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Frozen Mourning (Midna's Lament arranged)


blaggles
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I'm terrible at coming up with names for pieces, so if you have any suggestions let me know.

Midna's Lament is like the best theme from Twilight Princess in my opinion and it was begging to be orchestrated. This project's been sitting around on my hard drive for a long time as I hit a roadblock at one point, but recently was able to pretty much finish it. It ended up sounding kind of snow or ice-themed. 

Here is the link (aif)

Another link (256kbps mp3 instead)

Source

 

 

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A softer take on the source. Sweet. Nice sound.

Structurally, it's really similar to the source. It gets mnore interesting once the rest of the instrumentation enters. There's more dynamics, more texture, more going on and more differentiating it from a plain cover. The very conservative first half might be an issue on the panel, but it's difficult to say.

Put it in a playlist with some posted remixes, other orchestral works, and compare levels. Is this _too_ soft in that context?

If it's just down to source usage issues, my go-to response is to just sub it and see if it passes. Check levels and sub it when you think it's sounds good next to posted mixes. Pass or no pass, I think it's lovely. Nice work.

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Thanks! I'll fix the dynamic range issues (I didn't realize how high I had my system volume cranked) to get things up to a decent volume, and I am going to swap in a flute part at the beginning; it's already been done, in fact. I also added a little more attack time to the string parts and fiddled with the modwheel/expression parameters in an attempt to get a slightly more realistic tone.

I was also concerned about keeping too close to the source; I could add more ornamentation, or try to come up with a countermelodic line, or a bridge or something, I suppose. Arrangements of existing works are hard for me to deviate from because I tend to know them so well, and my mind just refuses to deviate from them that much. x_x If I have to though, I think I could probably do it.

Still trying to come up with a better name for the thing, too. Here's the version I plan on submitting...

 

Edited by blaggles
wrong link, fixed
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2 minutes ago, blaggles said:

I was also concerned about keeping too close to the source; I could add more ornamentation, or try to come up with a countermelodic line, or a bridge or something, I suppose. Arrangements of existing works are hard for me to deviate from because I tend to know them so well, and my mind just refuses to deviate from them that much. x_x If I have to though, I think I could probably do it.

Deviation for the sake of deviation usually don't make it better.

I find that the best approach is to deviate early, on a structural level, where you can then add elements verbatim without it feeling too similar to source. Typically I create a groove that I can stick some source element onto, build the track on top of that. Maybe it's a percussion and bass groove. Maybe it's a synth arp. maybe it's a staccato strings loop. And then I see how well different parts of the source will fit onto that. The opposite approach is when you first make a cover, and then try to force the arrangement and melodies to be different. It usually doesn't work.

Besides, when it comes to ocr, people will have different ideas of what's too close to source. Maybe the panel will be perfectly fine with a conservative intro and deviations later in the arrangement. I'm inclined to think that's the case with this remix at least.

Good luck when you sub it.

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Actually, lemme give a quasi-eval, myself, since I've actually already dropped my thoughts on it for the panel. No reason to hold it back from you at this point, eh?

EVAL

Very tasteful approach to the source, here, if a bit conservative. The texture is light, but when change comes in it's quite effective. It's clean, crisp and overall a really slick track.

All of that being said, the levels on this are very low on the whole, and it's difficult to raise your levels without clipping at 2:30 due to that single spike in levels there caused by the bass drum (it's very easy to see in Audacity). There's a certain amount of compression or soft limiting that one could do to fix this (say, amp it to max, soft limit it about 5 dBs in Audacity, max the amp again), but a cleaner solution would be to make it so that particular bass drum strike wasn't as loud (and do a soft limit over the track afterward). To be honest, though, either solution would work fine.

I could see this being easily post-able if the levels were fixed, so get your levels up!

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I did bring that bass drum hit down as well as applied some significant compression in an attempt to even things out some without losing too much perceived dynamic contrast (I have the privilege to run live music on an almost weekly basis and if there's one thing I love it's dynamic contrast.) Overall it's been boosted ~3.5dB without clipping. I've just kinda ... overwritten the file in my dropbox. c:

@Uffe von Lauterbach I'm going to go with your title, Frozen Mourning fits perfectly. Thanks for the suggestion!

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