Thank you for the comment Spinmeister. As for your penultimate paragraph…of course it was an artistic message. I had hoped to build to a sort of sonic explosion at the end but discovered I didn’t know how to create that so I just found a handy point to clip it (amazingly that fell at exactly 4:00) and clipped the sample to bring the listener to nothingness very sharply. Thanks for the chance to explain it.

“it could be heard as just a mistake” or just laziness :-). Please see above as I am looking for ideas for a better ending. Appreciate your comment very much oldDog, and your nickname always gives me a chuckle.

Glad you found it suitably creepy, that’s what I was driving for. Please let me know how to create a reversed volume swelled chunk of something and I’ll give it a whirl :-). Many thanks for the warm welcome.

P.S.- the title is swell.

Thank you very much F.B. (can I call you F.B.? I tend to do that to people with longish nicknames). I’m quite pleased to be forewarned about all forms of evil in music :-).

You should also know that the implement in the title is a guitar and is a reference to the underlying sample in the mix which is a time stretched sample of the guitar at the beginning of Loveshadow’s “Tonight Tonight.” I used a bit of freeware for the stretching and was quite pleased with the result.

Thank you very much Gurdonark. You’ll always get my attention if you tell me anything I do has any kind of Eno vibe to it, so thanks a heck of a lot for that reference. :-) :-)

One thing you may not realize about me is that I am still very much a beginner at this. I agree with you about the levels. Another odd thing about the samples/sounds in this mix is that all of them migrate in the stereo field which meant that panning control was nearly impossible. I just let them do their thing but sometimes they were all kind of stuck together like little kids playing soccer who haven’t learned their positions yet. I rushed this one out the door. I promise to be more exacting next time :-).

On your ending solution, what do you mean by “3 steps lower”? Are you referring to pitch-shifting? I have never done that. I’m always game to learn something new, however. Thanks very much for the review.

yes, by “three steps lower”, I mean to pitch-shift. With very percussive samples, pitch-shifting can be more subtle as a sound varation, but it can make for some fun contrasts even so.

Maybe you could try to do a mix in which you use tons of freesound samples and create a piece by sampling and looping from them. This would give you things you could pan here and there.

I like the way you’ve mashed things together here, though, to achieve a nice effect.

If I can make one old man feel young with my music then I have more than done my job, so thanks for this. As it is, it might be at least two, so that’s very nice indeed.

I’ll take the ending idea under advisement, but it sounds quite interesting …

For everyone, the old sci-fi feel is what I was heading toward. I could see the doors sliding and the lights flickering and hear the hum of the ship’s engines. These old productions were far more charming and personal than some of the special effects blockbusters we see now. I am more than pleased that so far that “vibe” (what a goofy word) is getting across.

when i said `vibes’ i meant the sounds of the Vibraphone the big glockenspeil thingy.:-)

I realized that. I was using the other sense, however, which I still think is goofy. :-)

What a pretentious response to a debut; when your own offering is so feeble. Sorry to be so harsh, but what the hell is “cleverer”?

Well Essesq I’ve had another listen but my first comments still stand.

I must however clarify what I was trying to say! The mix as a mix is fine but what I meant was that you can produce better work. It was a bit of a backhanded compliment and maybe the backhand hit first before the compliment had a chance!!

So no offence intended and please have more confidence in your ability

Quote: radiotimes…you can produce better work.

mmmhhh - by that measure I am always guilty of underachieving. While I spend rather long hours on each of my remixes, and have lost sleep over each one of them, I could always spend more time on them and thus produce better work. By that measure I should only publish one remix the day before I die. Because only then do I know that I can’t do any better any more. :-)

And to be honest, RT - I am missing the “constructive” part of your criticism. There’s nothing in your review which indicates a specific suggestion for improvement in the remix. Which is too bad, since you are one of the most idea rich remixers I know.

I am so with spin- tell us exactly why you are dissatisfied, and enlighten us with your suggestions.
P.S.- my remix is coming- I wait with
bated breath for your review.

He’s dissatisfied because he’s been doing so many remixes that he’s worn out his ears :-). RT’s been very encouraging in the past so I’ll chalk this one up to temporary insanity.

FB I can’t wait to hear it (please take your time though) , but I wouldn’t get too worked up about my review. I am of the belief that once art is born into the world it’s life course is out of the parent’s hands.

Whoah- forget it. I was just tryin’ to stick-up for a song I believed in.

P.S.- I did not know you guys had an artistic history. I have this bad habit of stickin’ up for a perceived underdog. My apologies…..FB

“Artistic History”… if you mean commenting on a handful of mixes, perhaps. RT saw tremendous promise in my earliest works (there are only maybe 7 total, so what’s early? Beats me.) There’s no need to apologize, FB, I think an explanation or suggestion of improvement is the least any negative commenter should offer if the comment is made publicaly. You are quite right with or without the history. I only hope if I go astray of common courtesy a little, someone like you will come along and put me on track again :-).

Thank you for my first big thumb. That silly little moog sequence was all I could come up with musically so thank goodness somebody liked it. I’m still hoping someone will teach me how to write music, but until then it’s awfully nice having kind, warm souls like yourself offering encouragement.

Well you may want to see me shed my “newbie” identity, but I’ll hang onto it as long as I can. There are a myriad of basic remixing skills that I still need to pick up and until I’ve tried them all at least once, I’m still new. That’s my story and I am sticking to it.

RemixerGirl? Wasn’t she the estranged relative of the Incredibles? (orange and black suit, headphones, keyboards, mug of coffee, bottle of wine (actually those yellow and black Sennheisers of mine would go quite nicely with the suit, what’s the name of the little designer lady????)

Well fine work, it’s too dark to remind me of Eno, but it does remind me of :zoviet*france: and that’s a good thing! I agree with the suggestion to let the last main sounds trail off gradually with reverb or very slow fade 30-40 seconds.

Thank you very much Subliminal. I am a scrupulously honest person so before I said the next thing I am about to say I went over to your page to remind myself of what I said about some of your work. So I can now say that I definitely do not have more talent than you :-). I’m also not a complete newbie (I got yelled at for trying to claim that status). I like listening to the interplay of sounds and just feeling the way they impact my emotions. Blending ambient samples is fairly easy for me to do, picking the samples and ordering them is another matter :-).

I am pleased that you enjoyed this piece. Looking back on it, I am a little disappointed in various things about it but I still like the atmosphere of it which was totally down to the time-stretching of that LS guitar sample which I knew would produce something really cool and I was thrilled when I heard the result. That was the core of the piece, the rest was really just jewelry and makeup :-) (no offense to the other sample providers ).