Skrypnyk

The piano doesn't sound as full as it should, there's a lack of low end to it, or it sounds more distant compared to the woodwind. The woodwind seems to be way more (4:00~ ouch!) in front compared to the piano a lot of the time, where this piece feels like it should be more of a duet, having both instruments in front or playing leads. 30 seconds of silence at the end can be cut too. 5 minutes seem too long as well. The parts where you kinda just go off in a random tangent feel unnecessary, like someone is saying goodbye and is about to leave, but then they forget one thing, then they start talking to someone, and they keep saying they're going to go but it's been 20 minutes now. Simplifying and shortening would make the overall piece stand out better.

It's so jarring having that intro with the bombastic electro sound, and then cutting to something more soft and laid back. This suffers from a lack of ideas and heavy reliance on loops. There's no personalization, no real creativeness in this. The synths are all pretty bland, the drum loop is repetitive, there is no ending, I'm not sure where The Damned sees this going (maybe as some sort of sunshine island theme?) but you're gonna have to do some massive work on everything in this to get it there.

Time to start networking. Guitarist aren't exactly rare. Sift through OCR or SoundCloud, come across something you like, leave a comment, ask to collab, see how things go. Generally speaking no not really, although if you're collaborating with someone and they just want credit for their work, that's a free option. I'll second BandCamp, but I'm receiving around 70% profit after everything is applied. Another approach to getting good guitar sounds is using Guitar Rig from Native Instruments. However, if you aren't playing a guitar live and well, a majority of your work will come in how well you can sequence.

[16:10:56] <Skrypnyk> djpretzel: http://tindeck.com/listen/zsat <--- that's fxsnowy's original version of the mix [16:11:13] <Skrypnyk> everything not in that is what I contributed [16:11:44] <Skrypnyk> tl;dr a bit of rearrangement, scratching, vanilla synths, mixing [16:12:30] <djpretzel> cool. so the guts are his, you tweaked 'em, mor or less? should chime in on the review thread and spell it out, case peeps are interested

That's the beauty of it. I think back to Super Mario Bros 3 and this little item http://www.brainygamer.com/.a/6a00e39824440288330167624757c4970b-pi and how I didn't know what exactly the P means (power or power up I'd guess), but it obviously means something more or better. Same with the E, it's something important and if someone new doesn't know they can ask, get an answer, or they can figure it out on their own. I can see where you're coming from with the flood posting then, but I feel that's so few and far between the majority of the time that isn't an issue.

You might need a different sample. It sounded soft like an acoustic kick, where as if you use say a 909 it'd sound more heavy, aggressive, intense.

You tambourine has no ADSR envelope, as a result when it plays quickly the decay is bleeding into itself, it makes it sound messy. I like the noise synth you have for the lead, but you don't really do much with it beyond sweep-in-crash-gate-effect. The noise synth, along with I guess the original arrangement, are the only things giving this track a sense of energy. The kick doesn't have a thumping, intense drive to it, it sounds more like filler to keep a rhythm. The hat is kinda weird in how it just kinda comes and goes when it wants to. The synth that plays at 1:04+ is a little over-exposed, it's doesn't add much to the song so it doesn't need to sound like a lead. I tried not to get into the arrangement aspect of the mix as I think you intentionally didn't do much with it. Hope you got something out of it though

Eval is one vowel away from seeming like your constructive criticism is just an excuse to bitch slap a person for their tune =P You could just go with a capital letter E, or even É , just something to differentiate an evaluator from someone who isn't. I guess covers as a tag would work then. What's wrong with a flood of throwaway stuff being posted though? Is no activity better than poor activities?

I picked up a Tascam DR-07 MKII a while back that I rather like, forgot how much I paid for it though

Echoing most of this. The mixing is rather poor with most things in the low register (bass, stabs, sine arp, piano, strings). You have something playing through out that I can't put my finger on what it is or what's playing, it's mostly on the left channel (you can hear it more around 1:08 but it plays through out), it's sounds interesting but it also sounds buried in a low pass filter. The drumloop does get stale after the first minute, you have the odd change up every now and then, but it's predominantly the same loop going on. You can do so much more with it, add a ride in a section of the song, add one-shot effects in some places, change up the loop every 2 or 4 loops, get creative. The ending I didn't really mind, though I find it curious that you have the original source play, or at least be some what audible at the end. It's not bad, but the poor mixing and stale drums keeps this from being great.

Not a fan of just 'eval', 'evaluation' on posts and dedicated or assigned 'evaluators' work a little better, but it also comes off a little as judges before the judges. Maybe just 'approved helpers' or something more innocent sounding. Maybe 'covers' tag for people who just wanted to cover a song and not worry about rearranging it, and a 'just for fun' tag for people not looking for critical feedback.

The original 2008 album has been remastered, and is available for free in high-quality audio via Bandcamp. You can also stream the album in full via YouTube.

Perhaps it would have been wise for me to spend some time adding extra elements that could compliment the mix or add extra depth or character to what was already present. You can do whatever you want. Play with an effect, phaser, delay, reverb, etc. Play with a sample in a slicer. Play around with a synth sound. Whatever sounds good,make it stands out, gives it character.

My suggestion on improving is keep practicing and keep experimenting with your DAW. I've listen to your mix several times and I'm sorry, but I can't give you any positive comments about your mix other than if you were trying to lay a hip-hop beat over the original source, you've kinda succeeded. The beat is too simple, the synths are dry, most if not all of the instruments are sequenced really stiffly, there hasn't been much if anything done to expand on the original source, and nothing about this mix stands out as being unique, having character, originality, or a certain je ne ce quoi. I understand you were trying to keep the feel of the original song, but you can still do things to personalize it more than just putting a beat over it. Get creative.

1) For me, it's not applicable. I don't follow or listen to much if anything that's getting posted on OCR anymore sorry! 2) To avoid answering this question with another question, why are the number of reviews relevant? Or even why are reviews themselves relevant? If posted mixes already got judged and approved by individuals, then there really isn't much more someone else can say about it. I'm not sure what one person could even say about a mix other than they like the style of the mix, or the game / original song being mixed, otherwise they're just talking about what is happening in the song which I've always found incredibly redundant. Reviews kinda just serve to stroke the ego of the artist (which don't get me wrong, LOVE it when that happens to me), and places like YouTube and Facebook have made using the review forum obsolete. Reviews really only matter before the mix is submitted for approval, where it can help an up-and-comer out with mixing or writing, or give a vet some advice if they're going through sound fatigue. Any criticism can be used to improve or alter the mix, and people can go more in depth with their review. To be critical of a mix after it's been posted is a bit of a waste because the mix isn't going to be touched up, altered, and resubmitted. However, to actually try and answer your question, you can't just focus on lack of reviews and you have to look at the forum system as a whole. The forums themselves have gotten very slow, very boring, very dead and dying, and so the question should be "How do you suggest bring the overall forum activity back up again?". I think back to the VGMix days are how they had a RPG-esque system in place for people when they rate, review, post, etc. You got HP, you got coins, you could buy stuff, and that made using their system fun and exciting. Currently there's only a post count standing where you can go from Goomba to Ness to Wario to whatever inbetween that's kind of a fun thing with posting here. I think what djp has lined up can certainly rejuvenate life back into these forum, but as it currently stands I don't think asking or having one person try and lead a march in improving reviews will have any long lasting effects around here.

2 dark tracks free download via: Bandcamp: http://bit.ly/1LTuLj0 Soundcloud: http://bit.ly/1PMqrUj

Display like framed on the wall? Or do you want a shelving unit? IKEA Kallax shelves are really good for vinyl storage. Most of my vinyls are in a paper sleeve, placed inside the album jacket, placed inside a plastic sleeve. It might be a bit overkill, as you can just have your vinyl placed in the album jacket, but like dust or something

The ending of your video

Bubble bobble? 1:15 things start getting cluttered, and definitely @ 1:30 the horns are a little too strong and drown everything else out. Better mixing would help that, or you can drop say the funky guitars when you start adding other instruments. The ending seems kinda sudden and incomplete, you didn't let the tom sample play out. I felt the intro was rather sudden as well. It's a bit of a fun mix, really short though. Would have liked to have heard something unique in your mix as what you have is pretty standard funk.

Wow, I've never watched a Nolan film and thought 'this sound mixing is terrible'. My complaint usually is the film is 40 minutes too long, but I haven't seen Interstellar. Moon I've seen twice and wasn't a fan of the film. You're watching one person on the screen for 90 minutes which becomes tedious, and I couldn't care about the moral or the big secret of the film. Gravity, The Martian, other recent sci-fi films I haven't seen either although I do want to watch Gravity. Classics like 2001 and Alien I can comment on.

How serious do you take people handing out mix tapes? Releasing a physical boxed CD set would be really fancy, even pretty cool, but won't necessarily mean people will take you seriously. Having a good, clear image of your sound and style, and trying to promote your sounds however you can should be enough for people to take you seriously (if, of course, they're interested). Throwing your best stuff on soundcloud, highlighting the best of the best and directing people to them should be sufficient, and a lot cheaper. Having a personal website would also help.

Yup

Oooo, unfortunately there probably isn't. I think I did all my album artwork around that size back then to save ram or to make uploading easier.

Wow, I'm flattered. Really thank you for the kind words, as those kinds of comments can make someone re-upload albums at a better bitrate (I believe I originally released it in 128kbps?)

The only thing that struck me as kinda weird is having the sax or guitar panned on either side and have everything else centered. You could fill up more of the space say panning the tamb slight right, another instrument slightly left, I dunno if you can pan out the drums, but space out other instruments a bit so all the lead focus aren't on the left and right. And maybe the piano in the intro is a little on the buried side, could bring up the volume a bit. Nice ditty otherwise.