[Liontamer]

ReMixer Name: Tweek
Real Name: Brian Arnold
Email: bmarnold@uga.edu
Website: www.tweekmusic.com
User ID: 6829

Game: Radical Dreamers
Song Name: Final Confrontation

This was the mix that I did right after the Tetris Attack mix and I started it because of the Radical Dreamers project.

This mix has been very interesting for me to work on, and warrants a small explanation. The source comes from the final battle in the game (or so I'm told since I've never played it myself) and I wanted to try and capture that sense of conflict. Since the visual aspect of the game is not present, I knew that it was necessary to create that feeling of conflict within the sound of the mix. My idea was to have three different genres of music battling each other, which is what I did: Trance, Orchestral, and DnB. Each genre has it's time to shine, so to speak, but each one is "infected" by another genre. Be it the tribal drums during the Trance section, the mechanical/shot gun sound of the orchestral instruments, or the gated Trance synths during the DnB part (and there are many more that I will leave for you to hear), the fighting is continuous to the very end. As I'm sure you'll notice, all hell breaks loose towards the end with all the genres fighting for the spotlight. This was certainly the mix that provided the most creativity for me to this point.

Special thanks goes to Sephfire and bLiNd for their input.

Two last important items:

1. This is a project mix for the Radical Dreamers project.
2. I request a link retention in the case of a NO decision.

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http://snesmusic.org/v2/download.php?spcNow=rd - "Final Confrontation" (rd-13.spc)

I thought the production was a weak point. Not a fan of the rigidly sequenced piano at 4:00 being so exposed, as it wasn't like that earlier on (e.g. 2:20), though the doubling at 4:06 helped. Brian's still yet to find his legs in terms of achieving a spacious yet clean & powerful sound, which isn't a big knock against him, as he's already a good arranger. Much like his collab with Sephfire, Final Fantasy 7 'REAKTR.1', though...I might as well quote myself:

Originally Posted by Liontamer

Not a blowaway production job, as the track seemed to want to be more grandiose sounding but didn't have all the oomph needed.

Not a dealbreaker, but an aspect that needs attention for future works. zircon & JJT pointed out the imbalance towards the low-end for 'REAKTR.1' and it's clearly a substantial issue here as well. I would have at least VBRed the MP3 to push the 6MB filesize limit and make the most of the encoding.

Now that I've heard this piece, I've got a better idea of how contributory Brian was to 'REAKTR.1'. A lot of the same sounds and processing/production techniques were employed here, which made the two feel somewhat samey in the negative sense, but the groove felt more integral and natural with this one. In any case, the arrangement was well developed, very expansive, and solidly dynamic. Perhaps we can get a new rendering of this one to address the EQing issues.

YES

[DarkeSword]

Quite expansive with lots of excellently executed interpretive ideas. I greatly enjoyed the genre grab-bag. It's not easy to successfully meld different styles.

Nice work.

YES

[big giant circles]

Mix is a little bit muddy - Brian loves him some reverb :)

However, I can't really voice any serious gripes that would come anywhere close to keeping this one out of the clear. Really fantastic job of varying the groove and genre-crossover throughout the track. Very expansive and there's lots of variation from start to finish. Song's just shy of 6 minutes, and I never got bored - always a good and rare quality of longer tracks.

I suppose I don't have much else to add except YES

(just so all you jdghaters out there know, this is my 3rd YES in a row, but y'all will never know because these mixes are never posted in order.)

[Vig]

Well-arranged. I would say there could be more stereo separation. I certainly don't have anything to say that's NO worthy.

YES