ReMix:The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild "Take Flight" 5:18

Decade-long lurker and first-time featured ReMixer Fusion42 (Larry Monteforte) debuts with an energized trance treatment of "Flight Range" from Breath of the Wild:

"Hi, guys! My name is Larry, and I've been a long time lurker here at OCR, since I was in middle school (so over a decade, wow!) and I'm proud to submit my first mix to you! I definitely wouldn't consider myself "new" to music production -- I started messing around with FL Studio when I was 14 and did it all throughout high school and college as a hobby, but I took a 5 year or so break to focus on other things (got married, had kids, etc.). In those 5 years, I grew a lot in my piano playing and songwriting, and it's been a lot of fun to come back to making electronic music with a widened perspective of music. Fusion42 is technically 2 people: myself and my best friend, and 42 was our room number in college, hence the name. This track was produced by me, but we have more collaborative stuff coming out soon that we have both worked on. We have a broad array of genres that we are into (by day I'm a gospel/jazz keyboardist and songwriter), but Fusion42 is going to be strictly for electronic music -- trance, EDM, hip hop, you name it. We're having loads of fun so far and our personal goal is to release 1 track per week.

On to the mix: This is a trance remix of "The Flight Range" from The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. I've played the heck out of Breath of the Wild this year, but somehow never noticed this little theme, basically a play on Revali's theme, until watching my wife play a few weeks ago. It's a simple, melancholy little tune that plays in the Flight Range in the Hebra region, and it's easy to miss. But its little chimes really hit me, and trance just felt like the right genre. I've long enjoyed listening to uplifting trance music, and remixes from the likes of bLiNd and Jewbei from back in the day are among some of my favorites on the site. I still go back and listen to bLiNd's "White Skies" remix very often -- good stuff!

The fun part about making this was trying to fit the 3/4 theme into a 4/4 beat. I ended up reworking the melody a bit and adding a little to the tail end. I'm really happy with how it turned out, and I feel like the emotion of the original song was captured pretty well at the drop/breakdown section. For those curious, this was all done in FL Studio, and mostly with free plugins/Sytrus.

As for the mix itself, I'm working really hard at getting better, and I do feel like I have room to improve, but this is definitely my best effort in this genre. I actually had a few longer versions of the song, but decided to cut it short to avoid being too repetitive/lengthy, which I think was a good choice now that I hear the final product.

I didn't initially think it was good enough to submit, but I showed it to Jewbei, one of my favorite trance remixers who I have been connected with on FB for years, and he liked it, encouraged me to submit, and gave me some tips on my mix. So a BIG thanks to him for doing that! I hope it gets accepted, and even if it doesn't I will try again! Anyway, thank you for taking the time to evaluate this, and I hope it makes you smile!"

Good stuff! Many thanks to Jewbei for handing out some good advice & convincing Larry to send this our way - judges enjoyed it, and it's pretty hard not to: straight-up trance done well, with some breaks in structure to avoid stasis. DragonAvenger writes:

"The original source is definitely subtle, and I like how you worked it into your mix. I felt the flow worked really well with sections not overstaying their welcome. Going to nitpick that the transition at 3:42 is a little awkward and the track loses a bit of its flow as a result. Aside from that there weren't really and major crits in my book. Nice work, hope to hear more from you soon."

Noting some of the presets/staple motifs of the genre, Sir_NutS adds:

"The arrangement is super tropey, but the adaptation is where this shines as the translation from something sparse and on a different time signature to this genre was done very well. The artist has a good grasp on how to build a good song structure, and really, a lot was built from scratch in order to fill the soundscape of this remix of a source that's pretty much a simple melody played on chimes."

Jivemaster had some specific, on-point pointers on production:

"On the mixing side things are done fairly well - while improvement could be made with some of the separation each part, I feel things are audible and well fit into the sonic space provided to them. The same sound fx were used a little too often for my taste, and I would have preferred to have heard some more varied sounds across the mix in general to make things feel more varied - particularly during extended sections of similar melodic content. Overall, some niggling concerns with SFX and variance in arrangement - but not enough in my opinion to drag this back. A solid interpretation of the original."

I concur with the soundset feeling a little pedestrian; it didn't stop me from enjoying the mix, but I also feel that certain genres, trance among them, benefit from a more diverse & modulated timbral palette. Larry does a great job varying the structure and keeping that fresh, but in the future I'd love to hear more evolution & contrast on the synths. That said, this is a creative & fun extrapolation of a sparse source into invigorating & comfortably-fitted trance attire. Good stuff from Fusion42, would love to hear more!