Top Gear Track 3

[DJSoto13]

I always loved this song when I was playing this game (Top Gear, SNES). It felt so badass. Now... It feels a little calmer in this arrangement. But it's relatively conservative... Thoughts?

[No Escape]

Okay this isn't bad at all. I'm not sure the bass fits quite right. It sounds like an upright jazz bass, but this genre should call for a regular sound. It doesn't have enough mid highs in it to give me the feeling of a bass. the piano patches sounded decent. I'm not sure I'm completely sold on the lead setting (it works, but could definitely be better). Actually at about 1:40, the lead sounds decent, so maybe reverting all the leads to that patch would be for the best. There's not much going on with the drums, and I think the track could benefit from a little more action there, but that's preference. Production is passable, but definitely will need more work as you start to finalize the track. I hope this is a good start to work with and I'm some of these other vets will hop in and fill in the gaps I'm leaving. Good luck

[Rozovian]

Chris, you're not listening close enough.

Yeah, this is a lot calmer than the source, but some of your sound choices are highly questionable and others need to be mixed more clearly. Their quality can then become an issue. Anyway, the organ and other stuff in the background is really blurry and what little melody that's discernible is pretty distracting later on when there's other stuff going on. The long notes also end up clashing sometimes. Piano sounds quantized and not very dynamically sequenced anyway. Drums are completely drowned out by the dry guitar - which sounds a little too fake to work. The reverbed guitar is better, but still nothing compared to the real thing.

The whole thing is too conservative for ocr, but with this level of production you're not getting on there any time soon anyway. Practice makes pancakes - the more you make, the better you get. It has a cool mood and sounds like a good track to hone your production skills on.

Make it good. It'll make _you_ good.

[No Escape]

Yea you got me My review was pretty lenient. This track will require a lot of work to be OCR ready, but it's decent for what it is. If you wanted to try to go OCR submission with this, I would recommend getting a guitarist to help you out, and rework the drums quite a bit. On a second listen, the piano still sounds alright when I hear it (fake, alright), but I'm noticing that the bass is panned a little heavy to the right (I guess it was to compensate for the organ taking the left) and it sounds like it needs to come back in more. The mix did muddy up a little, and I think it's primarily the combo of choir and organ that I'm hearing (maybe trying carving out different frequencies out of each to allow them to sit better together). Also, whatever setting you having playing and octave below the leads is a little distracting and hard to distinguish as an instrument (maybe harp or a lower octave on the intro piano?). I would ditch that bad boy and try a few other patches in there to get a more balanced sound. Still, good luck with it, and even if it doesn't go OCR, it's still a nice track:-)

SEE DJSOTO? I told you the vets would follow up and make me look stupid

J/K Rozo- thanks for calling me out, it keeps me sharp:-)

[hewhoisiam]

No Escape! FOR SHAME! IT WAS BAD AND YOU SHOULD FEEL BAD!

I want the lows lower and the highs higher, or spread out enough so that you can hear the gaps between them. Mostly I'm think about the bass. Right now the pad sound is heavy and the bass is quiet. I picture like the hard bass type mix with a really distinct bass to it. Since this opens up on the bass, I assume you want it prominent.

Drums are non existent in this. I mean, they're there... but uh. That ride has no body whatsoever, no ring, no life! I don't hear any kick drum. It is makes me sad.

The panning in this may be a bit extreme, if you want some panning that far, that's fine, just bring it together so the whole song isn't over like that. These are broken headphones, and they're surround, so eh. It's rough to be sure what's panned where. But I hear lots of bass right.

When you have pads+organ, tone the pads down, they're not as necessary methinks. The same thing when you've got the guitar layered with the piano, it's like they're fighting for space playing the exact same note like that. It can work and sound really good, but here it's just not working for me. Maybe rework the balance or guitar something? Along those lines, there's areas where the piano and guitar parts seem to me like they should be reversed, piano on the higher octave, guitars brought down. I'd have to hear it that way though, so I dunno.

Hope that helps

[DJSoto13]

Okay, so I'll have to mess around with the panning and distributing parts evenly so they don't "fight" each other. A little trick for all of you - I did not put any drums in here. I just put an instrument in there (a soft bass + a ride cymbal) for rhythm. I'll put some [relatively] gentle drums in there later.

This is obviously nowhere NEAR OCR quality (production, originality, instrument arrangements, etc). This is just one of many songs I'm playing around with to see what goes with what. I'm trying to teach myself all these things that make music, such as the veterans' OCR submissions, sound amazing. I've made several pancakes, enough for them to actually begin to taste like pancakes, but not pantheon, pancakes-of-the-gods-quality pancakes (if we're going with Rozovian's metaphor).

But thank you, to EVERYONE.

Also, the vets aren't making you look stupid, NE. I think I'm the glutton for punishment here haha

[hewhoisiam]

A ride cymbal with no drum kit?! Propostorousnessezzes! Who will hit your kick drum with NO SET?! Can I just take this time to shamelessly promote a brush kit in there? It's soft, jazzy, lays down some beat without screaming 'look at me!' Could be that I'm bias from working with brushes recently too... Either way.

I do love me some pancakes... I review everything from the thought 'this is what it takes' to improve not to step on any toes. Of course, I usually get to a thing that Rozovian has already hit and have to twiddle my thumbs at it...

Good luck, keep at it o/

[BlackPanther]

It would be cool to get a link to the source xD. But on to the attempt at a review:

Piano sounds rigid, not human like. Where's that guitar from? It doesn't sound too bad in my opinion but then again I'm a nub when it comes to guitars so you might want to disregard my comment lol. That pad that sounds like it's panned to the left kinda hard is very distracting. It's not really doing anything to help the track stay cohesive, it feels like it's doin it's own thing, might want to center that more and help to keep it balanced in the frequency spectrum.

Wasn't really satisfied with the ride cymbal by itself seems like it needs more drum work. If you're goin for a chill type style, you can still get away with a kick and snare just give the snare some verb and make sure that the drum beat is slow, but that's more of a personal preference. That's all I got I think

Overall this sounds cool, but could definitely use some work in production. Just keep workin and practicin and you'll get there. I'm sure Rozo covered basically everything that needed to be said but I figured I would chime in anyways since you were so kind to check my music out. Good luck to you bud!

[DJSoto13]

Source:

And I'm playing around with a jazz kit... It's... A little shaky so I'll try what you're saying (a chill cymbal-snare-bass combo). And I was surprised when I heard this guitar (it's a preloaded guitar patch) and... I actually love the tone.

But in addition to the drums, I'm still going to have to pan things around (I was thinking guitar to the left a little, lead piano to the right, bass/harp/drums/everything else in the middle). Do you have any tips (aside from Zircon's sticky) on mastering and production?

[BlackPanther]

Yeah the remix was a bit conservative, try to expand beyond the melodies a bit. As far a as production goes, there are a lot of things that goes into that, plus I'm not sure what you're havin trouble with, there are a few guides around here and zircon is actually gonna be coming out with a full beginning to finish series of video tutorials of making a remix so I'm sure that'll help a lot of people such as yourself me included xD.

Some things I would say is: Make sure your samples have a clear sound, you don't want lo-fi unless it's intentional. Watch volume levels aside from instruments and sounds fitting into the frequency spectrum nicely, you want the sounds to fit cohesively without being to overbearing or soft to hear. As far as the stereo field goes, anything bassy is center for a nice tight sound, and everything else you can keep normal or widen a little bit, just don't overdo it. That's all I can think of right now, I suck at this type of stuff but I'm workin on it =D.

[DJSoto13]

So I put this together - differently placed instruments, an actual drum track... Yeah. However... I don't like it (at least parts of it).

There's an part that made me wince (when the distortion guitar drops out right at the beginning to give way to the piano solo). When I play that by myself, it seems really confusing to listen to both the piano solo and the rhythm (the part played by the bass at the very beginning), so I dropped that out (it seemed empty, so I kept it in. Just as a craptastic attempt at palm-muting). Any suggestions on how to make fades in/out better?

Also, when there's a powerful hit on the drums (on most of the cymbal crashes), it seems like it's distorted. There's a crunch there that I don't like. Any suggestions on how to get a crisp, slightly edgy, but still "clean" sound for drums?

Thanks to any and all responses.