Laguna - Man with the Golden Machine Gun

[Gario]

Alrighty, after a slight bit of embarrassment (after claiming this track has no errors in production ), I've revised it to (hopefully) fix what Cyril and Nutritious heard... and I added some sidechaining.

Man with the Golden Machine Gun (Fixed)

Interesting, Nutritious, I never thought to use a program like that to check for clipping and heat... Goddammit, how the hell did I ever manage?! That's going to help me out in so many things in the future. Thanks a lot for the picture .

Compressing the entire song into half a screen width will still get you a similar looking picture, even after the changes, but if you expand it you'll notice it has considerably fewer moments where the peaks flatten out (although there are a few that are still there - whether or not I go back to fix those depends on if anyone notices them when they listen to it).

Thanks for the help, and enjoy once again!

[Nutritious]

Just to clarify, these meters aren't always 100% accurate. I didn't hear clipping in your prev mix, per se, but it was definitely slammed too hard on the compressor. I've found that soundforge sometimes shows mp3's limited at 0.0 to be clipping, even though they're not. That's one reason I always master to -.1 dB.

Anyway, on the mix, I think there's still room for improvement here...

Pretty cool intro going here. I think you could do more with that :15 break to make it more interesting (personal) and lead hard into the beat. There's quite a bit of clutter when things really kick in here. Low end with kick and bass are really taking a lot of room sounds like. Things get cluttered in the high end more as things go on as well, esp at :57 and 1:09. There's just not enough room for everything to sit nicely yet.

Transitions are a mixed bag. Try to lead into some of the new sections with your writing. Dropping everything suddenly to a new section does work in dance genres, but try and intersperse some more interesting transitions. 2:37 was an especially weak transition.

Really liked what you did with the ascending line at 2:00.

Sometimes it feels like there's just too much going on - too much noise. Try to focus it a bit more without losing some of the energy.

So, try to focus on getting things cleaned up. Get your bass and kick distinct from each other & clear up the clutter. Arrangement side sounds good here, so really focus on getting the production up to speed and I think you're a go.

EDIT: Forgot to mention, some of the synths struck me as being a bit on the bland side. The bass synth was one, and a few other filler and sequenced ones were pretty basic. See if you can do some things to make them more interesting, effects, filters, etc or maybe replace a few.

[Gario]

Thanks for the input, Nutritious! I'll probably tone down the panning in the intro and fade it down a bit so the transition hits a little harder.

Yeah, I'm still working on :57 and 1:09 - I hear it, but haven't gotten to it yet (working on getting rid of the hot fuzz, which I think I took care of, for the most part). It's mostly one of the synths that's taking all the room on top... I turned him down, but it's probably not enough.

We'll see what I can do about the transitions (I agree 2:37 is not that great, and I'm sure some of the others are nothing special, either). I know how to do decent transitions, but I wrote this in... a day, for the laughs? I also have a thing for sudden transitions, so some of those might stay, just 'cause I like em'.

As for my synth bass, I don't know what I can do with it to make it more interesting. Sadly, that's the best sample I found, and since I'm using Reason 3.0 that limits my options to whatever is on the program, pretty much (no vst compatibility ). Putting effects on a bass is a no-no, since it not only takes up space in the lows, but also in the highs so I'd be shooting myself in the foot if I tried to 'spice it up' with effects (woo for basic acoustics)... Besides, there are four other basses in there that make appearances, so if one isn't interesting maybe one of the others will be .

Perhaps I can make the other synths more interesting, though. I'll work on some of that (although the chips obviously stay cheezy - that's what they're there for).

Too much noise... I hope you don't mean the gunshots, 'cause I'm leaving them in, sorry . Otherwise... I understand where you're coming from, but I do like the texture of the piece, as it is. I may turn some down and emphasize others, however, to give a little more room.

Again, thanks for critiquing this - while I like praise (who doesn't?), good criticism is far more valuable, in the long run.

[Gario]

D-D-D-DOUBLE P-P-POST!

Believe it or not, I did a little clean-up on this track. I cleared the sound scape up a little bit and fixed up one of the transitions. It's only got a few more days until it hits the panels, so I figured I'd get it as clean as I can before the J's see it.

Man with the Golden Machine Gun

Um... yeah, I'm basically just sharing this, as it is. If you have criticism, go ahead and let me know, but this file was already submit a while ago so I won't be able to make too many changes to it before it hits the panel.

Thanks again, Nutritious, for the help .

[Melbu Frahma]

I'm not a big chiptune fan, but you've got me lovin' this. Great stuff, Gario!

[Ransom]

Your latest version sounds pretty good. Like Nutritious said, I really like what you did with the ascending line at 2:00. I'm not too crazy about the gun sound effects though. However, things do break down really well at 2:38, and build up really nicely at about 3:18. I would have loved to hear more originality like at those parts. I was really digging them, and it felt like they became conservative again too quickly for my liking.

Still, I'm a big fan of the source tune, and I like what you've done with it, overall.