OceansAndrew Posted June 15, 2011 Share Posted June 15, 2011 name: Brandon E. Strader remixer: Brandon Strader forum: 3123 email: oinkness@gmail.com website: www.bstrader.net game: Mega Man 9 / Mega Man 5 composer: Ippo Yamda (MM9) / Mari Yamaguchi (MM5) source: Splash Woman / Wave Man ( / http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PtEcfF1STWY)remixname: Lady in the Water link: genre: Orchestral An orchestration somewhat in the vein of "Mirage", this is my third orchestration so far that I've submitted... I've maintained most of the orchestral elements from "Mirage", including the koto and shamisen. I wanted to add some more ethnic instruments but I ran out of RAM and my computer was crashing, so what can you do. There's some production tweaks but I felt Mirage was pretty strong, so I didn't go overboard. I made this for Round 1 of the Grandiose Robotic Master Remixing Competition run by DarkeSword. I wanted to get involved with a Shariq Production™® and I thought this would be a cool way to enter that Darke World. I made an orchestration I am very happy with, combining Splash Woman and Wave Man themes -- sometimes simultaneously. When I was writing the harmony for the Wave Man melodies during the chorus, I knew I was on to something special. (1:21 heard on the Oboe / Pizzicato violin). And the Splash Woman melody is going at the same time, which I thought was really awesome. Some stuff just works together nicely, you find out while you're in the process of fiddling around with doodads. I did a lot of doodad fiddling with various gizmos. Wanted to make sure I actually represented Wave Man properly even though I wasn't particularly interested in using that theme. I'm all about the Splash Woman, folks. Anyway, it's used for the intro, and also at 1:58 which represents 1:34 in the source youtube. As you can tell I really didn't go that deep into its source, really just a couple stand-out melodies were used. As for Splash Woman, I think it translated to orchestra extremely well. It's another charging piece at times, but I think it reaches a level of major-key epicity that the darker previous orchestrations didn't. I probably won't do many more orchestrations soon. It'll start to seem like a gimmick and people won't be interested in hearing more of them. I like to try different stuff, genres, and fiddle with the gizmos of various genres -- it keeps me interested in music. I hope it keeps ya'll interested too. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
OceansAndrew Posted June 21, 2011 Author Share Posted June 21, 2011 A little stiffly sequenced in some parts (but pretty much all orchestral arrangements besides VHD and Busta are guilty of this), but I felt the arrangement ideas overall. It generally felt more like a relay rather than a melding, as the themes switched back and forth. The arrangement felt more interesting when it was in the more contemplative Splash Woman mode, but a lot of the ssections felt copy/pasted to me, and there isn't a lot of development once the themes are presented. There are some nice points to this, but the arrangement needs more. No, please resubmit Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DragonAvenger Posted July 3, 2011 Share Posted July 3, 2011 Going to have to agree with Andrew. Once the original ideas are presented, it feels like the track doesn't develop any more. I'm hearing a lot of very similar/same sections throughout, when I know you can do more in terms of varying this up. The ideas you have are fun and creative, just not enough! NO (resubmit) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Liontamer Posted October 14, 2011 Share Posted October 14, 2011 The orchestration was a bit stiff with the opening woodwinds. The bowed strings at :13 in particular sounded really poor. Everything's just too mechanical sounding. I mean, you can argue VHDan and bustatunez have had some issues like this, but they've never had glaringly negative instances of that in a long, long time. Awkward transition from Wave Man to Splash Woman at :41. Didn't really have much flow to it. The Splash Woman stuff sounded a bit stronger, but that was going to happen with the bowed strings not being as prominent. Basically all of the articulations need work. The militaristic stuff ended up sounding powerful because the drumwork sounded the best out of everything and filled up much of the soundscape. That said, the Splash Woman lead brass at 2:43-3:52 was too low and getting muddied & buried by what was supposed to be supporting instrumentation. Arrangement-wise, 2:43-3:52 escalates, but nonetheless feels too repetitive. This would have passed with no doubt 7 years ago, but if this were made 7 years ago, it would be showing its age 7 years later. Great start though. Aside from the repetitive second half and a questionable transition of themes to start, the interpretation was pretty creative. The execution just needs additional polish to get the levels balanced and instruments sounding more natural and less stilted. See whose sleeve you can tug on to get more advice on what you can do for this; it'll come in handy now and for the future. I'm really liking the range you're showing as an arranger. The execution's not there for this genre yet, but you could get there, and I like potential I'm hearing so far. NO (resubmit) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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