*NO* Final Fantasy 4 'I Love This Radio'

[Liontamer]

Remixer name - Theory of Nonexistence
Real name - Dustin Lagaly
Email - omfgitsdustin@gmail.com
userID - 19501

Game remixed - Final Fantasy IV
Song remixed - Theme of Love
Composer - Nobuo Uematsu

Source:
My remix: http://ton.escariot.net/songs/remixes/ILoveThisRadio.mp3

This was the winning entry in PRC130 a while ago. A laid back arrangement of the Theme of Love from Final Fantasy IV. The prize was an OCR hoodie which was awesome because at the time, it was almost winter and I was a broke college student with no winter clothes (I'm still a broke college student, but at least I have a hoodie now). This mix has kind of a radio theme with a transistor radio (original, I know) and at the end, it breaks and I attempt to fix it the old fashioned way. By beating it like the red headed step child.

Enjoy!

ToN

You can leave the links in.

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http://snesmusic.org/v2/download.php?spcNow=ff4 - "Theme of Love" (ff4-04.spc)

Texture was on the thin side. I've heard GaMeBoX pull that off with his Project Chaos mixes, but I wasn't quite getting that here; it's almost there, and some might feel it's already there though.

I know this is meant to be a track played over a radio, but I would have pushed the leads up, because they sound too far away, leaving the soundscape dominated by the beats and bass. The core beat never varying hurt this too, all the more exposed due to the sound balance I just mentioned.

Arrangement-wise, I think you went off in the direction of original writing over the chord progression too long in the middle. For a 2:31-long track (I'm not counting the ending, that's just extra), I needed more than 75.5 seconds of source usage. Here's what I heard:

:00-:13, :33-1:23, 2:20-2:28 = about 71 seconds or 47.02% source usage

That's pretty much it, gimme some more variation of the core beat (doesn't need to be drastic), tweak the balance and integrate the source a bit more. That said, if another Js points out a direct source connection I'm missing, I'd just suggest the first two things. Really cool, chill concept, Dustin; hope to see this posted in some form!

NO (resubmit)

[Palpable]

Arrangement was cute and had cool solo writing, I liked it. The thing is textures were thin, and you could have had some subtle effects or something going on to spice things up. The instruments sound on the plain side. The radio parts of it didn't seem that well integrated either, if you were going for a concept that it was randomly becoming low-quality - the radio effect parts use different instruments than the main parts. Actually, it might have been cool to hear the piano for more of the song, would have fleshed it out. The ending was funny though.

As far as the source usage, it sounded ok to me and was close enough to the 50% line that I could give it to you. The parts that used only the chord progression are always iffy, but this song has a pretty unique progression.

Production sounds fine except as it relates to arrangement - textures could be more full. If you can resolve those problems, and maybe include more direct source usage, I could see this passing. It's a pretty nice arrangement.

NO (resubmit)

[anosou]

HI ToN! WHAT'S UP MAN? LONG TIME NO SEE! Ok, much has been said but I'll reiterate what I thought was important.

Arrangement is very personal but sometimes leaves the source melody behind for a bit TOO long. Just a few more hints to the melody, perhaps in the other instruments, would help a lot. Varying up the core beat and instrumentation would also be really nice. Like Vinnie said, incorporate the piano a bit more perhaps?

Production suffered from flat sounds and an overall lo-fi feel. Some more high-end and some proper mastering would get this in much better shape. You might want to look into making the instruments move a bit more too to keep it from getting stale.

I think it's a good concept that shows a lot of promise but it needs some more polish to really shine. Great start though Dustin!

NO(resubmit)