HAPPY'S PROFILE

Has anyone ever come across with some of these before?




http://darebee.com/ (formerly known as Neila Rey) is an entirely free site run by bunch of fitness enthusiasts, full of fitness programs and workouts. All the information is well tested and absolutely free, available with easy to comprehend and intuitive guidelines.

There's some really easy to start, short-, or longer-term programs for both losing body weight, as well as building muscle tone. There's also a lot of good diet and general fitness tips without any unnecessary bullshit attached to them.

A blurb about my personal experience:

I've never been a particular fitness enthusiast myself and I often felt insecure about starting any extensive workout, and I felt I lacked proper self discipline to do so. I've usually felt I've lacked any proper self discipline to begin with.

Somewhat precisely one year ago I just came across some of Darebee's workouts in 9GAG and thought it'd be cool to try something like this out - hell, I liked to run around outside when I was a kid, anyway. Why not try to get into a good shape, as it's something I've always thought would be a cool thing.

I'm 5.6 feet tall and I've lost 53 pounds in one year, even though I had some pauses when I didn't workout out for several weeks. I weighed 198.4 lbs when I started and now I weigh 143.3 lbs, though of course I've gained a lot of muscle too.

Even though I've always considered myself pretty confident and positive, I feel working out has:

- Made me generally a lot more positive
- Made me a lot more energetic
- Made me more confident about any undertakings I choose to pursue
- Helped me build self discipline to carry out routines and work towards personal goals.

After all, it's just about utilizing your body for what it's meant for...

I've spent absolutely no money on working out since I started, and I still haven't even once stepped to a gym. I've come to love running, though, and I am currently working out every day.

I personally started out with http://darebee.com/programs/30-days-of-change.html which is a completely equipment free program that consists of varying different workouts that will enable you to train daily. I just generally ate healthily while carrying out the program and it worked really well, though now I've been on the Modern Hero diet, which can also be found from the site: http://neilarey.com/mealplans/modern-hero-diet.html

Currently I'm doing the Hero's Journey program myself, which is pretty fun as it has sort of "RPG elements" to it: http://darebee.com/programs/hero-journey.html

If you've ever felt that you'd like to be a bit more in control of your life and felt you could actually appreciate being alive more, working out is pretty easy answer, and this site is super easy and handy to keep you on the track! There's good tips for keeping yourself motivated and building a habit out of something. I highly recommend checking it out.

@ chenbaiwan:

That new version of The Hunt sounds really good now!

@ Fulminis-ictus:

Hah, this is great. Sounds very energetic and also authentic. Nothing to complain about composition, I like it a lot. Fits the theme of the challenge really well. It just feels somewhat short so I was wondering how well it loops, but it might do just well!

The mix feels a bit left centered in general, especially the violin sounds it could be closer to center - or at least I personally feel it's a bit distracting when the entire soundscape leans too much to either monitor, considering the banjo is panned slightly left as well... Otherwise than that the mix depth seems pretty good, especially the bass is very tight. Though the cymbals and splashes sound like they could create more space, as in have more reverb and create more ambiance.

@ Tean Koi:

Very well composed woodwinds. The theme feels very fitting for the challenge and creates a very light hearted village or town atmosphere, or why not a cheerful event theme.

Generally I feel the composition as well as the mix are very solid, though if I were to improve the mix further, I feel there are a lot of volume details that can be improved.

- The highest flute or piccolo notes are a bit too loud at some parts

- The lower woodwind playing briefly in the intro and coming in again at 0:17 could have more volume and presence when it is played.

- The guitar could perhaps create a bit more reverb and have less foreground presence than the woodwinds that play the main melody phrases. At 0:38 I feel it needs to come up to the front as it takes the lead momentarily, though.

- The percussion elements could all use more volume and still they would probably sit well in the mix.

@ Someoneman:

Sounds very light-hearted and especially homely to me. Very well composed mood. I like the melody a lot. I can easily imagine this for some light-hearted town in a j-rpg.

I feel the intro up until 0:14 is not so strong though, and the song gets a proper direction only from there on. Something weird happens at 0:49 and again at 1:49. The way the harp suddenly breaks the pattern sounds distracting and almost like the song was "lagging."

What comes to the mix, the harp could build more ambiance by having a bit less volume and build a soundscape behind the main melody woodwind you have there. The strings are pretty subtle which is good, and they sound appropriate volume in relation to the main melody instrument, but the harp just feels too loud. I'd personally try giving the harp some reverb, less volume, and raise the main melody volume so that it has a bit more presence over the harp. I would probably also try raising the strings tiny bit in volume, though.

@ drassray:

Interesting sounds. :P I like the mood, though I feel the structure is pretty ambient and further polish in the mix would do it a lot more justice. The strings build most of the soundscape foundation here and the shaker and other percussion having so much more volume over them sounds distracting to me.

I'd try bringing the shaker and the other foreground percussion down a bit and have the flute to prevail as the foreground instrument with the triangle, for example. The percussion which sounds like a seal... could probably also have some reverb / subtlety to it.

I like the uniqueness of the mood here, though. And the instrumentation is somewhat light-hearted, even if the track general tone feels somewhat neutral and curious to me.

@ TheRexion:

Nice relaxant mood. I like the beat, too, though it gets a bit repetitive somewhere around 1 minute mark. Further polish in the mix could help fixing this, though, because if the main beat wouldn't be so prevailing in volume in comparison to everything else, it wouldn't necessarily be the center of attention all the time and wouldn't get repetitive as fast.

The composition feels solid enough, though if you're looking for feedback for the mix, I think the main voices could stand out more and the percussion could sit in better and support the main voice. Right now it feels the ambient pads and flute are just swaying somewhere in the background while the main beat is taking most of the attention. It could be as simple fix as toning the volumes of the percussion down a bit. You could try to give the synth hihat or whatever that is, a bit of delay or reverb perhaps?

author=BurningTyger

author=Happy
Really sorry for the mix up. I hope the roughly 2 remaining weeks is still enough time for people to complete at least one theme.

Sure you won't consider an extension? Also one ting i think is hard for peole to find is light-hearted battle themes, so i;m gong to try my hand at those

I don't think there will be many deadline extensions. 1 month should be enough to complete at least one theme for the challenge and if you don't find the time to do so, then you can participate the next challenge. There's so many chapters to come that I don't like the idea of extending the deadlines.

author=Magi

author=Dysergy

author=Happy
As a person who makes music I prefer spending most of the time outside composing in silence. And most of the times if I do start to listen to some music, I just start analyzing it. .-.

Saaaaaaame the joys of being an Audio Technology Student ...

You joyless lot. I hope you can one day find the sense of wonder and enthusiasm you have lost by professionally pursuing exciting careers in sound technology.

Well I do still listen music for enjoyment as well, it's just more active listening than having it on the background.

I still enjoy the atmosphere and emotions that all different music deliver, it's just that usually you end up getting so inspired in the process that you want to get back to work yourself.

I find it also easier to appreciate all different nuances, details and patterns of all different music genres and songs after becoming a student in music.

And artists like Maxo especially blow my mind with their sound manipulation abilities: https://soundcloud.com/maxoelectronic

Really sorry for the mix up. I hope the roughly 2 remaining weeks is still enough time for people to complete at least one theme.

I think most comments here are pretty random and just personal opinions. Mine is that this works very well as a battle theme, though more so as a special battle theme. Generally I couldn't find any fault in the instrumentation or composition, however. My feedback would be to improve the sound and mix quality.

And why is this better for a special battle, than re-occurring battles?

You have a progressive section swap around 0:30, where you break down the rhythm pattern and carry it out it with more subtle variation of instrumentation and with different accents, and this draws a lot of attention to the song itself. This is also why the song will sound like more custom tailored for a very specific situation because it has very discernible detail and transitions. It's hard to have this sort of background track used repeatedly to far extent because we grow very familiar with the discernible details and they will start to sound repetitive. These memorable bits make it a great track for some very underlined situation, however.

If you want to create a track that can be repeated to further extent as re-occurring, more "casual" battle theme, without having it sound too repetitive, I'd try stick with a structure that has room for texture and patterns, and doesn't have too expressive or over-emphasized details. If the melody itself is memorable, that's not a bad thing at all though.

Then again, I'm no expert at battle themes yet, but I think your song would make great boss battle theme at least.