*NO* Castlevania 2 'David's Quest'

Greetings, comrades!

Remixer: Brandon Strader

Game: Castlevania II: Simon's Quest

http://ocremix.org/game/19/castlevania-ii-simons-quest-nes

Sources:

The Silence of Daylight,

Dwelling of Doom (at 2:38 to 2:46)

Title: David's Quest

I made this for my dad David for his birthday on June 26th. It rocks but my favorite part is at 3:12 to 3:46 plus the didgeridoo and jew's harp. 4th place DoD Town month.

Man, once the instruments started getting busier at :17, the soundscape became very muddy lossy-sounding, moreso when the guitars came in at :33. The individual parts sound great, but everything just bleeds into each other until 1:23 and it sounds like you had to settle for a 112 or 128kbps encoding. It still sounded lossy, buy we had better stuff at 1:32 once there was less going on and things had room to breathe.

The transition to the "Dwelling of Doom" cameo at 2:38 was pretty abrupt, but the move back into "Silence" was smooth. Honestly, this arrangement is nothing short of awesome, but the mixing's putting me off. I'd LIKE to YES it along the lines of Mega Man 3 'Intro Jazz', and seriously thought about it, but that one was a much more delicate track without too many elements obscuring one another.

The arrangement is direct post-worthy, and the instrumental combinations here were unique. But the production needs another pass to tighten things up. No hate if this passes as is, but I think it desperately needs more clarity.

NO (refine/resubmit)

I think the lead needs a touch more high end to rise above the rest of the track, and while the reverb levels are a bit high on a lot of elements, I was definitely feeling this. Some super minor muddiness due to all the reverb once all the guitars were thrown in, but things are still clean enough to be separated.

The breakdown section was really well handled and classy, and actually listening to it again, the instrumentation is really unique, but didn't seem strange to me at all on first listen, so nice work. It has a bit of gypsy feel in spots, some Doors-style organ soloing, and a bunch of cool elements. Very creative work.

Yes

Dig the arrangement, though it loses some steam at the guitar solo. You could interject with more elements in the background to keep things moving a bit. Once the drums come back in the guitar is buried.

I think the arrangement is rock solid, but the mix is a wash of midrange. I think this is mostly a guitars + reverb issue, but there are lots of steps you could take to carve each part out a bit better. You've got so much low-mid information: guitars, accordions, harp, flute, etc. I'd also consider beefing up the 70-120 hz range of the bass.

Please tweak the mix a bit? Great track.

NO

To go a little counter to what the others are saying, the arrangement sounds a little overstuffed to me, like you helped yourself to everything at the buffet. I mean, it's fine to have that much going on at once, but you can't have everything trying to grab attention at once, and to me that's as much an arrangement problem as a production one. The quieter parts not only sound better but are also written better, and I really liked those sections. Lots of good ideas but gotta side with Jesse and Larry that this needs more time.

NO (resubmit)

Going to just chime in on this one quickly... lots of great ideas in here, as I've come to expect from Brandon's arrangements, but this time around I feel like the execution sounds sloppier than usual, mostly on the mixing side of things. However, the guitar performances also feel loosely timed and lacking in energy to me. Re-recording some of your solos and lead parts would help, as well.

Lots to work on but I don't think it's beyond your capabilities to bring this up to par.

NO (resub!)