FTL-Fate of My Crew (Milky Way Battle)

[Garpocalypse]

Updated version of my FTL Milky Way Battle Remix for the Artist Appreciation Competition. I changed up a few parts from the original competition version and added some sound effects. For fun I also did a version with a rage scream by Brandon Strader.  

 

Enjoy!

 

Remix: https://soundcloud.com/garpocalypse/ftl-fate-of-my-crew

 

Rage Scream Version: https://soundcloud.com/garpocalypse/ftl-fate-of-my-crew-rage-scream-version

 

Source: 

[Brandon Strader]

You sure I did that? I don't remember it at all

 

Sounds awesome though

[Rozovian]

First, apologies for the very late mod review.

 

Some weird timing things in the intro. I don't terribly mind, but I'd be remiss not to mention it.

 

Slow attack on the string thing 0:50 makes it sound like it's lagging behind. Sounds like a crash is missing from 1:01, and from similar places later as well. Nice piano sound 1:13. Hats and cymbals could be a little louder and a little brighter, because I can barely hear them. It's not just my ears, is it?

 

Overall needs to be louder. Not necessarily by much, but it's lacking impact on my setup. I would probably fiddle with the compression, add side-chaining or give the parts that should have more impact a tiny nudge in level, maybe all of these.

 

At 2:50 I'm hoping it'd end. Seeing it's only about half way, I'm a bit concerned about how it'll work. I'm glad you're changing it up after that point, but I wonder if it's a little too late. Giving the earlier parts more impact might solve this.

 

I would look into mixing up the chord sequence some, though. It's currently just Em-D-C-D through most of the track. No wonder it gets repetitive. Even if you don't change it much, you can do a lot by switching one or two of the chords every once in a while, to signal a new part, to serve as punctuation, whatever. You can swap out either D for a Bm(7), the C for a G or Am, depending on the notes you use in the other parts. The Em works well to keep the mood, but you can swap it for an Em7 or a G/E from time to time. Modifications to an otherwise repeating chord sequence is a way to signal progression to the listener, and helps keep the track a little more interesting. It might not always be necessary, but it often helps.

 

Snare sounds like it's lacking mids. You could easily bring down the synth lead and give the snare a bit more mids instead. Ending is really cool.

 

Source is there, nicely adapted. I'm cool with the source usage.

 

Overall, nice work. It might be a pass, but I would personally want it to be better before I was satisfied.

[Garpocalypse]

Thanks Roz for the review,

 

I did submit this one a short time ago but the version that was listed here wasn't the final version.  Before subbing I rebalanced the entire mix and spent some time doing more extensive eq'ing.  I recognized that volume was an issue and with this mix I was finally able to figure out how to get my SSD remixes up to normal volume levels.  

 

The answer was GCLIP.  I found I could cut around half of the transient before it noticeably affected the sound of the kick/snare. Cutting those down I was able to get the volume up by a pretty good chunk. 

 

The "string thing" i think you are talking about is a lead omnisphere synth, run through a high gain amp sim and tons of delay. It's role is to be a distant klaxon and the slightly slow attack is to create tension and to give the listener a feeling of panic and the associated time dilation. 

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dxkHaf7D7dk

 

 

As far as the drums go I was aiming for a cold and mechanical feeling so I layered the kick and the snare from SSD with a drum machine. I also kept the crashes, hi-hats and rides to a minimum.  I saturated the snares to make them crack more.  I'm not a fan of duller sounding mid-heavy snares but perhaps I overdid it for this version.