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The Big Video Tutorial - What do YOU want to see?


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I'm getting better at video editing and my YouTube channel (http://www.youtube.com/zirconST) is really starting to pick up steam. So, I've decided to prepare my biggest video tutorial project yet, a comprehensive walkthrough of creating a remix from start to finish. It's definitely going to be a big undertaking, but I think it would be pretty useful to a lot of people.

However, before I start, I'm curious what you guys think would be good to include in such a project. Keep in mind this would be 4-6 videos long (in all likelihood) so there's a lot of time to work with.

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(déjà vu-thread, unless the "remix" bit was meant to be more emphasized than it seemed in relation to "from start to finish")

Well, everything, heh. If you're actually going to make a full remix while recording, just do that - show EVERYTHING, no off camera cheating or fast forwarding - (explaining why you do whatever you're currently doing, of course) and it'll be bestest ever.

Achieving clarity and no mud in the mix while getting any kind of volume is still my worst enemy, while I think I know most tips people give and gradually improve (I think?) it's still annoyingly far away (especially considering how much I usually want to cram in there) and I'm such a "learn by seeing" guy, can't wait for whatever this ends up being. Thanks in advance.

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(déjà vu-thread, unless the "remix" bit was meant to be more emphasized than it seemed in relation to "from start to finish")

Well, everything, heh. If you're actually going to make a full remix while recording, just do that - show EVERYTHING, no off camera cheating or fast forwarding - (explaining why you do whatever you're currently doing, of course) and it'll be bestest ever.

Achieving clarity and no mud in the mix while getting any kind of volume is still my worst enemy, while I think I know most tips people give and gradually improve (I think?) it's still annoyingly far away (especially considering how much I usually want to cram in there) and I'm such a "learn by seeing" guy, can't wait for whatever this ends up being. Thanks in advance.

^ I agree with the first paragraph. Somethin I would like to see explained is your chain of effects. How to put the right touches on compressors and reverbs and eq'ing and what type of order you should put all those things in. I know stuff like that varies from song and instrument, but I'm sure there are still general guidelines and principals that would help for everyone.

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Achieving clarity and no mud in the mix while getting any kind of volume

This would be really cool. Also, though, if you had some time to go over reverb a little, that would be great - like how much and what kind gets used on which tracks in a song or even just the basics of how the different parameters (the typical ones, as I know there are a lot of different plugins) work and how they should be used. Either way, I really appreciate you making the video. I'm sure it'll be really helpful no matter what you end up putting in. Thanks!

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Thanks for the feedback guys! I'm definitely leaning toward a series of videos that literally shows the creation of a remix from start to finish, rather than specific components of remixing isolated. I'm not sure about having no editing - I don't think I can do a remix in just an hour or so :P I'll probably do some cleaning up and delete any parts where I'm just going 'uhhh' or generally not knowing what to do. But I'll definitely include anything relating to the process.

What do you guys think? Oh yeah, and this is all going to be 720p, highest quality audio possible.

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Thanks for the feedback guys! I'm definitely leaning toward a series of videos that literally shows the creation of a remix from start to finish, rather than specific components of remixing isolated. I'm not sure about having no editing - I don't think I can do a remix in just an hour or so :P I'll probably do some cleaning up and delete any parts where I'm just going 'uhhh' or generally not knowing what to do. But I'll definitely include anything relating to the process.

What do you guys think? Oh yeah, and this is all going to be 720p, highest quality audio possible.

If you simply vocalise all of the "major decisions" that you make while remixing, then I think that in itself would be extremely valuable. Follow the "speak-aloud" protocol.

So if you're doing something like choosing synths, rather than twiddling the knob say, "That sound has too much body in it so I'm going to reduce the cutoff... bit more... bit more. OK, I like that, it's going to sound good with the arps I've got going in the back. Hmm, now that I listen to this again there's a bit of mud, probably in the 800-1K range so I'm going to cut those frequencies in the arps like so."

...

"Okay, so now that I got this sound I'm going to put down the chords. I listened to the source and got these four: A, E, G, and F. I'm going to repeat those in the first part here but I think the chorus needs some more spice. Let's see... so for that part I'm going to use these chords instead."

....

And so on. I'm sure this is what you have in mind but I think that a "stream of consciousness" video might have some value for people who are curious about how remixing works and how musicians make decisions.

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OK, very helpful feedback. To me, I sound stupid when I'm just talking to myself and fiddling with things, but I'm more than happy to do that if people would think it would be helpful. :)

PART 2...

What song should I remix?

I'm thinking either the Zelda 3 "Fairy Fountain" theme, River City Ransom (the main theme, bluesy one) or Phantasy Star 4 - End of the Millienium.

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OK, very helpful feedback. To me, I sound stupid when I'm just talking to myself and fiddling with things, but I'm more than happy to do that if people would think it would be helpful. :)

Most people do, so don't worry. When I run experiments looking at people for user interface testing I encourage them to speak aloud and then prompt them if they happen to fall silent. This is also what editing is for.

I found, for example, watching Flik work on a one-hour Flik Omp really interesting even though he didn't do any think-aloud on that. Just watching him jam out on the keyboard and write down ideas and choose instruments (despite not being able to see his screen clearly) was educational.

Since as you said you probably can't complete a (good high-quality) remix in an hour you'll have to be creative in how you can get the major ideas across without actually removing too much of the meat. Another consideration of course is to actually try a one-hour compo style approach and get the "main ideas" of a song done in an hour, and then skip a bit and do a separate video when you get down to a "polishing" phase that most people are interested in.

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I'd have a whole dedication somewhere along the line to how to decide what kind of synths would fit with a song and how YOU go about deciding what YOUR synths are.

I'd also like to see this, and it would be quite interesting to see you create a synth sound from scratch, as that's an area I'm keen to improve upon. Finding the right synth sound can take literally hours for me, and even then I'm still not happy! Any tips would be greatly appreciated.

Also, I wish I had youtube at work :(

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Alright, I'm actually having a hell of a time getting my recording setup to work properly. The first time I recorded, Camstudio just cut off the last 8 minutes of the recording, rendering it unusable. I'm using Voxengo Recorder to output the audio from FL and my mic separately, but with this latest thing I recorded, THAT is choppy from time to time too, cutting out entire words at a time. Worse still, the audio/video completely desyncs. At this point I've recorded the same remix start twice and now I have to pick something completely different. Weak as hell :(

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