cfx

Thanks all for your encouragement! I don't know how to put into words just how much this has made my month and inspired me to do more for everyone. Even the gentle criticism helped! Enjoy the music! -cfx

I did one cookie-cutter and one of my own.

So YouTube, you think we spam? Now we will! Jokes aside, I share the sentiment, Fishy. But at the same time, this is totally ridiculous. OCR has a judges panel to help make sure music is sufficiently different from the original to avoid exactly this type of thing (on top of forcing people to not to be lazy in their remixes). I did my tweets, and now to hurry up and wait. Armchair activism at its finest? We need to assemble and protest!

Howdy. Sauce: Mix: http://soundcloud.com/cfx-music/remix-dust-ocean-preview/s-NyeF4 Title: "Dust Ocean" (Original: "Dust River") Game: "Mechwarrior 2: Mercenaries" (ActiVision, 1996) (SoundCloud has a volume control waaaayyyy up in the upper right, it's a tiny speaker icon.) I have submitted (a different track) to the panel before, but it isn't quite posted yet. I got it into my head that it's because the mix is good, but not awesome -- and there are plenty of awesome tracks which pass the judges. So I'm trying to top it and make something better than 'good'. I have several nit-picks about my track, but I want to see if they're really problems (to see if people notice) or if I'm just being too picky. Full disclosure: Too many themes? Too loud? Lack of flow (despite neat transitions)? During the long intro, there's a space where nothing much is happening. Feels dull. Where is it? Intro backing guitars come in/fade out randomly, but does it detract from the mix? Kickbacks to the original are mostly just repetitive riffs... need more source more often? Does the outtro suck?

Liked! I love the idea behind this campaign -- credit where credit is due. I can't stand posers that manage to steal the limelight from the real deal by copying, twisting, and misleading. There should be more campaigns like this! The contest isn't important. It's righting a wrong I support. For most people, the incentive of competition is a pretty awesome way to get motion, though! It's been utterly awesome to see the number of followers explode over the last 24 hours. Wouldn't you agree?

Take my opinion with a grain of salt if you will. Maybe I don't like wall-of-sound as much as I think I do. What bugs me firstly is the distortion (wait, what?!). On smaller speakers, the tune sounds like percussive fuzz. Turning the distortion down to 10.5 might have opened things up just enough to be discernible. That is, instead of a cloud of static where an occasional chord or single note might peek out of the fog and say hello (in a very straightforward manner) and then disappear into the ruckus again. On larger speakers and a couple different pair of headphones this problem is less pronounced, of course. Though, what can be heard through the distortion in those cases is a "one chord"-feeling through the whole piece. The quick guitar runs and 2-chord swing back and forth doesn't allow the fuzz to relax any, so while chords are well and truly moving, the sensation of motion isn't there thanks to the distortion keeping certain frequencies active all the time. Leads are simple, to the point of not contributing that much to the piece. Even a well-placed vibrato would have made a world of difference. The doubling was nice, but wasn't quite enough to give them legs. Overall it feels like a show for the double kick, which itself acts like it's supporting other interesting elements in the higher registers, while the higher-register stuff is conservative(! yes, I said it) because it acts like it's giving structure to crazy awesomeness in the lows. With this dual-support structure it comes across as loud but really, really tame. There are a couple personal nits about the choir having slightly odd panning (feels a bit tilted to the right and forward), cymbals could have been a bit brighter, but that's me being fussy at this point. All this being said, I completely respect the effort put into this (yes, really). It's mixed pretty well on the whole and one of the few pieces I don't mind massive compression on. I like the double kick work and the way it cuts nicely through. I fully expect to be disagreed with by others on many points above, but really, after all's said and done this is totally worth a listen or three.

Composition and arrangement. The other posters are dead-on, so take heed. I do want to mention that your problem is not your instruments. It's how you're using them. When you have corrected the things already mentioned (structure, timing, dynamics, and ear-training/listening) THEN worry about upgrading your gear. I made that mistake when I was starting out, and it set me back because I wasn't paying attention to the fundamental skills I needed to build.

'lo all. This'd be, like, my first forum post ever so -- hi. Now that that's out of the way, tag this. http://www.cfxmusic.com/h1d3/cfx-silken-strand-pre-a.mp3 No idea what sort of genre it is, and I threw it together in a sitting, sometime yesterday morning. I'm a little too anxious (way too anxious) to get a little bit of general feedback on it before I work on it again: My TODO List: * Clean up the low-end (bass is too crowded) * Rebalance the highs (bit of EQ to help it through lower-quality speakers) * Ensure percussion 'carries' 2nd phrase in a more defined manner * Third section at the end, 1-2 minutes long * Fix the 2 "incorrect" notes. Spot them, win a prize! And, * Add "stuff". Both phrases don't vary quite enough. I plan to solve this by adding subtleties in the highs and an ultra-subtle moving sweep pad to give the whole thing a swishy, moving texture. Listening recommendations: * Turn it up * Turn down your subwoofer, just a bit, not too much -OR- * Really nice headphones // No laptop speakers! It's horrible without the deep bass later on. PS: Absolutely NO compression was used. Does the experiment work? First time I haven't used compressors since I bought my first one. ~ Eat it! ~