Anger is for the Birds

[Guy_Sweater]

Hey Everyone,

Nice to meet ya. First time remixer, long time food eater. I do mostly original composition, but I thought that doing remixing would help improve my work in virtual instruments as well as arranging in all the different possibilities.

I'm really trying to get a better mix overall, however, I'm open to arrangement critiques as well. I'd love to get your feedback on this first go at it. Here is the info:

Remix - http://soundcloud.com/grhufnagl/anger-is-for-the-birds

Angry Birds

Anger is for the Birds

Main Title Theme

I was going to submit an arrangement of the Angry Birds theme for a contest under the theme of "magic," but since it was cancelled, I decided to have fun with it in a different direction. It is a Metal/Rock inspired aesthetic in 5/4 time, sprinkled with squealies, deedlies and ba dumby dums for good measure.

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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vUdW8gmZpFA

I look forward to hearing from you all. Thanks for your time and consideration!

-George

[Ivan Hakštok]

Ok, the idea is nice, but the execution doesn't really do well.

First thing that I noticed is that the way the remix is done makes it lack some general structure. While it's not necessarily a bad thing, it makes the tune somewhat less enjoyable.

Rhythm guitars lack a bit more energy, I'd try double-tracking them. Synth leads are a bit too loud compared to other instruments at some parts. Drums could also use more energy, maybe try compressing them a bit more.

[Guy_Sweater]

First thing that I noticed is that the way the remix is done makes it lack some general structure. While it's not necessarily a bad thing, it makes the tune somewhat less enjoyable.

Rhythm guitars lack a bit more energy, I'd try double-tracking them. Synth leads are a bit too loud compared to other instruments at some parts. Drums could also use more energy, maybe try compressing them a bit more.

Great feedback, thanks! Perhaps increasing the length of each of the sections and working with the material more will help coalesce the differences in sections.

The "lack of energy" is exactly what I'm hoping to counter. My mixes tend to sound a bit flat, so I'm going to back to each track individually and work on boosting frequency bands via EQ. I've only been working with virtual instruments for a couple years and did a major upgrade at the end of 2010, so getting a great "presence" in the mix is where I'm looking to work hard in improving.

Thanks for your advice, Ivan!

[Dhsu]

Liking the concept. Sounds piratey!

[Guy_Sweater]

Liking the concept. Sounds piratey!

Thanks David! I appreciate the kind words.

[bananabomberman]

Haha. Agreed on the piratey part.

From my roomie, it doesn't sound as fun as the original. Perhaps you can pull off a fun piratey mix? =D

[Rozovian]

Banana, a remix doesn't have to sound like the original at all.

The judges seem to think the arrangement is good (5/4 ftw), but the problem was with the production, so let's focus on that. Saves me the trouble of learning the source, being the only person in the world who doesn't have Angry Birds.

I'm ok with the first 6 seconds, but the guitar really drags the whole thing down. Some vibrato might help, and varying the sound of the chugs (I'd image the first and/or third of every group of chugs would be a little louder). The chugs sound ok while in the background, but when exposed they need to sound more human.

At 1:10 the guitar lead sounds more like a synth than like a guitarist. Do some air guitaring and try to figure out how it could sound more alive. Pitch bends, vibrato, and getting the guitar to wail tends to add a certain amount of performance to it, but the classic tools of timing, note length, and velocity shouldn't be overlooked.

Leads in the following section are a bit too loud and drown out everything else. From 1:23 there seems to be some note clashes or just weird harmonies.

The whole thing sounds rather soft, see if you can filter out excess lows from tracks that don't need them - that could give you some more headroom to work with. Use it to boost the drums a bit.

Cool track, and it got you a couple of votes to RESUB (and any resub will afaik be fast-tracked to the panel, so less waiting). Good luck with it.

[Guy_Sweater]

I'm ok with the first 6 seconds, but the guitar really drags the whole thing down. Some vibrato might help, and varying the sound of the chugs (I'd image the first and/or third of every group of chugs would be a little louder). The chugs sound ok while in the background, but when exposed they need to sound more human.

At 1:10 the guitar lead sounds more like a synth than like a guitarist. Do some air guitaring and try to figure out how it could sound more alive. Pitch bends, vibrato, and getting the guitar to wail tends to add a certain amount of performance to it, but the classic tools of timing, note length, and velocity shouldn't be overlooked.

Leads in the following section are a bit too loud and drown out everything else. From 1:23 there seems to be some note clashes or just weird harmonies.

The whole thing sounds rather soft, see if you can filter out excess lows from tracks that don't need them - that could give you some more headroom to work with. Use it to boost the drums a bit.

Cool track, and it got you a couple of votes to RESUB (and any resub will afaik be fast-tracked to the panel, so less waiting). Good luck with it.

Hey Rozovian,

Thanks for taking the time to listen and respond. There is a lot of great advice here and I appreciate all the tidbits. This should really Help. Just a couple of questions - "The whole thing sounds rather soft, see if you can filter out excess lows from tracks that don't need them - that could give you some more headroom to work with. Use it to boost the drums a bit."

Do you mean this in a per-instance basis or would rolling of a whole part of the frequency band be in order (e.g. everything 70Hz and below)?

Thanks again!

[Rozovian]

"The whole thing sounds rather soft, see if you can filter out excess lows from tracks that don't need them - that could give you some more headroom to work with. Use it to boost the drums a bit."

Do you mean this in a per-instance basis or would rolling of a whole part of the frequency band be in order (e.g. everything 70Hz and below)?

A lot of instruments have some low frequency content in them that you can't hear, that doesn't actually contribute to the sound, and that only shifts the rest of the audio towards the compression threshold. Generally, bass and bass drum doesn't do well without at least one of them reaching down to about 40Hz, maybe more, maybe less.

On the other hand, when you have high bells, cymbals, or other instruments that really don't benefit any from lows, you can safely roll off the lows on those. Depending on how controlled you want the sound to be, reducing some lows on pads and other instruments that have some useful low frequency content might also be a good thing.

Cutting the lows at 70Hz would have you lose valuable bass sound, but on many instruments, you can safely roll off the lows at 400Hz or even higher (depending on the instrument and its notes). Don't do it indiscriminately, just see which tracks don't need stuff under 200Hz and cut everything below that.

But my complaint is primarily about the low volume. There's more tricks to getting a little more volume out of a track than to just cut unnecessary lows.

[Guy_Sweater]

A lot of instruments have some low frequency content in them that you can't hear, that doesn't actually contribute to the sound, and that only shifts the rest of the audio towards the compression threshold. Generally, bass and bass drum doesn't do well without at least one of them reaching down to about 40Hz, maybe more, maybe less.

On the other hand, when you have high bells, cymbals, or other instruments that really don't benefit any from lows, you can safely roll off the lows on those. Depending on how controlled you want the sound to be, reducing some lows on pads and other instruments that have some useful low frequency content might also be a good thing.

Cutting the lows at 70Hz would have you lose valuable bass sound, but on many instruments, you can safely roll off the lows at 400Hz or even higher (depending on the instrument and its notes). Don't do it indiscriminately, just see which tracks don't need stuff under 200Hz and cut everything below that.

But my complaint is primarily about the low volume. There's more tricks to getting a little more volume out of a track than to just cut unnecessary lows.

I can't thank you enough for this great feedback. This has been the year of learning of VSTs and other plugins and I hope that the rest of this year and next will be about increasing production values across the board. All of your advice I will surely take into account. There's a lot to this that keeps one on one's toes

I've not yet attempted side-chain compression yet with drums, so I might give that a go to see if I can get them to punch through. In addition, I'm going to work on setting up a master template in addition to the individual track assessments to see if I can get a more unified sound on production. Thanks x 100!