Villainelle

You're like the Simon Cowell of the WIP forum. I hope you're the next new judge. No, seriously.

Thanks so much for the comments guys. I <3 you all. This is the finished version that I submitted (ignore tags/filename plz, it has not been judged yet): http://leah.johnsandford.org/music/seekrit/Zelda_64_Book_of_the_Dead_OC_ReMix.mp3 Pushed it a little louder, more definition in the highs. Tricklozen (awesome comments <3), yup, there's dissonance with that sung clip, and earlier at 1:55ish when the sitar plays against the lead (as Theory pointed out). It bothers me a bit...but then, considering that the original song has a bunch of pitch bends and grace notes that are dissonant (there are some pretty flagrant G#s in it, while the whole thing is in G minor o.O), it seemed to fit okay. I ran it by a jazz musician friend who actually told me to leave the dissonance in, because it was interesting. So I guess it's tolerable? Chumble, good catch - I didn't notice that cut at the end, added another 2 secs to catch the whole fadeout. There are still some points in the final mix where all the shrill voices add up to be on the piercing side, which is what I'm most worried about...it sounds okay to me on headphones, but on my monitors it sometimes seems overwhelming, sometimes not. I don't know anymore. ; ; Guess the judges will determine whether it's unbearably piercing!

Oh yeah? Suc

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You have Addictive Drums? *envy* All the demos I hear of it sound so friggin' great, like this. OMG WHAT IS THIS AT 1:53 I'M THE BRUCE DICKINSON This arrangement is awesome. But all your shit is. Please to rock on, sir.

Xela! This is awesome. I'd meant to comment on this before. The section at 2:11 only lasts a couple seconds, but is that what you're worried about? I really liked it, was hoping it would keep going. That bit definitely had that movie score from early to mid last century sound going there, sounded great--such an appropriate style for Cid's theme and all the images of early aviation it conjures up. And the DnB-ish break at 1:30 was surprising but fit very well. Overall this is just smokin'. Love the concepts and the strange yet excellent blend of ideas. Can't wait to hear more, man. You asked about the reverb...I'm a bit of a reverb hater, so take this with a grain of salt. To me the reverb sounds a bit too heavy overall, but moreso on certain elements. I would rethink putting it on the master buss--at least take it off the kick entirely and ease up on the snare (both for the kit and the orchestral rolls). Reverb is killing the attack of the drums, and while the mix is very smooth, there's some crispness and attack missing that saps the dramatic flair/energy a bit. I know what you mean about it holding the mix together, but another layer of strings or a synth pad underneath everything (maybe alternating amongst various sustained washes of sound) could do something similar, without damping the character/bite of everything. You definitely still need some degree of reverb on most of the instruments, but I tend to think that lighter is better, and controlling the cohesiveness of the mix with another sound can be more effective. It's probably largely a matter of taste though, so again, YMMV. Anyway, keep it up, Xela. Great stuff here, I'll be watching for updates.

That bass sounds awesome. Aside from the drums which sound like they need effects, the sound design in this is pretty good. An original lead part would be great--I was hearing new melodies in my head to lay on top of this while listening. This could be an awesome jazz/trip-hop piece, if you're so inclined. Nice base, build on it!

Just FYI, the new sampler Samplelord can play GIGA files without conversion: http://www.samplelord.com/ The dev's got a special on both the sampler + his converter utility, which seems pretty good too. Might be worth an investment ($170~ for both) if more GIGA-format stuff goes on uber sale...

Awesome! I love that plugin too. Really happy for you man, (early?) congrats on making it!

I disagree that it's of limited benefit, and it's only niche due to consumer ignorance. That's the whole draw of buying lossless hard copies (aside from the weirdos who enjoy the packaging)--you can encode to whatever format and bitrate you want, however many times you want, and you never have to buy it again (assuming of course you treat it well and/or make sufficient backups; also ignoring SACDs and DVD audio etc. for the sake of argument--we can argue about repurchasing when everyone has a multi-terabyte iPod and is listening to surround mixes at 192kHz and whatnot; CD has been standard for some time and isn't dead yet). Music repurchase has been a huge scam every time music media format has had a sea change; we've all read the articles, I'm sure. You even mentioned repurchasing Cibo Matto albums! Robbery. Anyway, lossless is about half the size of WAV. 40-odd MB per 4-ish minute song IIRC? That's about the size of a high-quality movie trailer, and there's been no shortage of bandwidth sacrificed for free for those, so...

Okay, WIP #3! Tried to incorporate some of the suggestions...it sounds clearer, and the ending isn't as abrupt. Did some light filter automation on the lead to smooth over the shriller parts too. Sooo sick of this thing now. It's made me really listen to and appreciate OoT's soundtrack though...methinks a mellow Water Temple/Serenade of Water mix is next.

Man Avaris, you are always right on the money. Good ears! I agree with everything you said, tweaking accordingly. Appreciate the honesty too. Recorded myself. Actually bought a copy of the book with phonetic pronunciations of the hieroglyphs...but the chanting has a huge chain of effects on it anyway so it's not like you can tell how accurately I pronounced stuff. The one line that's actually sung is flipped backwards...it sounded cooler. Transcription is here: http://leah.johnsandford.org/music/seekrit/zeldaoot_botd_transcript.txt Btw, you think the chanting section sits okay in the mix? I've listened to this too much so it's hard to be objective about the arrangement anymore...

Bump, major update, see OP.

DJP - kudos to you and all the site staff for the hard work you do on this fantastic site. In the interest of improving a site we love, I'd like to voice some suggestions that I and some other users share concerning the level of interactivity/attention for certain aspects of the site. As you can see from any of the recent music-related competition threads in the Competitions forum, we're concerned that these threads are not visible enough to forum members and that we're missing opportunities there. I also personally think the game remix WIP forum could benefit from higher visibility while bestowing some of the same benefits to the community that a more visible Competitions forum could. Not sure what your plans are regarding further site design, but my suggestion is to make the modules on the front page of OCR customizable, and to change what the default modules are. Instead of Reviews, which I think is somewhat redundant (it often links to the same remixes displayed in the sidebar/"Previously on..." sections, or to old review threads that got bumped with a one-line comment), I suggest linking to the last X active topics in Competitions instead (default, customizable). I'd also suggest a module for the last X active topics in the game remix WIP forum, also default. Most of the competitions have deadlines ranging from one week (PRC - People's Remix Competition; ORC - Original Remix Competition, etc.) to one month (VOCR - vocal comp; FLMC - FL Studio comp, etc.), so it's essential that those who'd be interested in participating are aware of the current contests ASAP. By spotlighting this forum, I think we could increase the focus on music that sometimes seems to be lacking in forum discussion here (referring to the volume of posts about non-music topics vs. music-related topics). And of course, the more people actively practicing music production and critical listening--both in the Competition and WIP forums--the higher level of quality we can expect from music created by users of this site, which theoretically could lead to generally higher quality submissions to the site itself. As we saw when Malcos linked to the last VOCR comp in the Community Discussion forum, the interest and appreciation is definitely there, it's just more difficult to keep up and participate in forum events now with the more segregated structure of the forums. Please consider these thoughts whenever you have time. I think we could increase interaction at the different "levels" in which users participate in the site by making the contests and WIPs more visible--not everyone will get a song posted to the front page, but there are plenty of other opportunities to participate and enrich one's own knowledge/the community in general, if only people were more aware of them. Much love for OCR!

What I think would be cool is if we could have the last X active topics from the Competitions forum linked on the front page of the site. Does Reviews really need to be linked there? It either duplicates links to recent remixes that are already in the sidebar/"Previously on..." sections, or links to random old remixes that someone decided to post a one-line comment on--kinda redundant and unnecessary. That or, just allow people to customize which modules they see on the front page, and maybe make Competitions--and WIPs, imo--the default sections along with Announcements and Community Discussion, while getting rid of Reviews. People could change it to whatever they prefer. Having this forum and WIPs linked more prominently could encourage more substantial interaction/musical productivity in this community. Since the forum restructuring, it kind of feels that things are becoming more segregated and neglected, and that the unofficial music content on both aforementioned forums is slowly languishing from lack of attention. Has anyone spoken to DJP about this? Maybe someone could point him to this thread or others that explain our concerns. Or post your thoughts in the 2007 State of the ReMix thread where DJP asks for input - link on the front page. edit: Actually, I'll try to post something about all this on the SotR thread, but probably the more people who voice their thoughts, the better!

Sweet, good source. <3 Cave Story.

Holy crap, NICE deal! This library is also included with Quantum Leap RA, right?

The arrangement in this is pretty good, although the strings incessantly playing long chords in the background get tedious. The energetic sections toward the end are great, very powerful. There are some slight touches of dissonance here and there that almost recall Israfel's excellent work. Overall, excellent arrangement. If you're going for a small ensemble sound here, as it seems, one thing that's contributing to the unconvincing realism is the lack of articulations and velocity expression in your samples. Interestingly, there isn't much reverb in this, so it sounds very close and intimate--which could be a nice change from the usual orchestral stuff here that tends to be heavily reverbed and epically distant. I like your stylistic choice there, but I don't think this will quite work without a lot more expression in your samples. Volume and expression automation are really important. This could sound stunning with even a little bit. So yeah, kickin' arrangement, needs that human touch to push it to the next level. Good stuff, I'll be watching for updates.

http://www.ocremix.org/game/ffmysticquest/ The composers are Ryuji Sasai and Yasuhiro Kawakami. Never heard of their other work, if they've done any. And no, the game wasn't produced here, it was made by one of Square's Japanese dev teams. It was released in NA first, though. The only Square game I know of that was produced entirely in NA was Secret of Evermore, but I'm not keeping up with Square-Enix these days.

The acoustic sections are excellent, but the electronica sections pale beside them, relying on loud, unchanging arpeggios which get pretty tedious and drown out most of the mix; the drums are especially buried. To me, there's just a grating, cacophonous wall-of-sound effect during the louder electronica parts. First crossfade transition is pretty awkward. Some automation and effects on the electronic sections would have been nice, as that's where electronic music gets most of its expressiveness. Would have enjoyed this a lot more as a fully acoustic piece I think. *shrug*

Yay! (...10 characters my ass.)

"Get better samples" is one of those generic comments like... "the synths sound generic." It probably has more to do with HOW you're using the samples, what effects are on them, how you write the parts and use different articulations/velocity layers/etc., than the samples themselves. And Reason's included library is pretty decent, so...

It's too bad we can't get this on the Community forum (or can we? I know Malcos advertised the VOCR comp there).

Don't know the source, but this is gorgeous! Very expressive, wonderfully paced...just great. All I can suggest is on the production end...transients are not very clear and the overall definition of instruments is on the muddy side. Specifically I'm thinking of the clarity and power in Jared Hudson's mixes--are you familiar with them? But perhaps production is something you're leaving until the arrangement is finished. Anyway, great stuff here.