ReMix: The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past 'Sacred Flute'

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The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past

We're definitely looking forward to attending Distant Worlds this weekend in Baltimore - should be rather awesome! Let's keep things a' moving, though: newcomer (another one!) Blue.Nocturne (aka Dennis Kim) writes:

"I was browsing through OCR's LoZ remixes and I noticed there wasn't one for the flute boy's song. I thought it kind of iconic and the precursor to the N64's highly involved ocarina system. This song would play around the ghostly image of this strange child which plays a flute in a meadow. He would be surrounded by animals and as you approach, he disappears and the animals run away. This happened only in the Light World, and as you eventually obtain his flute/ocarina, you were able to use it to summon a bird that flies you around the map. Anyways, I decided to be less orchestral in this song, but I ended up being as orchestral as my last remix. I used full Garritan Personal Orchestra for the orchestral elements, FPC for drums, and soundfonts for the guitar work. I also was hit by a major roadblock as I finished the song, FL 8 caused annoying popping noises, but luckily that was solved and I could finally submit this. Anyways I hope you enjoy it, but if not, there's always the next submission."

While there is, in fact, always the next submission, judges were pretty down with *this* submission - especially the arrangement. It's always cool when someone takes a well-known franchise like Zelda, and in this instance a popular game within that franchise, and still picks a song that hasn't gotten a lot of attention and goes places with it. zyko wrote:

"yeah this is pretty freakin awesome. right about flute boy... very much the precursor for much of what zelda would do musically for the upcoming games. kudos for tackling this.

the arrangement is somethin else. i think that is what is most impressive here... what is obvious here is that you have a very firm sense of what the basis of the theme's music is as you took a very simple source and expanded it based on a standard zelda chord structure... you even quoted the overworld themes and, i could swear, a couple other ones in there as well."

All of the judges unanimously cited issues with production, in particular the bass and relative volume on the strings, so there's room for improvement, but Dennis has the arrangement side of his house in order, and I'd argue that it's harder to learn arrangement/composition than it is production. With some more time spent getting feedback on levels and specific instrumentation decisions, I think he's got major potential. This mix is proof of that, and honestly even from a production perspective the winds here are nice, things are clean, dynamics fluctuate, and panning has been considered. There's a lot of good things going on, in other words, and the arrangement makes the most of these components. I hope to see more submissions & development from Blue.Nocturne; this is a very promising start.

― djpretzel

Discussion: Latest 15 comments/reviews; view the complete thread or post your own.
At risk of sounding heretical, this reminds me of MapleStory, with the drumset + woodwind combination and all. And as strange as it sounds, MapleStory is one of the games which induces the most nostalgia in me. So it's actually a really good thing.
It's some kind of contradiction in me, but this arrangement was so uplifting to the extent of almost moving me to tears. I've no idea how to explain it, I don't want to try to explain it, I just want to sit back and listen while I revel in catharsis.
So I just wanted to say, great job, absolutely amazing arrangement.

- evory on October 30, 2010
Hmm....kinda cool. For a track that was more like a seven second sound effect rather than a real song, this looks like you fleshed it out and gave it some beautiful sounding life. The guitar does sound a little ehhh *wiggles hand*, but all in all, the pros outweight the cons. Very nice.

- Crulex on February 28, 2010
There's not much subtlety to the arrangement here - everything feels like it's up front-and-center. However, the arrangement makes that approach feel almost appropriate. Despite the somewhat-weak samples, especially on the guitar, I really enjoyed what you did with this short theme, it's very quaint and reminds me of something out of Banjo-Kazooie in terms of how uplifting it can be.
Nice debut mix, I still enjoyed it despite the weakness in some areas :-D You can only go up from here, so make it happen! :-)

- Emunator on December 22, 2009
terrific.. really took me back, well done

- ncc14113 on July 19, 2009
What's really awesome is that this source is so under-represented, and Blue completely fleshes it out to a full arrangement. Beyond that, I would never have expected this source to make it into OCR, but it is and it's done well.
Love the over-the-top happy feeling throughout the mix. Great work!

- DragonAvenger on July 14, 2009
Very nice arrangement, and I really like the instrumentation. Also, it's nice to see someone tackle one of the less-often used source tunes from ALttP, especially if done so well.

- Martin Penwald on July 13, 2009
This sounds awesome dude, this has to be my favorite song so far this month.

- metalsnakejuice on July 4, 2009
Wow, very creative. The best way to expand a source tune. Reminds me of the Secret of Spram with Mustin and Jaxx.
10/10

- A-RoN on July 2, 2009
I liked it, but I felt the percussion and guitar could have used more variation, they felt like they were thrown in there on autopilot... heheh

- Nobbynob Littlun on June 30, 2009
Not to be that guy, but, while I enjoyed the song, I think the drumming was absolutely out of place. It sounds like you just took a perfect song, and without any editting, added a simple FPC from FL Studio, and finished it. Maybe it bugs me because I pay more attention to percussion, but it definitely sounds out of place and needs improvement.

Besides being a lame pessimist, the rest of the song sounds great.

- xCassiusx on June 29, 2009
Wow. Congrats and this is very good. At some points, it feels like I'm listening to an updated version of the game, and other times it sounds like a true remix. I love it. -applauds-

- Ryo242 on June 28, 2009
I really dig the writing in this piece. Very nice. :D

- DarkeSword on June 28, 2009
This is one of my favorite new mixes! Keep up the good work! :-P

- rainmanbk on June 28, 2009
Very beautiful song, I need to find more music like this. Very few songs make it to my favorites list as fast as this one did. :D

- diamondfalcon on June 27, 2009
I managed to find the midi of this on VGMusic earlier this week, and through googling I found that Blue.Nocturne had submitted it to OCR as well. I emailed him for the mix as I found it in the approved-but-not-yet-posted-queue... it makes me glad to see it here so soon after receiving it through email.
I love the arrangement, it's extremely good and sounds awesome even with regular midi samples - before getting the mp3 I made an mp3 of the midi so I could put it on my mp3 player...

- Bunjiro on June 26, 2009