OCR01859 - *YES* Final Fantasy 9 'The Rose General'

[Liontamer]

Contact information:

remixer name - katethegreat19
real name - Kate Covington
email address - katethegreat_19@yahoo.com
user id number - 26717

Submission information:

name of game - Final Fantasy IX
name of song - Rose of May
comments about remix -
This is my vocal adaptation of Rose of May. The arrangement is entirely acoustic and I am performing all the parts on harp, guitar, frame drums and recorder. The lyrics, inspired by the character of General Beatrix are my own.

please consider my submission! ^_^
~katethegreat19

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http://tzone.org/~llin/psf/packs2/FF9_psf.rar (http://tzone.org/%7Ellin/psf/packs2/FF9_psf.rar) - 302 "Loss of Me (Rose of May)"

Well, to get this out of the way, this is pretty solid stuff. I'm just putting this on the panel so they can check it out.

I was feeling the vocals, and the instrumentation is pretty serene. Solid lyrics. There were a couple of puffy ("buh"/"puh") sounds that could have been tweaked ("pale"-:52 & "bone"-2:27). Maybe a little de-essing for a couple spots, but that was negligible.

YES (conditional)

Aight, let's run through the stuff that needs to be tweaked before we can post this:

1. The overall levels are too quiet. You should raise the volume, I suppose with some compression given how loud the tambourines get sometimes. Don't wanna clip. A musician J can give a good recommendation on how to approach this.
2. The filesize is too large. Our limit is 6.00MB (bandwidth).
3. The encoding is too high. Our bitrate ceiling is 192kbps and we only take 44kHz stereo, not 48kHz. Go ahead and do a VBR encoding. The high end of the bitrate range can be above 192kbps as long as the average bitrate is at or below 192kbps.
4. The track needs a unique name to distinguish itself from the original. Since "Rose of May" is the informal name of the source tune, that's no good. Feel free to pluck something from the lyrics or whatever you'd like.
5. You don't have to do this, but I'd recommend dropping the "19" from your handle. If you wanna keep it, there's no problem honoring that. It does sound n00b though, and there's the potential you'll want to drop it later.

Your YouTube and MySpace pages look pretty busy, so hopefully we'll hear more from you, Kate. Excellent debut.

[anosou]

This is one of the most personal arrangements I've heard in a while. While it's still rather close to the source you have a unique approach, great counter melodies and one of the most beautiful voices I've heard in a while. I am a sucker for folk-influenced singing I must admit but damn, this is fantastic. Beautiful lyrics, as a big FF-fan I appreciate the way it really portrays a character.

There are some issues that needs to be sorted out though, I'll steal Larry's idea with a list:
1. The voice is panned hard left but the reverb is stereo, giving an unfavorable effect. I'd prefer non-left panning to make the track more focused but at the very least fix the reverb if you want to keep it.
2. Everything's quiet and distant. Interesting effect but pretty much everything should be louder and perhaps a bit compressed when better balanced. The harp is especially thin which is a shame when it's so beautifully played.
3. Track name and (pleasepleaseplease) your artist name should be changed. Believe me, you will want to have a name you can keep for a long while, I partially dislike my own remixer name already so I know the importance!
4. Filesize and encoding needs to be lowered.

As I said, this is wonderful but needs some fixes that are in my opinion fairly minor. Do them and you will most certainly make a huge impact on OCR with this one. I will listen to it on repeat for a while now.. be back later.

YES(conditional)

[Palpable]

Beautiful arrangement. Though it follows the source fairly closely, the source is simple and this adds a lot to it. Gorgeous harmony and countermelody vocal parts, and the supporting instruments stayed out of their way, which I liked. You have to up the volume. Some light compression would help with that, while also bringing out the supporting elements a little (still keeping them out of the way). Filesize, encoding, and mix title have been mentioned.

I'd also highly recommend but won't hold you to keeping the lead vocal center. That's very disorienting to the listener panning it left. Unless it's a duet, and even then I wouldn't pan as far as you have. Keep it center, move the supporting vocals to the sides.

Great work here, Kate. Hope to see more!

YES (conditional)

[CHz]

where did you come from

YES (conditional on volume and the submissions fine print)

Comments:


You can sing well and your arrangement highlights that. Digging the vocal harmony.
The left panning of the lead voice is kind of weird, but it's balanced for most of the track so I didn't think it was a big issue. Center would be better.
There are occasional strong plosive sounds in your p's and b's; the most noticeable one for me was in "pale" at 0:52. There's nothing truly bad here, only mildly distracting in a few places.
Submit more.