PRC242 - Results - Climbing, Running and Falling (Mirror's Edge)

The People's Remix Competition 242

PRCv10-08

Hello everyone and welcome to the People's Remix Competition!

Last round five people entered the contest. Esperado claimed victory by getting almost the maximum score. Not even V___ and Marcusg could stop him for winning his first PRC.

hey bundeslang!

I decided to pick a more modern game track. I chose the instrumental intro to mirrors edge. I did a remix of it for rwts, and i think it would be fun to see what you guys come up with for it!

midi- http://d.facdn.net/art/mordecairigby/music/1327174899.mordecairigby_mirrors_edge_still_alive_mordecai.mid

Source: Mirror's Edge (PC) - Still Alive

MIDI

Youtube

Wiki

ThaSauce link: Click here to submit.

GOOD LUCK!

PRC instructions

1. Limitations at ThaSauce require your entry to be 20 MB or less in size. Length for length's sake and MIDI rips are not allowed (only as Bonus Mixes). If anyone has problems with uploading songs to ThaSauce let me know (in this thread) and post a download link to your song in this thread (so I can upload it to ThaSauce).
   
2. Entries must be posted in the ThaSauce link by MONDAY April 15th 2013 at 10:59 am ThaSauce time: check my signature (below) or the ThaSauce page for the exact time left.
   
3. You may enter as many mixes as you like and work with as many people as you like on each mix. You are free to create a second ThaSauce account for that, it's needed to be able to upload a second remix. You can post it in the thread if that doesn't work.
   
4. Do not make qualitative comments on an entry until the results of the vote have been posted.
   
5. Mixers cannot vote for themselves but if they vote they recieve a free first place vote added onto their score.
   
6. The winner of this round may select the source for PRC243.
   
7. You can find the full rules list at this page as well.
   

Doulifee's PRC Archives! For information about the previous contests.

Edited April 19, 2013 by Bundeslang

Is the midi link suppose to be giving me 403 error?

This song is awesome. Will be tough to do justice without the vocal track, but we'll see what happens maybe.

Is the midi link suppose to be giving me 403 error?

It should be fixed now. The ThaSauce thread is now up as well.

Great choice -- I've always loved the music from this game! Hopefully I'll get something submitted in time for this one.

boat chase theme is my fave next to this but it would be impossible to remix and still be recognizeable. so minimal yet so driving!

Anyone asked for a remix?

Well you got one.

can i submit my version as a bonus mix just for kicks?

can i submit my version as a bonus mix just for kicks?

Yes, you can submit it as a Bonus Mix.

subbed.

Good to see everyone again! I'm going to get back into checking for PRC sources on time now.

A note about my description, when I said "finished" I meant it very very loosely.

Edited April 16, 2013 by Garpocalypse

almost forgot to post my bonus mix , its in though. glad to see such response! these should be fun to listen to

Welcome to the voting stage

The mixing stage is over. This round has 4 songs and 1 Bonus mix. To vote, do the following:

- Visit the stated ThaSauce Page and listen to all the entries

- Scroll to the form at the bottom of the screen.

- Fill in the rank of the entries from first to third.

- State a reasoning for it.

- Participants are encouraged to vote and leave feedback. However, they may not vote for themselve. They get a free first place bonus if they vote, so it is attractive to vote. Non participants are also encouraged to vote and leave comments.

- Do not vote on Esperado's song, it's a bonus mix.

Last round winner, Esperado, has a vote that counts twice.

You have until THIS Wednesday, April 17th at 10:59 am ThaSauce time to vote (which is exactly 2 days from now), check my signature in the first post or simply the ThaSauce page for the exact time you have.

The winner gets the right to choose the source tune for PRC243.

The songs:

Check the ThaSauce Page:

Voted.

Looking forward to seeing the comments!

almost forgot to post my bonus mix , its in though. glad to see such response! these should be fun to listen to

Hey this is a pretty cool bonus mix. Very chill and side-chainy

I can make comments about bonus mixes right? Forgot lol

EDIt

and I voted ;3

Edited April 17, 2013 by HoboKa

voted! that was a tough vote! alot of interesting interpretations of the theme.

Edit: thanks hoboka! i probably got a little carried away with the sidechaining there. it was the first fun effect i learned about when making music so i probably abuse it a little >.>

Hey this is a pretty cool bonus mix. Very chill and side-chainy

I can make comments about bonus mixes right? Forgot lol

EDIt

and I voted ;3

Comments about Bonus Mixes can be posted here before the voting deadline, since they don't influence possible voters.

It's results time.

Total number of mixes - 4 (+1 Bonus)

Total number of votes - 5

Maximum Score - 18.

Esperado submitted a Bonus Mix.

DrumJ8 got second points and again gets the last place wooden spoon.

FreakyT received 9 points, just enough to claim third place

Garpocalypse gets second place with 13 points.

And Sir Nuts is the winner of PRC242 by unanimous decision.

Congratulations Sir Nuts. You claimed the maximum points. Garpocalypse got four second places, FreakyT got four third places, so the voters agreed on the result.

Sir Nuts, you may select the source for the next round. Send your source to me (with a MID/MP3 file, otherwise send a second source with a MID file) by PM, other options are PM me @ ThaSauce or by e-mailing to bambombim@gmail.com (I prefer a PM @Ocremix).

You may select any source from any game, as long as it doesn't have an Overclocked Remix and it hasn't been on PRC before. Check it at the list:

http://sites.google.com/site/bambombim/prc

http://bambombim.googlepages.com/PRCRemixList.doc (also downloadable via the link above).

Send your source as fast as you can, but before this Friday, 19th of April 2013.

You can find the votes with comments here:

http://compo.thasauce.net/votes/index/PRC242

Edited April 17, 2013 by Bundeslang

Hey guys! sorry I forgot to vote again, but here are my short reviews on each mix (in order of preference):

1-Garpocalypse: Pretty progressive rock sound. Some of the changes are a bit abrupt, but overall enjoyable. You did a lot arrangement-wise. Given how long the song is, it never feels old, nice work.

2-FreakyT: pretty close to dream trance but not quite. It needed a bit of a harder, catchier beat to get there. But as you said, it ended more being a chilout song. It was nicely done with good arrangement ideas.

3-Drumj8:In your case I felt it was a bit too far from the original. I liked the signature change it was handled fluidly, but this track needed more work to sound finished.

4-Esperado(bonus): nice work, I felt your song was going for a more dancy vibe than mine, but it's somewhat alike in the feeling of the song. I do feel that the bass is a bit too prominent in some spots though.

Thanks for the comments guys. If anyone liked my song enough, I uploaded a more complete version to my soundcloud (It's longer, has some arrangement, mixing and mastering changes) which is much better in my opinion. So again if someone liked it enough, go grab the better version up there

https://soundcloud.com/sir_nuts/clear-reflections

This was, like the Supremacy compo, a very fun mix to work with. I'll be seeing you all next time!

voted! that was a tough vote! alot of interesting interpretations of the theme.

Edit: thanks hoboka! i probably got a little carried away with the sidechaining there. it was the first fun effect i learned about when making music so i probably abuse it a little >.>

I still need 2 learn how to do it properly. FL Studio's way of doing side-chaining is kinda clunky iirc. But I do have a vst that does the effect for me I guess - I really need to try it lol.

Thanks guys. I still have alot of work to do to it since it's no where near the finished sound I wanted but I am glad that you thought well enough of it.

I didn't want to skew the results with sympathy votes so I didn't put this in the description but the remix is based on both a hopeful sequel to mirror's edge and an inspirational send off to a family member that died before the competition from a very short battle with cancer.

I hope no one gets tired of metal crossovers because more are coming! I'm not working on a different style until I get a 1st place metal mix on PRC!

I hope no one gets tired of metal crossovers because more are coming! I'm not working on a different style until I get a 1st place metal mix on PRC!

At last I am no longer the only one that submits metal remixes

I still need 2 learn how to do it properly. FL Studio's way of doing side-chaining is kinda clunky iirc. But I do have a vst that does the effect for me I guess - I really need to try it lol.

its pretty easy in ableton. compressors have a sidechain tab that does it in a few quick steps ive heard the "multiband sidechain" vst is pretty fun. you can sidechain different frequencies and do some other crazy stuff.

Sidechaining is not that different in FL than in every other daw. You set your compressor in a mixer channel which recieves the signal to be compressed, and then send the trigger through an aux to that channel. It works like this in every other DAW really.

Also since Garpocalypse asked about it I'll go into a bit of detail about the production techniques I used for my mix. I believe everyone should give a little insight on what they do, I'm always learning stuff from others and I see these competitions as a way to getting better at this, while having fun. In fact joining competitions (since the now defunct IMC around 7 years ago) was what helped me get better.

Anyways I don't know what he wants me to talk about specifically because there's a lot to the production so I'll just talk about some of the new stuff I tried with this mix and the stuff I think ended up sounding better. If you want me to talk about something specific let me know.

So I'll start with one of the pads, which is the one that starts the song and is heard through the mix. When I heard the original I felt I could go in a melodic trance direction with this, in the vein of what Hybrid or Sasha were doing back in the late 90's (

, ) The main thing with this genre are the drums and the pads(ambience), so I had to work on getting those right first, which is kind of new for me because I start working on the drums and the bass first for most of my songs because the genres I do have a bigger focus on those.

So if you listen to the examples, the pads have a lot of movement and are quite evolving and envelope the listener. So I got a basic soft pad working first, nothing too impressive just a polyphonic pad made out of sawtooth and pulse waves. Then to give the movement I tried something new: I split the signal into 3. The first one stayed raw and a bit centered. Then I ran the other two through 2 different bandpass filters, each bandpass filter frequency knob was being modulated by 2 similar sine lfos going at slightly different rates and moving at slightly different ranges. Then panned onne signal to the left and the other to the right. Not hard pan, but a good amount so they were quite spread out, add reeverb to the 3 signals and voila, a pad that feels wide yet full, has a nice movement to it, and yet feels solid because the raw signal is still coming through the center .

Through the song there are some other pads that go in and out to suppor this one but that's the main one and basically the whole ambience of the mix.

So I got that right, next are the drums. For these, I actually do a ton of layering with my drums and in fact I have empty layer presets for my projects so when I want to work with something I just have to write the drumline and load samples in the layers till I get a solid layer of drums that I like. For this genere I needed a solid but not dubstep-overbearing kick, a snappy but wide snare that could get ghost notes sounding good (very important for breakbeats)and some subtle hats, not very important for this genre. To give power to the snare and kick I used parallel compression.

Some of you may be familiar with the term but I'll explain anyways, With parallel compression what you do is basicall you split your signal in two (or use send effect channels, it's the same). The first one stays raw, so it keeps the character and body of the original, and the other one you compress it heavily so it gets an extreme transient (starting peak, or snap) going. Then you feed that compressed signal to the original, gradually, until you feel the drum is snappy enough while reetaning the characteristics of the original sound

After the basic drums were laid out, with breakbeats I usually load a couple of loops just to fill space. I bandpass them so I get just the frequencies I want to be filled in the drumline, and compress the hell out of them as I feel this makes them fill space even more, but I don't compress them to get snap like you would do with parallel compression, I compress them to make them sound squishy in this case and lose all the snap they had. They aren't noticeable that much in the final mix, you can't really hear them much mostly you hear the main kick, snare and hats I wrote in the base drumline, but the loops are in the back making sure it doesn't sound too dull.

The acid bass was very important and I love my acid basses. I use them as much as I can if I have the oportunity. I always build them from scratch so they never sound exacly the same in my songs, and because I have a lot of fun doing it. Building one isn't too hard but is a bit long to explain, would be happy to if anyone is interested.

The Whistle-y/flutey sound is actually a preset I grabbed and modified it. It was a pad preset initially but I made some modifications to make it sound a bit more like a lead sound. I can't really go into too much detail about how it was built because it's very specific to Reason (it uses maelstrom and a specific wavetable caled ghost-something)

As for everything else well if you want to know about something in particular, just ask .

As for the mixing and mastering, my golden rule is: use sub-busses, keep your global mixing volume below -9db (I'm usually around -6), and leave mastering for when the song is done. try to get your mix to sound good without mastering, so the mastering process is devoid of any eq or hard compression. My mastering process usually involves only slight compression, slight tube saturation, and limiting to 0db. It's very simple because I focus on getting the mixing right.

Hope any of that was useful .

EDIT: If you're a Reason user I'll be glad to share the song file.

Awesome. Thanks for the writeup.

I'm listening to your remix now while reading but I had a question about your signal splits. When you say you split it three ways was it three copies of the original signal or was it a mono split and a sum? Assuming the polyphonic pad was originally stereo.