GOD ALMIGHTY

Haha now I'm all embarrassed about my voice... thanks for using my nasally vocals

I'm glad someone used those vocal samples! I just couldn't find a way to incorporate them into what I ended up doing, but they were inspirational :)
_gyms_ rides again!! Another instant classic. Always thinking outside teh bocks.
I've been waiting for this!

don't be embarrassed dims you have a good voice

very creative and interesting! haha i wasn't expecting anything in this, like what became the hook was unorthodox yet surprisingly catchy... cool piece here

Oh man, the mix you submitted tells a much more coherent story compared to the earlier mix you linked. I did really like the FX on the vocals though, super wide and open sounding.

yeah, great use of the say ____ samples

yea moot the earlier mix has a bit of shine but no meat. I have a habit of not doing any mixing or making production choices at all while working on ideas and saving it for when the music is done. Idk if that's a bad habit or not, but in this case it leaves me with 50 tracks to make more detailed production decisions with and then mix while only a few hours away from deadline(lol I'm very frustrated by this cos I had plans for the mix to sound really big and detailed).

Idk if I'm just really slow or what

I wouldn't say it's a bad habit, some things I've read seem to suggest that as a "correct" way of working. I just think it can create a lot of headaches trying to detangle all of that at the end!
That's just me personally. I tend to kinda "produce" as I go, because for me the basic sonics and the music are inextricably linked. I do usually save any kind of automation or any fancy FX for the end though. m

To put it another way, some things are key ingredients in the soup that make it what it is, and some things are just garnish that make the dish look appealing. The garnish can wait till the end, but for me, I wanna go ahead and stir in the main seasonings as I go.

Maybe you're too hard on yourself...your mixes always end up nicely detailed! I always get the sense that a lot of care went into it.

Yea I really get what you're saying, moreso now than ever before I think. And I think it's a good idea to produce on the go cos it saves a lot of frustration like you said. The only thing I worry about with that tho is the production process guiding creative decisions more heavily than the fluidity that comes from slopping stuff around carelessly and organizing it later.

One thing I do wanna work on is figuring out the sonic spaces and stuff of the sounds as I go and maybe keeping appropriate compressors strapped on the tracks as I go along. lol like I usually get to having 50 tracks worth of an idea and there's not a compressor anywhere and the idea just sounds like a big bowl of soup at that moment.

Just to give some context for what I failed at achieving here, this is a little draft for a soundtrack I'm working on: http://picosong.com/vsUR/

Took me a lot of time to figure out how to get the production to sound really big and clear like that but yea that's what I failed to do with this song and why I'm so frustrated! lol

(P.S. dm me on twitter!)

That's absolutely the balancing act isn't it? Does the music drive the production or vice versa? This type of thing, to me, is very different than like scoring TV/film/games or writing pop songs. Those things offer a strong argument for not letting the production get in the way of the musical processes. On the other hand, stuff like remixing (particularly these type of compos) seems to warrant letting the sonic palette drive the music, since really, keeping some of the source material in context is what makes it interesting.
Because of that, the music and the sonics are fused together.
I usually vote things low in a remix compo that just bulldoze over the source material and create sounds that could have come from anywhere. It robs the source material of context and to me, it loses the essence of what makes these types of remix battles so interesting.
You've always been great at striking that balance, I think.

I'll check your link asap!

The very specific and subtle area I'm focusing on is the tone and acoustic space of each sound. Like you can have a really spacious and detailed production and still stay true to the sound sources. Remember the good old days when it was all about mic selection, room selection, and mic placement? I've read so many times in these interviews from older engineers where they say stuff like, "I don't really ever touch EQ, I just make sure to get the right mic for the job and record it right!"

And it makes too much sense when you really dig into well produced and recorded classic(and new) records that have this huge, clear and detailed sound to them. The tone produced from the mic selection and the way the room and its reflections color and surround the sound is all the EQ you need until it's time to actually mix.

Like you said, there are key ingredients and then there are garnishes, and I'm thinking the key ingredients are the tones within various spaces you choose for each sound and how they all work together. Which is a challenge if you're a strictly computer based producer and a lot of your sounds are dry and DI stuff. Just putting some delay or reverb or eq on that stuff isn't going to get that spacious and clear sound.

And that's something I always struggled with I think lol, cos I don't think I ever directly realized it. Like you cannot fix a mediocre production with good mixing, it'll only sound like a well mixed mediocre production, haha

Like Savestate's entry sound fantastic imo. Idk what he tapped into but his entry has a lot of space and detail and clarity to it. That's a good example of what I'm talking about I think. Same sentiment goes for your entries as well, moot

this is flippin amazing

take my 7s

Ordinate, I wasn't in irc but saw the stream; to answer your question about what I used to get the heyYeah voice to sing like that:

melodyne

which has been the thing I've used in every detroit compo I've entered since the 2011 one

this is amazing.

the thing that's bugging me is the little gluing sections where the song is intentionally jarring/empty, i'm not sure if they work? i guess i'll know when i listen a few more times

yea I agree. they needed a lot more attention to smooth the transitions out to be less jarring. some appropriate film-esque production probably would have sold it a lot more

the vision I eventually ended up with for this was for it to be almost like a psychological/emotional film implanted into your brain via your ears, where you were this guy who starts out at an atm machine pulling out money and start hallucinating and speaking some esoteric gibberish out loud to your hallucinations. then of course the whole thing progresses and you're waking up on the plane and then eventually find yourself somewhere on the streets of detroit with some homeless man(puke) waking you up with some unsolicited advice.

maybe a little too ambitious for the 48 hr limit maybe but it was fun to try lol

No pizza.

AT LEAST WE'RE NOT fLINT! *cheering*

all timer right here