Topic: game12 WIP (fixed)

[hurleybird]

This remaster is 98% true to the original midi, made in reason (with high end headphones, hopefully doesen't sound too bad on speakers) and is still very much a WIP, but let me know what you think (criticism welcome, and there are a few parts I'm not totally happy with also, will be interesting to see if others share my thoughts). My goal here is to make a better sounding version of the original song, rather than my own interpretation, but I've still changes some things around (and the final version will have more stuff changed around also) Would be cool to have this kind of treatment to the entire D1 sound track for use in D2X-XL or another source port... but would be a lot of work.

EDIT: Totally uploaded the WRONG song. Link is good now though.

http://www.megaupload.com/?d=6A5JBNIX

For some reason I'm having a problem getting the file output by reason to loop properly. Loops great in reason, but the outputted file cuts off just a bit early.

[Kaiaatzl]

I'm downloading your song right now.

I've also done some remakes of Descent 1 music (5 songs, and I have ideas for two more).  The remakes are more like interpretations of the midis than actual covers/remixes, but they do feel the same.
I did game09, game16, game18, game19, and game20.  The most recognizable one is game09.  The other ones are looser interpretations but the listeners were mostly able to recognize them.

3 of my five remakes are actually going to be used in one of the next releases of Duper's COD D3 singleplayer level (which is a conversion of a D1 Levels of the World map).  It will have "The Hunted" (game09 remake), "Anomaly" (game18 remake), and "Ring of Doom" (game19 remake).  The nature of the release that's going to use the songs makes it difficult to tell if it's going to be the next release of the level or the one after that.

I had the same idea you did for the full soundtrack remake, but I posted the idea in a gallery comment for some reason.  I'll copy/paste the whole comment into this post.

From the comment:

I had an idea for a collaborative album which is basically a remix/remake of the entire D1 soundtrack.  I've already made 5 (very loose) remixes of some D1 themes (game09, game16, game18, game19, and game20), and I have ideas for two more ("Driller Hell" for Game06 and "Red Industry" for Game08).  I also have the beginnings of an idea for game13.
I was thinking it would be great if you got into the project too, since your remakes are great (and refreshingly different).  This idea has already been done with the Sonic the Hedgehog 2 soundtrack (the album was called "Hedgehog Heaven").  Duplicate tracks are okay, as long as we get remixes of all the songs, we can put the duplicates at the end like what was done with Hedgehog Heaven.
So far this is just an idea, and I wanted to bounce it off you and see what you think.  For me it would have to be a side project compared to my next planned album ("Thunderstorm II: Rain of Zombies"), but I think that won't pose a big problem, as I don't have any ideas for that album yet (aside from that I might reuse a track from Operation Otter).
On the other hand, I'm going to start "Red Industry" as soon as I have the time.

EDIT: Did you actually start from scratch with this remake, or did you load the midi file into Reason and remastered it that way?
If you did the latter, I've already done the same for all 27 Descent 1 midis using FL Studio (the 22 level songs plus the Title, Briefing, Escape, Endgame, and Credits themes).

[hurleybird]

EDIT: Did you actually start from scratch with this remake, or did you load the midi file into Reason and remastered it that way?
If you did the latter, I've already done the same for all 27 Descent 1 midis using FL Studio (the 22 level songs plus the Title, Briefing, Escape, Endgame, and Credits themes).

The latter. I've made some slight changes to the original midi notes, to some of the velocity, and the more I do generally the more it changes from the original. As I said game12 is about 98% original midi that number will be going down (this is also why I called the song a 'remaster' instead of 'remake'. The scope of the project right now is to just make really good sounding versions of the original songs, being very true to the original, and since I'm not anywhere good enough to make something from scratch that rivals the original (ingenious) composition anyway, it makes the most sense to use the original midi and go from there. It also saves a hell of a lot of work

If you've already done something similar in Fl Studio, you should post that on the web since I think people would want to hear that. I don't know about the scope of that project, but I am doing a bit of work behind the scenes besides just changing the instruments around. Doing a lot of work shaping synths and having undergo interesting changes through the course of the song.

Future collaboration might be cool, Reason can rewire into FL studio but the two programs are kind of like fire and water.

I've recently begun work on the main title. I don't know what it is, but the synths just really seemed to come together right away on this one in a way game 12 hasn't. The agogo sound is horrible though, some of the percussion sounds still need to be added, and recreating the synth tom sound is completely kicking my ass. Way more of a WIP than the last one, but again, thought I'd post this because I very much like the synths already, and I'm only about half done with 'em! (I'm pretty much done with the base attributes of the synth, but the second half of my workflow involves changing those attributes as the song progresses)

http://www.megaupload.com/?d=IWHBU2C2 again, the percussion parts are *very* rough.

also, would love comments about the actual mixing from someone with speakers, since the audiophile headphones -> cheap desktop speakers is often a very rough transition.

[Kaiaatzl]

EDIT: Buisness-letter-length post warning:

The latter. I've made some slight changes to the original midi notes, to some of the velocity, and the more I do generally the more it changes from the original. As I said game12 is about 98% original midi that number will be going down (this is also why I called the song a 'remaster' instead of 'remake'. The scope of the project right now is to just make really good sounding versions of the original songs, being very true to the original, and since I'm not anywhere good enough to make something from scratch that rivals the original (ingenious) composition anyway, it makes the most sense to use the original midi and go from there. It also saves a hell of a lot of work

I know what you mean... remakes of Descent music are a tall order.  That's why I did interpretations of the ideas of the songs rather than trying to emulate the songs themselves... it's harder for the listener to quantify and there's less comparison between specific parts.  If it's good enough, and has a similar enough feeling, then (as a remake) it's neither better nor worse than the original because you can't really compare it like a more direct remake.

My brother (who really likes my music) has said that he thinks that I could easily do a game08 remix.

If you've already done something similar in Fl Studio, you should post that on the web since I think people would want to hear that. I don't know about the scope of that project, but I am doing a bit of work behind the scenes besides just changing the instruments around. Doing a lot of work shaping synths and having undergo interesting changes through the course of the song.

Zico has my D1 mixes and is going to release on his site coinciding with the release of the next edition of Rebirth (which is in the testing phase right now).  (I call rebirth releases "editions" and XL releases "versions", because the difference between the attidutes of the creators towards their own projects.)

I am going to release them all to the D2X-XL community as well, but I'm going to finish my mixes of the D2 midis first (there aren't as many songs, but they're harder to do because of all the midi program changes, which is one of the few things that FL Studio can't emulate once you've assigned synths... automation (external and internal) and synth morphing (the name I gave to a technique I tried where I would automate enough internal parameters to change the sound of the synth completely... turn a saw wave into a sine wave for instance) often don't do enough either, you'd actually have to change the VST plugins themselves according to the program changes, and I don't think it's possible in FL.  It's a great program otherwise though, and it was the first thing I tried after Sony Acid, which I couldn't even figure out how to use (the manual and online help were no help at all).  FL is far more intuitive and I was able to figure out how to use it from the first time I tried it.  Lifetime free updates are a definite plus too.

I have the Producer edition right now but most of my D1 mixes were done a while ago in the Fruity edition, and one of the songs was done in the demo edition.  I actually did almost all the songs twice, once in the demo and once in the Fruity edition.  I only kept game05 from the versions done with the demo program, because it used a lot of Sytrus, which I don't have access to anymore (because of a change in FL Studio 9, demo synths like Sytrus not only don't get saved into the song but they are programmed to periodically mess up the whole song).

Future collaboration might be cool, Reason can rewire into FL studio but the two programs are kind of like fire and water.

I'd like that too... do you compose music?  (I figure you probably do since you spent money on Reason).  If you do I have a project that I could use some help on...  I've been making some songs for Xfing's Descent 1 1/2 levelset (more specifically, I've contributed some songs from my Splintered Sanity Ultra EP, but now that that album is finished, I can start making songs exclusively for the levelset), and right now I'm the only composer.  We were aiming for at least 3 or 4 composers so that we can have some variation in composition styles.  Right now Pumo has contributed a version of his previous song "Red Dew", but probably won't have time to do any more, and Kaizerwolf has said he might be interested in composing for the project, but if you want to join in that would be great.  We could definitely use more musical talent.  If you're interested, send me a PM.
You also might want to ask Thomas about *his* project (I can't say any more on the public boards).  Right now all but one of the levels have music (composed mostly by me, but also a bit by RV Dextron and Aenn Sidhe Priest).  The second secret level is lacking a soundtrack.  Yeah, I know this one isn't much but if you're interested, PM Thomas (he's on this site).  Put AOH in the subject line, and just tell him that I refferred you.  (Also please tell me if/when you PM Thomas so that I can get rid of this paragraph... I'm not sure I should leave this information in a post any longer than necessary, as the project is supposed to be secret).

Enough about my job offers... if you have anything music related you'd like to collaborate on, I'd certainly be happy to try (and I'd likely succeed.  I don't know everything about FL Studio yet but my knowledge is growing quickly).  One little note though... the way I compose music is by using an external midi sequencer to compose a midi file (I record it directly from my midi keyboard... it saves a lot of time) and then I remaster the midi file in FL Studio.  Because of the way I do it, I don't really know much about step squencing and piano roll etc.  I do all my work in pattern mode (I have no need for anything else).

I do have perfect pitch (I can play something onto my keyboard exactly how it sounds in my head, without having to write the music down first), but at the same time I am notoriously bad at distinguishing keys.  I can usually tell the mode that the song is in, but it's hard for me to tell if it's in C minor or A minor, if you know what I mean.  If I'm trying to play a song by ear, I can do it perfectly once I've found a key that sounds right.  To find the key I just use trial and error (methodically).

I've recently begun work on the main title. I don't know what it is, but the synths just really seemed to come together right away on this one in a way game 12 hasn't. The agogo sound is horrible though, some of the percussion sounds still need to be added, and recreating the synth tom sound is completely kicking my ass. Way more of a WIP than the last one, but again, thought I'd post this because I very much like the synths already, and I'm only about half done with 'em! (I'm pretty much done with the base attributes of the synth, but the second half of my workflow involves changing those attributes as the song progresses)


http://www.megaupload.com/?d=IWHBU2C2 again, the percussion parts are *very* rough.

also, would love comments about the actual mixing from someone with speakers, since the audiophile headphones -> cheap desktop speakers is often a very rough transition.

I find the transition is the other way around.  If something sounds good on my speakers it won't neccessarily sound good on my headphones, but if it sounds good on my headphones it will almost always sound good on any speakers I try it on (low quality laptop speakers all the way to enourmous stereo speakers with subwoofers).  But maybe that's just the way I mix the music, I don't know.  And I also don't use expensive headphones for mastering, or anything else (I tend to mistreat my headphones, and they die within a few months).  I get cheaper earbuds that have pretty good quality, so that could have something to do with it as well.

The mixing of your music (game12) sounds pretty good on my laptop speakers, though the treble sounds pretty loud (but they *are* laptop speakers.  It's not out of proportion with the other music I listen to).  I think the FX05brightness/bell synth at the beginning is a bit too loud.  The verse before the last refrain (the one that had the square monotone and echo choir in the original midi) is awesomely rendered.  And the whole thing sounds epic in the same way as the FM mix of game21.  It will be kind of hard for me to test on desktop speakers though... there are no desktop comps in the house (everyone has a laptop instead).  The closest thing to desktop speakers would be the ones my mom got for her advocacy presentations, but they're not what you'd call cheap run of the mill speakers.  Pretty insane high quality.

There is one thing I'd suggest you could consider for the next game12 version is to add some reverb to some of the instruments... try to make it sound like you're hearing it performed inside the Callisto Tower Colony, if you know what I mean (the enourmous tower room).

I'll take a listen to your title mix, do you want to hear mine?  I tried to make it sound more industrial.  It also ended up sounding a bit reminiscent of game06 in one part (though that might be just my music - colour synaesthesia, the colours I see in that part are very similar to the colours I saw when I first heard the D1 level 6 song... brown blotches).

EDIT: Here are some examples of the remastering I did.

http://www.planetdescent.net/index.php?action=mgallery;sa=album;id=16

Main theme

Game12

Game17

Game21

Game22

Escape (endlevel)

I made several changes to game12 and game21 to differentiate them.  They were the midis that I altered the most (though I didn't actually change any note data, only volumes and the types of synths).  The reason game21 sounds so different is because that all of the differences were inaudible in the background of the original midi and I just brought it to the foreground.  For game12 I went for a more retro sound... it feels more simialr to the OPL2 version than the wavetable version.

I try not to monopolize the gallery, but it's just so convenient...

[hurleybird]

I'd like that too... do you compose music?  (I figure you probably do since you spent money on Reason).  If you do I have a project that I could use some help on...  I've been making some songs for Xfing's Descent 1 1/2 levelset (more specifically, I've contributed some songs from my Splintered Sanity Ultra EP, but now that that album is finished, I can start making songs exclusively for the levelset), and right now I'm the only composer.  We were aiming for at least 3 or 4 composers so that we can have some variation in composition styles.  Right now Pumo has contributed a version of his previous song "Red Dew", but probably won't have time to do any more, and Kaizerwolf has said he might be interested in composing for the project, but if you want to join in that would be great.  We could definitely use more musical talent.  If you're interested, send me a PM.
You also might want to ask Thomas about *his* project (I can't say any more on the public boards).  Right now all but one of the levels have music (composed mostly by me, but also a bit by RV Dextron and Aenn Sidhe Priest).  The second secret level is lacking a soundtrack.  Yeah, I know this one isn't much but if you're interested, PM Thomas (he's on this site).  Put AOH in the subject line, and just tell him that I refferred you.  (Also please tell me if/when you PM Thomas so that I can get rid of this paragraph... I'm not sure I should leave this information in a post any longer than necessary, as the project is supposed to be secret).

Just started getting into Reason a few months ago, so what I've been doing is taking some old video game midi's and playing around with them, trying to make them sound as good as possible. Actually *needing* to recreate the sounds themselves (or if you're lucky a default sound is close and you just do some minor tweaking) I think is a better teacher than just making a random sound and going with it. I do intend to get into the composition part eventually after I figure I've mastered the rest of the program, and I bought an axiom pro 61 midi controller to that end. The one thing I am very good at composing is drum tracks, as I've been playing drums since I was five. In terms of the descent midi's, the percussion parts interest me the most. Definitely ahead of their time (and in fact, this might be one area where music has gone backwards, making drum tracks easier via simple step sequencers that never sound as good as a completely hand made track). This also seems to be one of the areas most of the remixes on this site seem to be lacking compared to the original composition. I'm not saying that I can make percussion tracks as good those in descent (unless maybe I record myself, but I have nowhere to do that right now...), but I might be able to help in that area.

I am going to release them all to the D2X-XL community as well, but I'm going to finish my mixes of the D2 midis first (there aren't as many songs, but they're harder to do because of all the midi program changes, which is one of the few things that FL Studio can't emulate once you've assigned synths... automation (external and internal) and synth morphing (the name I gave to a technique I tried where I would automate enough internal parameters to change the sound of the synth completely... turn a saw wave into a sine wave for instance) often don't do enough either, you'd actually have to change the VST plugins themselves according to the program changes, and I don't think it's possible in FL.

That's definitely one of the strengths in reason. I can assign tons of automation to my synths, have the mod wheel and rotaries change multiple things and edit in real-time. However, if a synth becomes totally different part way through a song I'll probably just break of those parts and make a new track.

I find the transition is the other way around.  If something sounds good on my speakers it won't neccessarily sound good on my headphones, but if it sounds good on my headphones it will almost always sound good on any speakers I try it on (low quality laptop speakers all the way to enourmous stereo speakers with subwoofers).  But maybe that's just the way I mix the music, I don't know.  And I also don't use expensive headphones for mastering, or anything else (I tend to mistreat my headphones, and they die within a few months).  I get cheaper earbuds that have pretty good quality, so that could have something to do with it as well.

That's probably it. My headphones are pretty high end and I run them through a headphone amp. They show even the slightest details, but often times that subtlety will be lost on lower end hardware.

The mixing of your music (game12) sounds pretty good on my laptop speakers, though the treble sounds pretty loud (but they *are* laptop speakers.  It's not out of proportion with the other music I listen to).  I think the FX05brightness/bell synth at the beginning is a bit too loud.  The verse before the last refrain (the one that had the square monotone and echo choir in the original midi) is awesomely rendered.  And the whole thing sounds epic in the same way as the FM mix of game21.  It will be kind of hard for me to test on desktop speakers though... there are no desktop comps in the house (everyone has a laptop instead).  The closest thing to desktop speakers would be the ones my mom got for her advocacy presentations, but they're not what you'd call cheap run of the mill speakers.  Pretty insane high quality.

Yeah, I'd definitely try to find something a bit more hi-fi than laptop speakers, and the treble is probably due those as well. I actually cut the treble back quite a bit on the cymbals to make things sound less "hi-fi" and more "gamey". The bells being loud may just be that they are a boosted range in your laptop, would be nice if you could also try on something more hi-fi. And yeah, that verse before the last refrain definitely turned out well I think (would be nice to have the rest of the song sound that good) Echo choir is still in there, but may be wayyyy to subtle for laptop speakers.

There is one thing I'd suggest you could consider for the next game12 version is to add some reverb to some of the instruments... try to make it sound like you're hearing it performed inside the Callisto Tower Colony, if you know what I mean (the enourmous tower room).

I'll look into that.

I'll take a listen to your title mix, do you want to hear mine?  I tried to make it sound more industrial.  It also ended up sounding a bit reminiscent of game06 in one part (though that might be just my music - colour synaesthesia, the colours I see in that part are very similar to the colours I saw when I first heard the D1 level 6 song... brown blotches).

Yeah, you don't even need to ask, let's hear it.

[Kaiaatzl]

When I compose my own music, I record all my drum tracks by hand... but I have a special way of doing it.  I record it to my keyboard as an instrument track and then send it to the computer as a drum track.  (Actually I usually use two tracks on the keyboard and send them to the computer as one track.)

I've been told that my drum tracks are reminiscent of D1, and that's probably, like you said, because they're hand recorded, rather than sequenced.

The drawback is that I usually spend more time on the drumtrack than on all the instruments in the song combined.

So what I'm getting at is, you can probably find a way to hand record... especially if you have a midi controller and a good midi sequencer, you don't necessarily need to record it with an actual drum kit.  (When I was experimenting with recording directly into FL Studio rather than using a midi sequencer as an intermediate, I found that hand-recorded drum tracks were much easier to record into a midi sequencer and then import the midi into the DAW rather than trying to hand record drums into the DAW itself.)  
A good (and free) midi sequencer to use if you're just using it for an intermediate is Anvil Studio, it's a little complicated to install but has all the rudimentary features you'd need built in.
My music is entirely hand recorded so I use anvil studio as an intermediate for everything, and I usually keep the midi afterwards, in case I need to remaster it again.

Oh, BTW - I added a link to my remastered versions of the D1 midis at the very bottom of my previous post.

All right, thiat's all for tonight.  I'm lucky I have no classes on Fridays, because it's quite late.

[hurleybird]

http://www.planetdescent.net/index.php?action=mgallery;sa=album;id=16

Main theme

Game12

Game17

Game21

Game22

Escape (endlevel)

I made several changes to game12 and game21 to differentiate them.  They were the midis that I altered the most (though I didn't actually change any note data, only volumes and the types of synths).  The reason game21 sounds so different is because that all of the differences were inaudible in the background of the original midi and I just brought it to the foreground.  For game12 I went for a more retro sound... it feels more simialr to the OPL2 version than the wavetable version.

I try not to monopolize the gallery, but it's just so convenient...

Out of those, my favorite is is 24 - neptune (which is *awesome*, pretty much *perfect* except for a little bit I'll get into later). 14 Also sounds pretty good, and I prefer it to the other version. Some interesting contrast to my own version (also interesting, now realizing that at the beginning some midi synths render my bell sound as a string sound like yours, may need to try that...)

The one I liked the least was the title track. One of the most important parts of that piece is the synth drum which in your rendition was barely audible (I have the feeling you might be covering it up intentionally. After personally spending *many hours* attempting to recreate that damn synth tom and my version *still* sounding worse than the original midi version, I feel your pain. My current plan is to find a good sound font, record the stupid synth tom part, and just stick that in, lol). Besides that though, the synths start to sound muddy when are all playing together. Basically, for as much as I loved 24, I disliked the title track.

Now, a few things that I've noticed.

1. You seem to really like reverb. I think you're right that I could use some more, but your stuff might have a bit too much. The proper amount is probably somewhere in the middle.

2. To be perfectly honest, the mastering is pretty bad, to the point where it's choking everything else. If you're attempting to mix on laptop speakers or cheap earbuds, then that is definitely the cause rather than being some fault of your own., and my advice would be to get some studio monitors at any cost (and I probably should do this too, because high end headphones give the exact opposite problem). Even without listening to the music, you can tell how bad the mixing is by looking at the levels displayed when you play the song in the gallery. The middle two bars are all the way into the red, while the rest of the bars remain very low for most of the song. No song should look like this. It makes everything sound flat empty and hollow, with no highs or lows, and really does a number on the sound quality. The good news is that this should be an easy fix, assuming that it's simply due to the mastering in fruity loops. Another possibility is *very* heavy compression when you publish to the gallery, cutting off most of the dynamic range.

Whatever the issue is, I did try to look through it and when I did a few of the remixes seemed pretty promising, esp. 14 and 24. Would be very interesting to see if you can get the mastering better with a few adjustments (or with a better upload if it's simply the gallery butchering whatever gets put through).

[Sidhe Priest]

So about mixing... Do get monitor speakers, good cheapie ones are the Roland MA- series - they're not stunningly accurate, but then they're designed to mimic most stereo setups. Good for music playback, too...

Headphones good for mixing are AKG K-240 Studio and K-271 Studio, and they're better off with a custom cable (stock AKG cable is made of really low-quality copper and has no shielding). Shout if you need one...

Headphones handle transients much better than speakers (they're quicker, more dynamic), so usually a headphone mix has the drums muter than they should be to stand out on speakers. Most speakers also have worse high-frequency response than headphones; this, of course, excludes laptop speakers which are pretty much headphone diaphragms :-P

An acquainted producer mixes everything on a bog-standard Philips stereo in addition to Yamaha monitor speakers (he just turns off the Yamaha monitors when making a commercial master).

[Sidhe Priest]

My old Game12.mid mix. It's from 2002, something like that...

[Sidhe Priest]

A more recent mix.

FLAC file and MP3 player.

[Sidhe Priest]

Game01.mid, mixed in headphones in Reason 3 (instrument balance isn't that perfect on speakers).

This uses a synthesised drum from Reason's Subtractor (Syntom.zyp).

Anyway, here's a Soundfont instrument that worked for many Descent mixes: ASP-ECW-SD.sf2. It's sampled off the old Ensoniq soft synth wavetable and slightly downtuned.

[Sidhe Priest]

About patch changes... get a dedicated MIDI sequencer app, the one here is old Cakewalk Express. Reaper is a shareware DAW that has a MIDI editor you can use to remove programme change events. Another thing about Reason - Reason 3 at least used to ignore MIDI pans. So you have to pan all instruments manually and recreate sweeping pans.

[hurleybird]

posted an updated version in the gallery

http://www.planetdescent.net/index.php?action=mgallery;sa=item;id=445