Chimpazilla Posted May 21, 2016 Share Posted May 21, 2016 (edited) Contact Information Your ReMixer name : SuperTrey Real Name: Trey Dieterich (You may use my real name as remixer name) Email: Websites: www.treydieterich.com (Currently unavailable) www.soundcloud.com/treydieterich www.facebook.com/treydieterich https://treydieterich.bandcamp.com Userid: 26019 Submission Information Name of game(s) arranged: Battletoads (NES) Name of arrangement: Toadally Tubular Name of individual song(s) arranged: Surf City Additional Info: This song was recorded using Logic Pro. I play Ibanez guitars and model amps with Guitar Rig. Drums are sampled with the Steven Slate's drum library. Download Hosting: I have also attached the file in the event sound cloud misbehaves. File may be in 24 bit? Can resub in lower rate if it is an issue. Edited June 8, 2016 by Liontamer closed decision Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gario Posted June 6, 2016 Share Posted June 6, 2016 Holy shit, that intro fucking nails it. One of my favorite, underrepresented sources from this game and this arrangement sweet-spots the best part of it, from the get-go. If you ever want to get on my good side, that's one way to do it. The rest of the arrangement is pretty standard fair, chunky heavy metal arrangement with some cool leads and soloing. It's pretty good overall, but those first forty seconds are divine. Just deep, heavy bass, subtle arpeggio, subtle use of the source playing above it with that clean nylon. Beautiful. Now that I absolutely gushed on it, let's get into the production, which save for the beginning is a little more questionable. The first thing one can notice right away is that it's a quiet production - compared to other metal tracks on this site, it's very quiet. For the sake of listeners on the site who listen to multiple metal tracks at a time, the overall loudness should be comparable to what others have produced, else they will get sudden jumps in volume listening to other tracks after hearing yours at an appropriate level. Listening to the track, it sounds like you're losing a lot of soundscape real estate in your lower end. You have a solid bass, a rhythm that's heavy in the bass (which sometimes acts as a lead, as well). On top of that, there is no side chaining at all on the bass drum, which completely eats what limited space you have in getting louder before clipping sets in. I'd suggest clearing all of this space up by playing with the EQ on the rhythm guitar a little bit - give it less bass, and lower the impact on the low pass that you're probably using to give it some more upper EQ to compensate a bit. For the more bass-y instruments (like the bass and rhythm), utilize a little bit of sidechaining to the bass drum. Not too much, like in a trance song or anything, but enough to give you more headroom so you can make the song louder. At 1:47, you double the lead at an octave below. Considering the bass issue that I mention earlier, I'd suggest not doubling that lead an octave below - it creates mud, and give you less space to create a louder mix. As a general rule based on the physics of sound design, bass has a larger waveform than mid-and upper EQ, so you need to handle it sparingly. Use it when necessary, as it's important for the foundation of any piece of music, but handle it carefully, as it just eats up the amount of sound that you can get in a track otherwise. As much as it pains me to do this (again, amazing intro), due to the loudness issue, as well as the underlying bass issue that takes up all your soundspace, I'm going to send this back to you this time around. PLEASE resubmit it with the fixes to the overall loudness and less crowded lower spectrum, though, as this is a really good arrangement of my favorite source, and I'd hate to see this fall by the wayside. NO/RESUB Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sir_NutS Posted June 8, 2016 Share Posted June 8, 2016 I'll agree with Gario on the Intro, just great. The mix is a bit on the quiet side but in my opinion is not low enough that I have to bump the volume up too much. The mix balance was passable to me, it could've had more air and the low/low mids could get more separation but I would be ok with this. My main issue with the production is the clipping, and this is something you can fix easily by just slapping a limiter on your master. The arrangement was solid, as previously mentioned the Intro was on point and the track evolves pretty well, the performances are pretty good and although you won't hear a great departure from the source material here, it's definitely interpretative enough. As it stands, I would've borderline passed this if the clipping issues weren't there. Please fix those and while you're at it try to get a cleaner bottom end on your mix and you'll be gold. NO (resubmit) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Liontamer Posted June 8, 2016 Share Posted June 8, 2016 I'm taking a different tack, because while the production criticisms from Gario and NutS are all fine, and I can't/won't disagree since that's above my pay grade, I just felt a decent portion of the execution was underwhelming. From :44-1:02, 1:20-1:46, 2:23-2:56, the snare drum/kick writing was vanilla and bland, despite some fills and spices; there's something about the tone of it that doesn't lend any energy to the piece. Also, the kick was (arguably) too loud relative to the lead guitars while the other supporting writing was too quiet & obscured (in a track that's already mixed too low). The arrangement and mixing were going well in the right direction, Trey, so I don't mean to imply the track's poor. But the drum writing in particular undermines the piece too much, IMO.NO (resubmit) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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