OCR02480 - *YES* Castlevania 'Of Whips and Strings'

Your ReMixer name: Super Guitar Bros.

Your real name: Steven Poissant and Sam Griffin

Your website: http://www.youtube.com/user/SuperGuitarBros

Your userid: 47679

Name of game(s) arranged: Castlevania

Name of arrangement: "Of Whips And Strings"

Name of individual song(s) arranged: Prologue, Vampire Killer, Poison

Mind, Heart of Fire, Voyager

Your own comments about the mix, for example the inspiration behind

it, how it was made, etc.

The Super Guitar Bros are Steve (formerly known as Aktulua) and Sam

(formerly known as Sascratch) - though you probably never heard of

those names before lol!

Here's a little info about the Super Guitar Bros (as taken from the

Vampire Variations website):

The Super Guitar Bros are not actually brothers – they’re bros! Steve

met Sam back in 2007 at a local coffee shop he was performing at with

a mutual friend. After seeing Sam’s incredible classical skills, Steve

knew the two of them had to start making music. After their first jam

session together you could tell the two of them just clicked. They’ve

been playing together ever since. Not only do they both love making

video game covers, they have been working on many original songs,

which they plan to share further down the road.

http://www.youtube.com/user/SuperGuitarBros

And now some info about the song:

Sam and I had been planning on making a Castlevania arrangement for a

while now so it worked out pretty well when I got a message from

FoxxDragon telling me about the Vampire Variations album and asking if

we would join. From beginning to end it took us probably about 2

months to learn each of the songs, figure out how we would arrange

them together, practice the hell out of it, and then finally recording

and mixing the song. As with all the other songs we've done, this one

is played from beginning to end in one take: No cuts, no punch ins, no

copy/paste, just a straight performance. Because of this we've spent

many late nights trying to record the song with as little mistakes as

possible. It took us at least 60+ takes before we finally got one we

were satisfied with. It was a fun but also incredibly frustrating

experience - same with all the other videos we've done so far.

The video for "Of Whips And Strings" shows the actual performance that

we used for the album, while the closeup hand shots were recorded at a

later date.

========

Well that's it, hope you guys like it!

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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RlIvsBRexto - voyager

Very nice playing between you two, this was a fun listen. That being said, the overall aspect of this is that the mix as a whole is a medley, and fairly coverish. There are a couple moments of really nice personalization going on, the one that sticks out the best being at 2:16. I'd love to hear more of that sort of stuff from you guys, that's where the really good parts come in. Along with that, at times the track became really sparse, even for just two instruments. I'd like you to do more to fill out the soundscape and maybe work at playing a more complicated and interesting background part.

Pretty cool overall, but right now it's not quite at our arrangement standards. Hope you do more stuff in the future!

NO

Holy crap, you guys have some really awesome harmonizing and interplay between your two performances, there's some points in the track where I find myself really getting into it! Your cover of Vampire Killer is just stellar. However, despite how awesome it is your arrangement is still a pretty straightforward cover of the themes, and the moments of personalization from a purely technical viewpoint are too few and far between, as far as OCR's standards are concerned.

Damn, I wanna pass this mix so bad because it's one of the coolest acoustic cover songs I've heard in recent memory, but it's just too close to the original sources to be posted on OCR. Don't be discouraged though, I for one would really like to see more from you guys with more personalization on the melodies and arrangement, I know our listeners would dig this sort of thing.

NO

I definitely agree, this is an excellent mix, but it's just too conservative for OCR. I loved the playing, and If you guys were to submit that was closer to the OCR scope, we'd be all over it.

No

I've heard loads of conservative covers with a lot less personalization than this. I don't think I'm just being a sucker for the performances being solid. I agreed with the crit about the soundscape being too thin at times, and it should have been fuller, but it wasn't a huge deal for me. The transitions here didn't bother me; everything there was pretty smooth instead of jarring.

Modifying the genre, chord progression, instrumentation, rhythms, dynamics, tempo, or overall composition of the source material.

There are some notable personal embellishments of the themes, and a LOT of original supporting ideas involved in the interplay between the two guitars that are absolutely not in the original themes. Together with the sum total of the different instrumentation, tempo changes, new dynamics and overall different mood of the performance added up to more than an overly simplistic cover to me. This doesn't rely on melodic interpretation, but the other tennants of arrangement are there enough for me to be more than fine with this.

In short, I disagree VERY strongly with these NOs. Rejecting this on arrangement grounds goes against our standards and is a huge mistake.

YES

I concur with Larry; the arrangement is not so conservative as to be a sole deciding factor in rejection.

http://ocremix.org/forums/showthread.php?t=34585

THAT was too conservative, and a good call. This... yeah, it's not going way out there, but there's minor adaptation for the instrument throughout (inevitable but shouldn't be completely ignored), the bridging patterns used to connect each source, which work better than I would have thought, the performance flourishes - again, just an attribute of emotional, competent guitar playing, but still affect/count towards the arrangement, and then some choice passages and notes that are more traditionally just plain old modifications to the source.

I'm not comfortable with this being below the bar on arrangement; I think it's near it, but above it. I'm not directly telling anyone to change their votes - there could be other factors - but if your sole deciding factor was conservative arrangement, I personally would like you to reassess as I think our threshold needs to be more tolerant.

No worries, the conservative nature was my only issue.

Yes

Don't really see this as conservative. Vampire Killer alone has a lot of rhythmic stuff going on that you don't see in the original in terms of how the different parts lock together.

This is a very organic, emotive piece of work with great use of dynamics and syncopation. Love your transitions and movement between pieces. Definitely YES.

I see what they're talking about. Works for me, I'll agree there's a lot of personalization, albeit the melody and structure do seem on the conservative side.

YES

Sweet, it makes me incredibly happy to change my vote here too.

YES

Just so this can have 6 yesses for no reason at all.

YES

make it 7, yo.

YES

Stand back, we are professionals.

fuckin sweet that you guys are able to all pile onto this one. Where have some of you been for the other 100+ subs up for voting?

I was thinking about YESing it without even listening.

I was thinking about YESing it without even listening.

I will.

Yes

nice try, but I already beat both of you to it.

I was thinking about YESing it without even listening.

I think I'll adopt that for every sub from now on.

nice try, but I already beat both of you to it.

Bitch please, like I listened to it.