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OCR01672 - F-Zero "The Freedom of Zero"


djpretzel
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Wow, I'm glad I refreshed the front page one last time before I went to bed.

Great singing, sweet groove, nice choice of sounds and all around good song. I did find the drums a bit strangely mixed, the snare sounded hollow but it wasn't that annoying. When the open hi-hat enters though, the drum kit gets a tad too much.

The filtered drums was a nice touch and worked great with the piano, taking it into a more "ska" feeling was a pretty nice move too. I loved the organ licks and I adored your girlfriends announcer voice, that's creativity right there! The arrangement is well written and everything seems like it belongs in the track, the only thing I can think of is that the production sometimes feels a bit thin but it isn't really a big problem when it comes to this style.

This is one smooth remix, recommended.

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I hardly ever post, but I just had to for this one. This is one of the most enjoyable mixes I've heard in a really, really long time. Extremely polished, chilled, and creative. The transitions are so smooth and and vocals work perfectly. I love it.

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Oshit! Another harmony mix!

Anybody familiar with Harmony's past work will, of course, have very high expectations of this mix.

And the mix certainly doesn't dissappoint. Awesome track.

Now brandon, how the fuck did you do that at 0:39? Where the vox transforms into a synth and slides up? Awesome, seamless effect, and I have no idea how you did it.

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Really nice work, Harmony. I love how you explore different styles in each of your remixes. The spoken vox is great and what you did to your voice at 0:40 was used as a nice transition. I did feel this mix was somewhat lacking in low end and the vocals were mixed a little too quietly at some points, but these are minor complaints. Kudos to you!

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Humm don't get me wrong, it's a compliment, but your girlfriend sounds hot! ;)

She absolutely have the "professional-polite-transportation-voice"!

You also have a great relaxing voice, it's overall a very relaxing song... great thing it got posted at night, I'll have sweets dreams tonight!! ;)

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"Respect" at :39

Reminds me of that one scene in Rocky, where Adrien and Rocky are having that intimate moment and are about to go at it (hee)... In the background you hear this 70s era synth on the radio playing and it does this exact same thing. So yeah, for a moment you channeled Bill Conti... That's hilariously great.

Anyway, this was fun. Good job as always Harmony, glad you mixed another song on OCR. The drums sound pretty cool, I like the rolls, though I'm not sure I'm a huge fan of that hit... but w/e that's nitpicking. The song picks up and yeah, it works out well, especially when the e-guitar comes in then fades out, which cools it all down and allows the song to work up another build.

I liked the change-up for the last minute too. Chilled everything out pretty well for the ending fadeout. I always loved this source so yeah, great job expanding on it. Kudos

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This is pretty much the type of thing I'd expect from Harmony, but I just had to come in and say that turning your voice into the car sound was a stroke of genius. It took me completely by surprise, and was amazingly effective.

djp mentioned the Barenaked Ladies, but what this really reminded me of was StarBlast's work. And if you're not sure whether that's a compliment or not, it most definitely is.

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LOL @ the stray children part, indeed.

Excellent work with this remix, man. Loved that vocal-to-synth switch-up everyone has been raving about. The transition to Mute City is also awesome. Over-the-top piano and guitar work there. And of course, an excellent singing voice.

Not a fan of the voice-over work, but your girlfriend is quite believable. She should do this type of stuff for mall and airlines or something. :P

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Thanks OCR, glad you’re enjoying so far! Dave, I’m thoroughly honored by that write-up, it really means a lot to me. Thanks also to Larry and the other J’s that listened to this and gave it the all-clear for a DP.

Vocal Pitch-Bending:

This song actually started as an attempt to figure out how to do that vox pitch bend at 0:39, and it sounds like everyone thinks the final product is just as cool as I do. I ended up recording me singing “respeeeeeeee”, then carefully looping the last part of that (the “eeeeee”) to create about a 60sec clip, then importing the entire clip into FLStudio as an audio clip. I played the audio clip in the piano roll, then used slide notes at the appropriate times to achieve the effect. The long 60sec clip was required because FLStudio’s pitch slides don’t preserve the clip length (or at least I don’t know how to make them). I like the quality of the pitch bending algorithms in SONAR better than FLStudio, so if anyone has any other suggestions as to how they’d do something similar using other methods, I’m all ears.

Drum Kit:

If I had it to do all over again, I’d lower the volume on the kit and cut some of the mid-highs; I agree it gets a little grating at times. However, I think the snare sample is absolutely perfect and I’ll defend that choice to the death!

I can hear the odd off note because a different source doesn't *quite* fit

I think I know what you mean. The source for White Land is not only in a different key, but the lead for this mix is also played in a different key relative to the bassline. Don’t ask me to go into music theory that I don’t know, but the original had a chilled mixolydian feel to it (for the guitar folk out there). In my adaptation, I sort-of "Americanized" the lead/bass harmonies to a more simplistic major scale deal. I think that all of the harmonies work in context, but if you know and are referencing the original, they may sound odd or off. In the end though, I’ll put it out there that all of the harmonies were either intentionally constructed, or intentionally left in the mix because I liked them, and I’m glad to hear that they aren’t too bothersome :)

e-guitar stands for "electric guitar"...

friggin idiot.

<3 Larry. Thank you for your tireless defense of ReMixers against misguided or malicious reviewers. Nevertheless, rofl. Actually all of the guitar work was done with my acoustic guitar.

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Vocals had a decent tone and the harmonies were pretty decent. Its a bit too heavy on the drum machine. Pitch bending was a cool effect. second time the vocals come in the dynamics of the other elements needed to be lowered a little because they were overpowering them. Nice use of a triplet figure a little past the middle. Overall nice jazzy feel, I enjoyed it. I did find the announcer lady to sound a bit hokey. I rate 8.3/10

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