bardofawen

This was lots of fun. Great use of unconventional samples.

There's a lot of good stuff here. As ProjectSpam said, the intro is really great. The layering of the strings/pads is haunting, as are the chimes delivering the original theme's counterpoint. The whole piece feels very much like an ethereal mist glittering with pinpricks of starlight. The addition of the piano echoing a reminder of the famous prelude is a nice touch, but the instrumentation doesn't quite work for me. It might work if you had a better piano, or it might work on a different instrument. Right now, the piano just sounds weak and fake compared to your other instruments. After the first minute or so, we've heard pretty much everything there is to this piece, we've got strings and ethereal voices and tinkling chimes and piano, but they all pretty much to their own thing. The voices in particular become a bit grating. They start wonderfully, but they go on for too long, become too prominent, and they never changed tone. There's nothing wrong with a drone of course, but this one isn't working for me. It goes from been really subtle and lovely to beating me over the head with a bat that says "Look! I'm mysterious!" More subtlety please! Don't be afraid to step a little further away from the original work. Let the pads explore some different harmonies. Play with different sounds and try different layering effects. Maybe even throw in some nonstandard percussion effects. As it stands, the mystery wears off to fast, so keep us on the edge of our seats. Looking forward to hearing more!

I don't know if Guitar Center is still having this sale, but to sweeten the deal... IK Multimedia is having a "buy one, get one free" event through the 31st of January. The best part? It doesn't matter where you purchase the product. Your choice of free product is immediately available to you after you register. I picked up Miroslav Philharmonik, then grabbed Sampletank XL for free. There are some other nice options like SampleMoog if you're into those classic Moog sounds, plus a bunch of guitar and bass Amp modeling software. It's definitely worth a look, I think. This offer is good for any IK Multimedia Product registered between November 15, 2008 and January 31. Here is the flyer that explains everything http://cachepe.zzounds.com/media/MIC_PromoSheet-EXTPDF-3dc145e49c4b63163ff7ad19cf1ffb1a.pdf

Looking forward to it!

Good advice. Thanks, folks. Unfortunately, getting to a retailer is a big problem for me at the moment. I think I may just have to make my best educated guess, order from an online shop that offers a satisfaction guarantee, and see what happens.

I'm going to go ahead and ditto brothersum on the reverb. The entire remix sounds like it's been recorded at the bottom of a well. At first, I thought perhaps you were going a different place with this remix, using the heavy reverb as a sort of envelope to separate and accentuate the original music before you began to interpret it. But in the end, there isn't a lot of new interpretation here. And that brings us to the bigger problem: it's very, very close to the source material. So close, in fact, that it sounds like you took a MIDI file of the original, changed some of the synths, and just recorded it as is. Even if you composed this from memory, you really haven't added anything to this piece. If you're planning to submit this to OCR, you really need to break away from the established arrangement and do something more with this. Good luck with it. It's a great piece, and a worthy effort. I'd definitely like to hear it again after you've done more work on it.

Thanks for the help, everyone! The Oxygen seems to be the smallest of the true keyboards that I've found, but I think I'm favoring the Axiom 25 for its semi-weighted keys. Does anyone have any experience with the Korg NanoKEYS? Reviews seem to be mixed. Either it's the greatest thing since equal temperament, or else it's a piece of garbage. I'd love to hear some thoughts if anyone has one/has worked with one.

Thanks for the recommendation! I think I'm definitely looking for something more in the 25 key range, however. 37 might be doable, but even with micro-keys, I think 49 would be getting a bit unwieldy. In a very literal sense, I need something that will comfortably fit in my lap.

Hey everyone! I'm currently looking for an inexpensive MIDI Controller, as I've come to realize that mouse-based note entry is contributing to two of my biggest compositional problems: mechanical playback and general compositional fatigue. I've been looking around at some options already, but nothing has really grabbed my attention yet. This is what I'm looking for: - Inexpensive. I'd really rather not spend more than $100, but that's not looking like an option. Cheaper it is better. - Small. I can't stress this enough. I don't have room for a full-size or even a half size keyboard. I barely have room for my equipment as it is very I don't really need more than a couple octaves to work with. Ideally, I'd like something with micro-keys rather than full-sized keys, but I haven't seen anything like that on the market. I know Korg used to make keyboards with micro-keys, but the only thing I've seen from them recently is their vocoder. That's really too much machine for what I'm trying to do. - Semi-weighted keys would be preferable, but unweighted keys would not be a dealbreaker if everything else is just right. When it comes down to it, all I really need in a controller is 20-30 keys, a mod wheel, and MIDI Out. Did you ever have one of those tiny little Casio keyboards as a kid? Something that size would be perfect, but I haven't seen anything in that size that's MIDI-capable. Is there something out there like this, and I just haven't found it yet? Thanks!

Wow. Great stuff! In regard to your question, my gut feeling is that you need to tie this in more closely to the source material in order for it to be considered. I suspect your gut is telling you the same thing, or you wouldn't be here asking this question. Don't get me wrong. You that your friend have a great sound, and I suspect the judges would really like this. It's my impression that the judges here are a little bit more lenient with jazz interpretations and other forms that typically focus on improvisation. You also have a distinct advantage in recording (talented) live musicians. Live performers tend to stand out amid the sea of synthesized submissions. In short, I think they will like your sound a lot, and if you sent them a cleaned up version of this, I think you'd have at least a 50/50 chance of it being selected. When it comes down to it, however, this isn't a piece so much as a riff. It's a really good riff, and you should be proud of it, but if I were a judge, that's the one thing that would keep me from voting yes. Take this riff, put some more thought into it, and make a piece out of it, and I suspect the end result will proudly join the ranks of OCRemixes.

Great album! I really enjoyed "Burn Out" and "Air" in particular.