The last Friday I actually got to make a news post was Black Friday. Anyways, school was cancelled today because of snow. Most of the schools in my area are going to be starting late in about 4 minutes from now, but the least my school could do is give us IB kids a break once in a while. It's actually really nice, because the last time I had snow that actually stuck to the ground was 4 years ago when I got an entire week off school because there was a ton of snow with a thick ice layer on top of it.

The only thing not good about today is the fact my tablet isn't charging again. This is the third time now. I haven't even had the thing for 3 years :/ 

ANywas enough about irl self that nobody really cares about hearing, music updates, yeah.

First off, I've been trying to work on an intro for Voltage. I have a good start, I just need to elaborate on it. It's going to be electro as me and AzeXiR decided, so I'm trying to make something that fits at 124 BPM. I'm also still trying to work on Lunar Energy. I'm sort of just going to have to go on blind judgement that's it good enough to continue. I can't keep expecting people to give me full-on in depth reviews on a WIP I may not even finish. I guess I got to think, not every artist was good during their first year. One thing I can identify is that during the drop the other noises don't match the same level as the main growl. That really bothers  me, eh.

Speaking of volume matching, I need to finish typing up that document with the mp3 for my remix. I would love to get that released soon since I actually have something to release.

Finally, I should probably work on my DnB track. Even if I don't finish I want to try my hand at drum and bass. In the future, I want to attempt neurofunk. I actually didn't realize how good it was, especially when it's fused with dubstep. I kinda started to get the liking of it from this track.

Next year I do have some stuff I want to work on. Like, I want to remix this track, although unfortunately it will be a SoundCloud only release. There's also maybe some other midi remixes of video game songs I might work on. I'll still work on original tracks, but those come and go obviously.

~Alpha

Well, yesterday I screwed around with making a drop. I tried two drops and they didn't work. This is my third drop. I'd appreciate feedback, since this is my first attempt at a complex drop. If I get too much critique saying it's not good, I'll just revise it. I kinda like the drop, and I promise I'll try to not make it repetitive. It will be a long drop, because the pre-drop is 48 bars. Also, I know the build-up isn't as powerful as the drop. I'm working on it. It takes a while to find bass that won't mess up your mixing beyond repair. Sorry about the volume, again. I just realized the volume in FL Studio isn't the same as my browser, I may need to fix that...

Anyways, I hope you like it. If enough people like it and I don't have to start over, I may be able to get this out before the end of the year. I'm probably not going to have time for a Christmas song. If I do it will probably be a very short loop.

~Alpha

Today is Saturday which means yaaaaay it's time for another post because nobody is gonna see my posts at 7:00 at night.

So, me and an artist named AzeXiR decided to collaborate on a track. Most likely dubstep, typically 140 BPM. What will make this collab really interesting is that we have different DAW's. But since we both have audio editors, we'll make it work. We're going to call the track Voltage, because I like that word :333333.

Also, I've made little progress on my drumstep track. It's either going to be called .:Lunar Pulse:. or .:Lunar Energy:. because just .:Lunar:. sounds really cliche. The thing is, same with literally every dubstep/drumstep/glitch hop track I've attempted, it's the drops that are hard to make.

When I styled .:This is the End:. I just layered that growl over the strings. Some thought that was a horrible idea, which begs the question if you guys are going to like the Raining Lake remix or that calmer style in general. The problem is not that I don't know how to place wobbles and growls. I can easily throw a bunch of growls together and call that a drop. Usually, there's some form of melody in a dubstep drop. It's why I've never understood the difference between dubstep and melodic dubstep. I would call a track like this melodic dubstep, while some may argue it's just normal dubstep. Technically, everything is melodic.

Enough of that pointless rant, making the drop for this drumstep track will be difficult. I really like everything before the drop as well. I think I'll just draft a few and post them on to a thread to see which one people like. I'm honestly hoping to god the mods don't remove the thread and redirect me to the review for review thread over a few 10 second previews-

aND because I get so carried away, I forgot what I was even trying to explain. Usually, in a drop, there's some form of melody. Even if it's chords playing every half a measure, the track will sound super empty without some notes playing. As I said previously, if I can push through it once I can push through it every time. I need to stop this giving up because I'm not going through another 3 months of just releasing 16 bar loops because I can't advance beyond that point.

Also, if you haven't listened to the preview of the track, here it is again just in case. 

~Alpha

In fact, I've used it for 3 sounds so far. One of them is made by me. It's all in this drumstep preview I have right here:

http://www.newgrounds.com/projects/audio/1042440/preview

I know it doesn't have a lot of energy yet, but this is actually where my mixing problem comes in. Once I add a bunch of subbass the whole mix will just sound drowned out. Currently this is just the pre-drop where it stands.

Also I tried to give this as much variety as possible. If anyone complains this is repetitive, I have no idea how to make it any less repetitive. I might modulate the acid-ish sound during the drum build-up a bit more than just a plain pattern (that's the sound I made btw). Currently I'm stuck on the drop. Like, it sounds more neurofunk than drumstep. I'm finally trying to make a bit of a complex drop. If I just do it succesful one time I can excel every time. Pretty soon I'm going to start using sound bytes in my tracks as well. No clue why, but I like sound bytes in tracks.

That's pretty much all I have today, just a preview. If anyone listens to it I'm curios how you think of it. I kinda started getting attached to it right when I made the intro.

~Alpha

Hey NG, I hope you had a great Thanksgiving (to those who celebrate it). Mine was actually better than expected. Of course, what's Thanksgiving without doing something completely dumb?

Yep, that's Massive. It's not cracked either, I legit bought it. Now, I'm not sure how good of a decision this is. I kinda regret buying it, mostly because I would prefer Serum (Serum seems a lot easier to use and learn, this is just hard as hell-).

Now some people might be like "But Massive is better than any other synthesizer you could get," and I do plan on giving it a chance, but if I find it too difficult I'll have to find the rights to resell it because Native Instruments doesn't give refunds for digital purchases.

However, if anyone knows if it's legal to trade VST's, I'll gladly give you Massive in return for a legal, legit version of Serum. I'm not doing that though until I know it's legal.

I think the main problem with Massive for me is because it's FM. Certainly I don't use FM that much. However, it's also difficult to make growls and stuff with native Fl Studio VST's. The pitch also seems to be a problem. Literally no where on the piano roll does a key sound good.

Anyways, about my remix at the moment, I kinda rage quitted on mixing. The balance was just off completely. So, JK-FlipFlop offered to do it for me. He even offered to do .:This is the End:. a while ago, but that wasn't as much of a mess as this remix is. But, even when he does get done, I'm not releasing it till I get the DnB track completed. Then I'll release those two plus .:This is the End:. as an album on my SoundCloud. The DnB track will be posted here as well.

And finally, because I have serious issues staying on one track, I started this drumstep track. I like how it is so far. I have no idea what got me into doing drumstep lately, because I really want to master 110 BPM. There's not enough powerful Glitch Hop in the world.

Yeah, that's about it.

~Alpha

First off, the current progress on my remix. Right now the basic outline is done, the only thing left to do is see if I like all the sounds and I need to balance the volume a lot.

This is me trying to mix tbh:

"Hey this isn't very audible as it should be I'm turning the volume up"

"WOAH OK NOW IT'S TOO LOUD"

"Ok this is actually a good volume but oh great now it's clipping out the other sounds GHDDBDUDBDUBDBUFUB"

So yeh, once I get through the mixing and mastering part, my first official remix will be on SoundCloud because Sony is going to be confused af if I ask them "can i post a remix of one of your ost tracks on Newgrounds".

Now, for my first official DnB track.

Here is a preview:  http://www.newgrounds.com/projects/audio/1040711/preview

For some really odd reason, the rendering got thrown way off and extended the song an extra minute. The song stops at 0:53, and the rest is just silence. FL Studio sometimes I swear-

And no, I did not make those drum patterns. I downloaded some drum and bass drum loops to guide me until I can make my own. I already tried making my own drum and bass drum loops and the mixing was just completely off.

If anyone wants some themselves, I got them from here: http://rhythm-lab.com/102-drum-n-bass-drumloops/

So, if you're wondering why the mix is so soft, I made it that way.

Has anyone here ever listened to Liquid DnB? It's actually quite relaxing. If anyone has ever heard Blastikz - Floating, that was the first Liquid DnB song I listened to. Well, as you notice with a lot of liquid DnB songs, the mix is very soft and mellow. I tried to make it that way for this track, despite the only DnB I have in my playlist is really wild-

And now for one more thing I have made a decision on.

I am not changing my username.

I am, however, creating a new alias for myself. When I made .:This is the End:., I wanted to try a new style of having more calm tracks. Making brutal dubstep like Eptic or whatnot wasn't working, so I wanted to adapt making softer stuff. Once I release this track and my remix, you'll notice all of them have a similar flow to .:This is the End:. And, to be honest, I want to attempt making hard dubstep again. So, all 3 of the tracks will be listed under a new alias. It can sort of be a debut EP for that alias because it will have its own SoundCloud. I don't favor the idea of creating a separate NG account for my new alias, because I'd rather manage one NG account. I'm not making a separate YT account for that alias until I know people on YouTube actually want to listen to my stuff on that platform.

That's all for today,

~Alpha

But unfortunately it won't be on NG, I can't believe the site expects me to reach out to a video game company for permission to post a remix. It's not like I took the original song, changed the pitch, and said "yep this is good I'm going to post this". Although it's mostly the notes and chord of the original song, I still put effort.

So, which remix is this?

It's the ambient/dubstep one that I talked about. I decided to spend some time on it, because I really like the project so far. The dubstep part is real snarly too, so I hope you like it. Some might complain it's repetitive, but all I can say is listen to the original song and you'll see the original has not much more variation than my remix. And because it's my first remix I'm actually finishing, I was too scared to throw in some original melody twist. I'll do that risky crap on an original mix.

So, what song did I remix?

This isn't really the song I wanted to remix, but I can't play by ear and vgmusic.com didn't have the midi I wanted so I went with this one. This is a song from a game called Ape Escape, a game I'm slightly sure you never heard of until the 2014 remake of the first game, maybe earlier if you had the PSP spin-off, maybe earlier if you were around for the release of the third main series game in 2006. The first Ape Escape game released in 1999 was the first game I ever touched around the age of 3 (so probably around 2004 or 5). It's still pretty nostalgic to me.

Before I even got into EDM, I spent my time listening to OST. Ape Escape had great OST for it's time. I did not realize until I really became a fanatic for EDM, half of the game's OST is drum and bass. So, for example, Primordial Ooze (alternatively called Raining Lake depending on which country you live in) is 160 BPM, and I'm drastically lowering it to 70 BPM. It's going to be quite interesting. But tbh, 70 BPM isn't as slow as I thought.

I have a feeling I'm going to get very mixed feelings about this track. I'll explain when I release it through SoundCloud (no one really checks my YT).

~Alpha

Maybe you could upgrade my experience by aligning the ads correctly XD

Ok I have no idea wth went on with my tablet the other day but it's charging like normal.

It just wanted me to do homework.

My tablet is obviously satanic.

Anyways, despite me asking which song I should do next, I'm actually doing a full DnB track for a reason I believe I've stated numerous times but I'll say it again. One user suggested it to me a while ago to do something easier than dubstep, listing drum and bass as an easier genre to try out. Despite my not liking for DnB (unless it has wubs and stuff in it like Droptek or Virtual Riot), this actually has been an easy track so far. I downloaded some DnB drum loops because I have a hard time getting the balancing and mixing correct for the drums, and I'm using one for this track. Now this may not be as good as some DnB, but it is my first attempt I'm actually releasing, all I can tell you is I'm trying my hardest.

And now, for a screenshot:

I've decided to not do the whole color coding thing because that's stupid af unless I'm releasing the FLP. Even then, people could navigate fine with the titles of the tracks..

This is currently the intro and build-up, I have no clue what I'm doing for the breakdown yet. And yeah, I'm using growls again because.. I-I just can't help myself :<

I'm giving a hint of the track name I've decided to permanently name it: P---- --e (it's going to match that name as well).

~Alpha

The charging port inside my tablet is broken yaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaayyyyyy :DDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDD *stabs myself*