what is your dirty music listening/composing secret

[prophetik music]

what is your dirty music composing and listening secret? are you a bluegrass artist that loves nightwish? are you a sound engineer who loves tracks that are slamified to the maxilation, way past the realm of reason and logic? maybe you just really like taylor swift and can't admit it in public.

 

mine is that i really, really like overcompressed drums and layered/repeated phrasing. surprise! all those things that people point to when they complain about my music...i love that stuff. i hear it every time, but i don't take it out because i love that part

[Meteo Xavier]

I pretty much steal all my music from dead artists no one knows about and pass them off as my own in every facet of music I do.

I'd like to see the next poster beat that. >

[prophetik music]

you mean, like every composer ever has done?

[fxsnowy]

Everyone seems to love chiptune music as well as very clean/high quality music, which are like polar opposites. But a lot of people for some reason hate the sort of 16 bit "in between". I love it though, the sounds from Banjo Kazooie, Donkey Kong Country, Mario Party 1... I really love those cheesy synths and sounds. I wish video games would still use that retro soundscape once in a while.

[EpicRPGRemixes]

Everyone seems to love chiptune music as well as very clean/high quality music, which are like polar opposites. But a lot of people for some reason hate the sort of 16 bit "in between". I love it though, the sounds from Banjo Kazooie, Donkey Kong Country, Mario Party 1... I really love those cheesy synths and sounds. I wish video games would still use that retro soundscape once in a while.

I know, right? I love that early PSX sound, like the stuff from Parasite Eve and Final Fantasy VIII. I also love the soundfonts from Pokemon Stadium 2, which are super nostalgic for me since I played that game to death.

Cheesier sounds in general are very comfortable to me. I like the challenge of making a polished track with "crappy" instruments.

[Garpocalypse]

For some reason i love the obviously fake cello patch in the Myst soundtrack.

 

 

It's not the dirtiest of secrets but...eh. 

[prophetik music]

haha those strings and timpani =P

[AngelCityOutlaw]

My secret that's not really a secret since I've said it numerous times before is that I hate DAWs and doing MIDI sequencing, but it's a necessary evil.

 

My listening secret though is that I listen to Girls Generation, cheesy J-Pop and 90s Max Martin pop hits when I think no one is within earsho-SHUT UP IT'S CATCHY AND NOSTALGIC OKAY!?!?

[Eino Keskitalo]

I mostly listen to and make arrangements from video game music recently.

[MindWanderer]

Yeah, I personally think it's unfortunate that the OCR panel hates fakey instruments so much.  It seems like everything has to be really close to live performance quality, or so synthetic it doesn't resemble a real instrument at all.  There are a few exceptions where one low-fi instrument is accepted as an aesthetic choice, usually among a bunch of synths, but otherwise it doesn't seem like 4th-5th generation-esque sounds can get through.

 

I also like those a lot.  They're close enough to real instruments to convey intent and capture the feel of a genre, and I don't find them unpleasant to listen to at all.

[timaeus222]

It's really all about the context. It tends to be that whenever someone uses an instrument that sounds fake, it was in a context where it was presumably intended to sound real and did not. I, more often than not, hear orchestral remixes with stiff orchestration, and in those cases the instruments weren't treated with suitable CC11 automation and proper articulation layering to make them sound realistic enough. I think it would be fair to reject a mix like that for that reason.

 

However, this OC ReMix has FL Slayer pretty prominently in it; clearly FL Slayer is a fake guitar, but in this context it happened to suit the soundscape (from both the judges' and my perspectives). In this case, there likely was no intention to make the guitar sound real, because it was just an aesthetic choice as a dubstep element. It's not to say, however, that if something less fake than FL Slayer was used for the guitar element, and its sequencing sounded fake, that it would also be overlooked and assumed as aesthetic choice. It could have been an attempt at using a real guitar in a dubstep track (which is completely rational; see Metalstep), and not successfully accomplishing that.

 

So, it's not like the judges just assume that fake, clearly-sequenced instruments are bad, nor assume that a fake instrument that sounds like a synth is automatically OK. If they don't already, they should consider the context (which I strongly believe they do).

[AngelCityOutlaw]

It's really all about the context. It tends to be that whenever someone uses an instrument that sounds fake, it was in a context where it was presumably intended to sound real and did not. I, more often than not, hear orchestral remixes with stiff orchestration, and in those cases the instruments weren't treated with suitable CC11 automation and proper articulation layering to make them sound realistic enough. I think it would be fair to reject a mix like that for that reason.

 

However, this OC ReMix has FL Slayer pretty prominently in it; clearly FL Slayer is a fake guitar, but in this context it happened to suit the soundscape (from both the judges' and my perspectives). In this case, there likely was no intention to make the guitar sound real, because it was just an aesthetic choice as a dubstep element. It's not to say, however, that if something less fake than FL Slayer was used for the guitar element, and its sequencing sounded fake, that it would also be overlooked and assumed as aesthetic choice. It could have been an attempt at using a real guitar in a dubstep track (which is completely rational; see Metalstep), and not successfully accomplishing that.

 

So, it's not like the judges just assume that fake, clearly-sequenced instruments are bad, nor assume that a fake instrument that sounds like a synth is automatically OK. If they don't already, they should consider the context (which I strongly believe they do).

 

I hate to help de-rail the thread somewhat, but I'm actually going to disagree with you a bit here.

 

While I do think the judges are fair most of the time, the community itself screams "FAAAAKE" in the workshop harder than the average YouTube comment on a ghost hunters video. In my experience, a lot of people on here tend to run through this checklist of sorts, even when critiquing original music. "Not hyper-realistic sequencing" is among the top complaints. The problem I see with this, is as you suggest, it's about context, but the thing about that is one can make up just about anything they want to justify a criticized production choice. For example, I could post an orchestral remix that was super fake sounding in the forums, like a retro game and everyone would say "oh, those samples are terrible! This needs better sequencing or it would never pass!" Now, imagine I shared that mix but said "Hey guys, here's my oldschool sounding JRPG orchestral mix!" and those same people would probably say it was good because of the context. Context is malleable in many cases.

 

Recently and I'll share the link when I find it, one of Roetaka's (I think it was him anyway) remixes got No'd by a couple judges in the evaluation because they felt the strings weren't realistic enough and another judge countered with something that said "The strings here sound better than some actual game scores, c'mon". What's interesting about that, is that if you read the submission standards, nowhere does it say that unrealistic sequencing is grounds for rejection. It just says this -

 

 

 

• Synthesized and sampled elements must be reasonably sophisticated.

• General MIDI sounds from low-budget soundcards are not sufficient when superior samples are available online for free.

 

What is "reasonably" sophisticated exactly? Is that realistic or just good and modern sounding? It's not actually in the standards, likely because of the whole "context" thing, but as I said - that's not necessarily a static thing. 

 

That's why "fake" sounding doesn't really bother me, honestly. I find criticisms in the workshop like "Oh, well your strings didn't swell enough here" or "your flute trills aren't realistic enough!" laughable when many of us have all enjoyed retro scores that were a lot less realistic and if the remixer had just lied and said it was for some artistic/contextual reason, no one would care and probably say it was good. Most listeners who aren't in the know, aren't really going to notice or care much anyway. If you make a track that sounds fake and use nostalgia to excuse it and people say it sounds good, they'll still say it's good if you make it really realistic. At that point, it becomes little more than stylistic preference. 

 

To me, if someone makes an arrangement that's going for "real" and there's a few slip-ups, it doesn't really hurt it. If someone makes something that's more rigid and retro sounding, but it's still a good song and mix, that's fine too. Besides, to quote Snappleman from a couple years ago

 

 

Most OCR users don't realize that sample "quality" is relative. On here what most people consider to be a "good" sample is a "real sounding" sample. As your ear becomes more tempered and experienced you'll find yourself less and less convinced by the realism in all samples, and when that happens all you have left are the samples that truly sound good for whatever reason.

Personally I prefer to use older samples or samples from hardware synths because the developers really do a great job in mixing and programming those patches to be playable and feel good under your fingers. Today's newest samples are returning to that mentality, since for the past 10 or so years we've all been installing 100gb libraries that are terribly programmed and have no musical nature to them whatsoever, so the developers now are focusing on making those massive sample banks usable in a musical setting by creating very smart articulation engines and whatnot.

In the end all that matters is what you do with something, and a new sample will not fix your problem since you'll have to take time to learn how to properly use that too. If your goal is realism then you'll fail 100% of the time until you get a real performance recorded, but if your goal is style and character then you can use all the samples and effects you have to create something unique and cool without it trying to trick anyone.

 

[timaeus222]

Recently and I'll share the link when I find it, one of Roetaka's (I think it was him anyway) remixes got No'd by a couple judges in the evaluation because they felt the strings weren't realistic enough and another judge countered with something that said "The strings here sound better than some actual game scores, c'mon". What's interesting about that, is that if you read the submission standards, nowhere does it say that unrealistic sequencing is grounds for rejection. It just says this -

 

 

What is "reasonably" sophisticated exactly? Is that realistic or just good and modern sounding? It's not actually in the standards, likely because of the whole "context" thing, but as I said - that's not necessarily a static thing. 

 

That's why "fake" sounding doesn't really bother me, honestly. I find criticisms in the workshop like "Oh, well your strings didn't swell enough here" or "your flute trills aren't realistic enough!" laughable when many of us have all enjoyed retro scores that were a lot less realistic and if the remixer had just lied and said it was for some artistic/contextual reason, no one would care and probably say it was good. Most listeners who aren't in the know, aren't really going to notice or care much anyway. If you make a track that sounds fake and use nostalgia to excuse it and people say it sounds good, they'll still say it's good if you make it really realistic. At that point, it becomes little more than stylistic preference. 

 

To me, if someone makes an arrangement that's going for "real" and there's a few slip-ups, it doesn't really hurt it. If someone makes something that's more rigid and retro sounding, but it's still a good song and mix, that's fine too. Besides, to quote Snappleman from a couple years ago

 

 

That example probably involves some judges not actually recognizing what's realistic enough and what's not (it's actually quite hard). I would probably have said "the volume dip here sounds weird. What happened?" and focus on the liberal arrangement. Remember, they don't have to know formal music theory to be a judge, nor do they have to be a really good orchestrator. It's a plus, but not a necessity. So, that was simply a conflict due to mistaken observations. I believe it might have been Vig who said "The strings here sound better than some actual game scores, c'mon".

 

"Reasonably" sophisticated is intended to sound general and has room for interpretation. It just means that it should sound like some actual effort was put into making it sound good (now whether or not that effort is apparent from the listener's perspective is another thing).

 

The example you are referring to with JRPG scores having retro orchestral instruments is that they are emulating a specific sound, like how the Roland SC-88 has orchestral sounds that were used in something like Final Fantasy Tactics or Suikoden II. If you are emulating the specific sound, then having those technically fake orchestral instruments is OK. It's more questionable whether it's a fit for OCR.

 

Perhaps a more practical way of saying it is, "Did you truly accomplish what you intended?", or perhaps, "Did you accomplish what we believe you intended?", rather than "Did you accomplish what we believe fits in with the OCR standards?".

 

If someone IS going for "real", and there's a few slip-ups, it still hurts it, but according to certain people's standards, some might take it more seriously than others. Generally, the people who are great at orchestrating would be more partial towards great orchestration vs. not-so-great.