[Liontamer]

Hi DJP and Judges,

It's been a real long time since I submitted anything here... sorry I've been busy with other stuff :\

Well I did this for a little orchestration/sequencing practice, and I thought I'd pass it along to you guys. I hope you enjoy it.

-J

LINK:
(Sorry, don't have any better hosting than that right now)

Contact Info

* ReMixer name: Jaroban
* Real name: Jared Banta
* Email address: jrban138@hotmail.com
* Website: http://www.soundclick.com/jaredbanta
* Forum userid: 1861

ReMix Info

* Name of game(s) ReMixed: Zelda, A Link To The Past
* Name of individual song(s) ReMixed: Dark Mountain Forest, Dark World, + several others

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http://snesmusic.org/v2/download.php?spcNow=loz3 - "Overworld" (loz3-04.spc), "Dark World" (loz3-12.spc), "Dark Mountain" (loz3-13.spc)

Definitely awesome to hear something from Jared after not having a chance to hear his work for so long. Some nice tense strings in the background going without being exposed, though I dunno how long they could be played like that; they carried for 42 seconds, then abruptly cut out during their fadeout at :42, which was sloppy. (EDIT: Fixed in the mastered version.) Loved the light percussion at :22.

The samples here sometimes strained for credibility. After the 1:51 mark when things escalated, some of the more lacking samples, like the brass, were pretty exposed. Definitely made all the more noticeable at 2:24, though the layering at 2:39 for the "Dark Mountain" section worked pretty well. Brass sounded pretty fakey here, and the arrangement was a bit too conservative. Some of the orchestral embellishments helped, but overall it stated off like a simple orchestral conversion at the outset. It took until 3:27 for something more interpretive to be thrown into the picture, so no problems there.

Fairly decent textures, although the overall soundscape wasn't spacious at all; some effects are in place, but the piece still sounded way too dry. For the casual listener, this sounds pretty full and energetic, but to me these sounds weren't used at their best and came across as rather flat and hollow.

The arrangement was pretty good, if not a bit underwhelming. The instrumentation feeling flat helped me form that opinion moreso than the quality of the writing. I'm liking the concepts, but the execution could be better. Collectively, this could be an easy pass, but my gut's going NO (refine/resubmit), hoping that you touch up the instrumentation to flesh this track out more and get it sounding fuller and less synthy. I don't intend to sell the arrangement short, but the production was bland and IMO negatively impactful enough where I have my reservations. (EDIT: Vote changed with revisions; see below.)

Best of luck with the rest of the vote, Jared. No matter the outcome, it's awesome to have you creating and submitting mixes once again.

[DarkeSword]

Wow. Incredibly cinematic. The part-writing here is quite excellent. I really enjoy the entire prelude section of the piece. The march, not so much; the fakey trumpet samples really don't do the part justice.

In the end though, quite excellently done.

YES!

[big giant circles]

Well, the first time I listened to this, I thought there might be some slight issues in terms of pacing, but the lengthy "looming" intro kind of grew on me.

Gonna try and sum this up rather directly. I think there's some really great part writing and arrangement going on here. Instrument quality comes right back and counters that, though. There's wonderful attention to dynamics and overall composition, but these horribly fake samples/soundfonts/synths, etc. just simply won't slide by me.

Along the lines of this, let me just say a few things.

I'll begin by saying that I'm sorry, but I just feel too strongly that there are just too many resources (even free ones) out there for me to simply "YES" a track in spite of such a thing. Period. I don't mean to be a nit-picky pain in the ass, really, I don't. And even as one of the newer members of the panel, in this sort of genre, I would only assume realism is kind of important--we're trying to improve upon the capabilities of the SNES soundchip.

I think this piece could be absolutely raw if not for things like the phony brass at places such as 2:27, 2:47 etc, 4:47, and so on. I understand that realism is kind of hard to achieve via sampling, but if you put in the work, you can come a lot closer.

Really, I'd love to pass this. It's awesome work, it just gets bogged down by the quality. (By the way, even with the VBR, i think 96kpbs is a little low for an OCR--but that's a minor gripe).

NO REWORK/RESUBMIT

[pixietricks]

BAH! Samples shmamples! I understand your concern, guys, but I think you may be coming down too hard on the guy. Purely orchestral remixes are by far the most difficult to get a realistic sound from, and I think this is still well above the bar in that respect. The brass didn't bother me as much as that one cello solo section at 1:17, and even that wasn't cringe-worthy.

This arrangement is brilliant, and Jared knows what he's doing with those sforzando crescendos! The production 1:54-2:25 was weaker compared to the whole, but I'm not gonna let that stand in my way. Ultimately, there are going to be people who simply can't get into a synthesized orchestra arrangement, as was the case with Chrono Symphonic. Oh well, right? Their loss.

YES

[zircon]

I listened to this one a couple weeks ago and just came back to it today. I was liking it overall then and I'm pretty sure my feelings haven't changed. The mood here is really quite good - I think that is one of the most important aspects of orchestral writing and arrangement. You can have a technically flawless piece that lacks emotion, and it won't sound good to the listener. Good writing will always shine through technical problems such as bad samples. But in this case, to be honest, I think these samples are totally fine. I've personally passed orchestral pieces on OCR with less realistic samples being used. The arrangement here is good, the structure is good, and even if there are some less-than-perfect execution aspects I don't think it's enough to hold it back.

YES

[Vig]

The arrangement and partwriting are fantastic, which is to be expected from a fellow berklee guy. I don't think anyone is arguing against this point.

Lets refrain from being samplewhores plzkthx? Complaining about GM is one thing, or mediocre samples used poorly, but these are okay samples used very well. The quality of the samples doesnt come close to dragging this track down to NO territory.

YES

[zyko]

i'm gonna agree and suggest we stop being sample whores. this is great stuff. like pixietricks said, jared knows what he's doing and you can hear it throughout this brilliant arrangement. it is unfortunate that orchestral mixes are always suffering from bad samples because, for example, brass is so difficult to sample and there aren't many good brass out there. we can't fault the piece on being orchestral but we can laud it for being very well written

from an arrangement standpoint, this is spot-on. it is well-written... builds up right when it ought to and then rolls with the energy very nicely. after a spell of the marching, military music, it segues into a triumphant close that is both climactic and conclusive. this is good writing and arranging. very creative. no question about it.

the samples do bug at times but i don't see how they are bad enough to drag this down, either.
good shit, jared

YES

[Liontamer]

Originally Posted by Jaroban (11/11)

Hey Larry-Lar,

How's it going?

I saw that y'all passed my Zelda arrangement.. that kicks ass! Thanks

I didn't do any mastering on the original version.. so I went ahead and cleaned it up and mastered it a little. I was hoping you could pass on the new version to DJP to be posted on the site.

Thanks a lot! Hope everything is going well in your neck of the woods.

See ya,

J

No thanks to me originally, of course. Depending on the circumstances, I'm generally tougher on samples than the rest of these guys, but the arrangement was still strong for the original version.

The tweaks made in this version push it over the borderline for me, especially now that this mastered edition adds a bit more power and depth to the sounds, and fixed some of the more noticeable issues with sample quality.

While the arrangement was good, before there were sections that just sounded flat despite the strong writing attempting to convey otherwise. Props again for a strong return, and hopefully not the last VG arrangement you ever do.

YES