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Hyrule's Synths (A Link to the Past X Synthwave)


Xyntec
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Hey folks,

I've been a great fan of this community and its content for more than a decade now. Therefore I'd like to take the chance to thank all the artists who contributed to this site :)

After so many years I thought it's time to bring myself in. Over the past years I've become a huge fan of the synthwave genre. Since I kept listening to VGM since my childhood I thought it might be an interesting approach to merge both genres. I'd call it: VGMwave :D

More recently I finished my first song and would love to contribute it to OCRemix. I was wondering if it's good enough? I'm eagerly awaiting your feedback! :)

Also, I'm considering to set up a compilation for VGMwave. Maybe some of you might want to jump in? Would love to welcome some OCR-folks on board!

 

Anyway, here's the track. It's still set to private, so please don't share it yet:

 

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Well hello there! Welcome to OCR!

Seems like you want to send this in as a submission, right? Awesome, I'll give you an idea of how it'll fare on the panel if you submit it as is.

Nice combination of instruments you've got going there - this works pretty darn well as a synthwave track. The overall soundscape is delicious, and the way that the track builds off of itself does a great job to progress the track. Your synths are well crafted, and when the drums come in they compliment the overall soundscape very well.

In the beginning the production works well enough, but as the track progresses and more instruments are introduced the soundscape tends to get pretty muddy, due to how wet the synths are. The moments of clarity in this give me goosebumps, like at 0:45 (the introduction of that bass synth) and 2:12 (that drum over the bass), but 2:46 onward the instruments all bleed into one another and create a messy soundscape. The Sanctuary portion's main synth is also overly wet and would otherwise be problematic, but that section doesn't have nearly as many synths going at once to cause issue. Release heavy synths, delay and reverb are solid tools in the Synthwave genre, but there's too much of it in this track so tone it down to clean it up.

Related to the issue above, when things get overly crowded the track takes a hit as far as having limiting artifacts. When everything is going down in the second have it sounds like there's a constant "buzzing". While I can't 100% confirm this to be a limiting issue, clipping or anything without uploading it to Audacity, it's very likely when this gets busy it also hits your limiter. Be careful with that.

The drums in this, while great for the genre, suffer from being pretty static. Change it up from time to time, add a pattern, switch the beat a little in subtle ways, etc.. The fills are a good start, but the pattern drones on after 2:12, so you'd very likely be called out on it on the panel.

If you were to send this to the inbox as is, I would likely pass it on to the panel, but it would very likely be rejected on production grounds, overly crowded soundscape and that static drumset. I'd suggest making your synths a bit more dry, and giving some more variety and life to those drums. Pay attention to your production levels, too, though they'd likely be almost automatically fixed once the soundscape is less crowded.

...

On an unofficial note, I really like the arrangement, here. Personally, I feel there was a lot of potential to expand on the Sanctuary track after 2:12, but that's just my opinion. Most of your issues in this track come into play after you start the Castle theme, though, so it wouldn't be a bad idea to have a more rich and focused Sanctuary arrangement. This doesn't affect your track in any way as far as the panel goes, but I thought I'd add that suggestion in there a bit off the record.

Best of luck, and thanks for sharing your track, here - it's a pretty cool track.

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Hello Gario,

and thanks for the warm welcome. Now I'm a bit blown away by your post. There's so much helpful feedback in it I mostly understand and that helps me a lot progressing this track. Thank you so much! 

Yes, I aiming at a submission of it. But before that I will keep working on it. Especially bringing in more variety on the drums, tuning the instruments and their volume etc. I still need to figure out how everything works fine. I startet making music just a few months ago and still have to learn a lot because I don't have any musical background unfortunately.

I only hope that you don't going to shoot at me, but I intentionally combined the Church's and Castle's theme since I wanted to come up with something original. There are already many cool remixes of both themes, so I thought I can merge them into one track since they carry the same mood. :)

Thanks again for your feedback! That's probably the best response I ever received - especially for being a newbie on the forum.

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Thanks for your kind words mates! Synthwave can be considered as some kind of revival of the sounds from the 80s and early 90s, while ranging from classic synthpop to dark, metal influenced tunes. Some bands I can recommend to start with are: Perturbator, Carpenter Brut, Com Truise, Miami nights 1984, Robert Parker, Waveshaper and Lazerhawk. But of course there are plenty more :)

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Haha, no problem. Maybe I should take the original version offline. But on the other hand it might be interesting for someone to see/hear how this track kept progressing. :)

I'm still fine tuning the intro and probably the end of the track as well, might introducing the snare a bit earlier. Then it's time for equalizing and mastering afterwards. Then I try myself on a submission :)

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So ... just submitted the song. I'm quite happy with it, hopefully the judges are fine with the track as well :) Let's see what they think ...

 

Note: Gosh, soundcloud's compression is awful. What are they releasing, 96kbs?

 

 

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  • 2 weeks later...

@Gario

 

Hey mate I just read your feedback on the judges' forum. Never mind my resub this morning, I wasn't expecting to receive your feedback so soon. 

I just would like to thank all of you for your feedback, I really appreciate it.  I will take your words very seriously like I did with your first feedback. Let's see if I resubmit the song one day. :) thanks again and hopefully you will hear more from me some day :)

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