't remember offhand what time signature it's in, but it goes something like 7/8 to 4/4 to something else to 7/8. I knew this one would be a divider for some people, mainly because it's difficult to get vocals down with someone who is halfway across the country and can't be directed live and in person, but I think Doug did a tremendous job with what I gave him. This is similar to Overdose in that I have a slightly punchier version done but don't have access to it (production PC, again). In that version I've edited out all draws for breath and merged the harmonizations a bit more naturally. As it says in the Youtube description, this one still has a little bit more of production work to be done (Doug's going to do another take on one section to fill it out a bit more), but otherwise nearly finished. In terms of the lack of vocals, I can see what you mean by some people, but without the vocals (and the message), it's a bit of a boring track. It's repetitive as it is, and what's really sprucing it up in my opinion are the vocal harmonies that kick tits. Yeah, this is going to be the all-out, thrash epic that I've been wanting to do for a long time. For those unfamilar with that type of thing, Iced Earth's 16-minute epic "Dante's Inferno" is along those lines (part one: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tXFlMBBAmC8 , part 2: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BppyJk9Tfh0&feature=related) It will likely close out the album, as well.

Yes.... yes... stroke my ego... In terms of production, oh hell yes I've upped my game. I had hoped that one of my newer remixes would have gotten posted before I got around to getting the album preview up so people could see the huge jump in quality from my first two songs, but oh well. They'll get posted eventually I assume.

Sounds like you got a guitar that had a cheap licensed Floyd Rose trem on it. If you're going to get a tremmed guitar, there are specific things to look for. You want an Original Floyd Rose, a good Schaller, or one of Ibanez's many fantastic Edge/Lo Pro Edge/Edge Pro trems. Anything else is almost always pure crap. So yeah, string bending, fretting (depending on the action) will cause you to detune a little bit on a cheap tremmed guitar. Sorry man The only option would be to block the trem somehow. Maybe a tremol-no

Thank you sirs.

To be honest I'm probably going to wind up just having it as a free digital download. I'm not terribly interested in making money off of this.

My debut album is nearing completion, but for a few reasons that cannot be revealed here, it will be some months before it finally sees an official release. Until then, I figured I'd throw up a preview of what's to come. This preview consists of two fully completed (length-wise) songs, and one abbreviated song. Entitled "The Agony of Man", this album features a trilogy of songs depicting the birth, life, and death of a man, detailing the major events that define his tragic life. It also spans various different genres of metal, including thrash metal, progressive metal, death metal, melo-death, and many others. : This song is entitled "Overdose", and is unrelated to the trilogy. Some of the other musicians that I've shown the project to have described this song as progressive/melodic death metal, however it lacks any type of vocals. So if you're one of those types who likes the guitar of melodic or progressive death metal but can't get past the cookie monster vocals, this is probably right up your ally. : This song is entitled "The Funeral", and is the middle part of the aforementioned trilogy. It details the death and laying to rest of the man's wife, and his regret at having ever met her and inadvertently causing her death. EMO FAGGOT. Vocals (yes, this song has vocals) were recorded by DrumUltima of, derp, OCR fame. : This song is entitled "Descent", and is unrelated to the trilogy. This song takes elements from thrash metal more than anything, with some fast riffing near the fadeout. This track is going to be a doozy when the full thing is unleashed In the coming months, a few more tunes might be "leaked" up until the album's final release. Thanks for listening, I'd appreciate some comments if you enjoyed it, or otherwise.

Still need somebody's help. It's a fairly simple design.

sorry mario sunshine is absolute shit this coming from a guy who thinks mario galaxy is gotf

I don't understand how people think Zelda 2 is difficult. It's my favorite Zelda game, and I've been playing it since the day it came out. To this day, I can sit down and beat it like it's nothing, and still find an extreme amount of fun in doing so. The only thing that's "hard" is the final temple.

Happy birthday, bro Don't kill too many zombies today

Congrats, you guys! Guess next month it'll be my turn.

He removed the original WIPs. Darn. I wanted to listen to it and remember its awfulness.

I'm going to let the cat out of the bag. The secret of the OCR DKC2 remix project is.... proticity is producing a bonus CD with 12 select tracks remixed specifically by him. not really

I would surmise to say that if you put something I recorded with a PodXT (http://www.youtube.com/user/nekofrog any of these songs, save for maybe the Xenogears OCRemix since that was my very first) in front of someone and then something with an AxeFX and then a truly miced up amp in front of someone, they would never be able to pick out what was a real amp and what was an amp sim. In short, both miced up amps and emulation can produce the same level of quality -- IF the person running the production knows what they're doing.

There's nothing wrong with stating that you were disappointed with the album, or even that you don't like it. But it's absolutely retarded to download a REMIX album, put out by overclocked REMIXERS, and then complain that you don't like REMIXES and just want straight covers (as someone else has done here). That's where I find this whole thing to be pretty dumb. If you don't like remixes in the first place, what are you doing downloading a remix project?

There's a HUGE difference between saying that you've never heard a good guitar tone in any remix and saying whether something sounds like a miced up tube amp versus emulation. The less tube-exclusive retards we have, the better.

nomination for dumbest post of 2009

Look up the words "remix" and "arrangement". Thank you.

sir i have every right to whip fake stats out of my ass at any time i wish 95% of the people here know that

You're in luck, my death metal is all being channeled to the DKC2 project. So it'll be regular stuff for Lufia.

FF4 project was like 70+% electronic... Lufia is inherently a rock-style soundtrack to begin with, so you're probably going to end up with quite a few rock tunes.

The Kotaku community once again proves itself one notch above the GameFAQs community but one notch below the NeoGAF community in stupidity and utter ignorance.

Oh, another reason I have no interest in the PS3: Capcom fighters use an archaic and ass-backwards netcode that makes online play a hair-pulling experience. The netcode they use for the 360 is absolutely HEAVENLY. GOD TIER stuff.

Check out my stuff, and I should have two more tunes coming up eventually.