*NO* Mario Kart 64 'Destruction of Rainbows'

[Liontamer]

Hi.

This is a slighlty dark, gothic mix of the Rainbow Road theme from Mario Kart 64, I realise there are quite a few mixes of this theme already, but, that doesnt matter :D

What this mix offers is different from the submissions already on site, those submissions are calm... whereas this mix is compeltely the opposite, it starts with the actual theme, slighlty mixed, it then goes into an original melody, which then sneaks its way back into the theme.

Its not perfect, but then nothing is, is it... I suppose the invention of soup... anyway yeah, enjoy :P

Ps, I havent a clue what to write about it music wise, or what to name the song itself...

I didnt put "OCreMix" at the end cause I didnt know if I should...

But anyway yeah, please review and all that :D

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http://www.zophar.net/usf/MarioKart64_usf.rar - 18 "Rainbow Road"

Cool changes to the percussion to give it more of a breakbeat flavor, but that was about it in terms of effectively arranging the piece. I thought the original "dark, gothic" section starting at :59 was completely out of place and didn't thematically connect with the "Rainbow Road" portion of the arrangement. Was it even in the same key? The stuff from 1:38 integrating SFX in the style of the original meshed better, but that was about it.

Finally went back to the Rainbow Road stuff at 2:10. All of the usage of Rainbow Road kept the melody way too straight and uninterpretive. Melody dropped out, leaving the foundation of the original at 3:09, which, while a decent part of dynamic contrast, still sounds way too similar in structure and mood to the source tune. Would have been a perfect chance to integrate some original writing with the foundation of the source.

So in short, the original sections don't piece together strongly enough, and the overall feel of the arrangement is the same as the source tune except different beats. Creatively, you need to make this a lot more unique and personalized. Decent first sub, and you seem to have the sound/production end of things going reasonably well. Keep at it.

NO

[Vig]

not bad by any stretch, but the drums get quite tedious. It seems like the arranged material isn't terribly creative. Almost original + drums. Then there's some original material which provides some dynamic variation, but isn't remarkably engaging either. I'd say it needs a bit more complexity and depth.

NO

[djpretzel]

Like Jesse says, not bad, but the original portions, which are neither dark nor gothic in my book, aren't substantive - so far as I can tell, almost all other non-drum elements drop out, and you've got a bassline doing filter sweep fx over the beats. Don't get me wrong, we do want original additions, but when the arranged material outshines the original additions to this extent, it seems like the new bits are added in simply to comply with OCR's arrangement standards, which isn't the way to go - things need to sound natural, and extended bars of what amounts to electronica filler isn't the way to accomplish that goal.

If I sound a bit harsh, it's only because the actual arranged bits here were really quite good - outside from some repetition issues on the drums, things were produced well, the mix was crisp and clean, and solid decisions were made on instrumentation. I was expecting this to be a closer call. But the original portions don't hook up with source material, and aren't particularly compelling, to boot, which is a double whammy.

NO