omicron_theta

Oh, cool, a(nother) Laguna mix. Some thoughts: - I like this intro! The tribal beats backed by huge chords are great, though the synth you're using for the accompaniment is too brassy (and bassy) for my tastes. - You are using literally the most generic guitar synth in the entire universe for the melody and it ruins everything. Crank down the distortion/overdrive and play with the note velocities, as it sounds like it's being played by a robot over a supermarket PA system. - The beats you've got going through the entire mix are pretty fantastic. You've got a solid groove going, and you mix it up enough over the course of the song to keep it fresh. My only advice here is to make them stand out more, the rest of the mix drowns them out. - Despite being flagged as a drum and bass track on Tindeck, your bass is kind of weak. Fatten it up and give it an interesting part to play. - You wait until 3/4 of the way through the song to start introducing any real changes to the theme, and when you do, they come out of nowhere. Bring some of that creativity out earlier in the track. This is a solid start, and I'd like to hear where this goes!

The song is World Revolution, by the way. As for your arrangement, I like what you're doing with the electronic instruments in the first half of the piece. I've always been a fan of simple, repetitive rhythms laid on top of each other in interesting fashions, and you do an admirable job of that. However, I'm not sure if the violin really fits with the electronica you've got going on. It's got too much tremolo and treble to really sound like it fits in with the much more mellow, mid-range stuff you've got going on in the background. Additionally, you're not really going anywhere with the melody. You've got an 8-bar phrase from a fairly long song that you're modifying slightly and playing repeatedly. If you don't want to go very far with the melodic arrangement, you'll have to throw in some fairly significant countermelodies to add variation to the piece.

This is definitely pretty up there on the epic scale, but I do have to point out that your mix is a little bit on the loud side, enough so that I was getting awful little scratchy popping noises when listening to it, even with the volume turned down. You should probably lower the master volume a tad. Otherwise, I definitely want to see this one finished. Your opening orchestral bits sound a bit mechanical, so you may want to play with the timing a bit so they sound a bit less perfectly on-time and a bit more human. Once the electronic beat comes in, however, it's no longer noticeable amongst the precise rhythms of the beat and synths, so you don't really need to worry about it past about 0:40 or so.

This is absolutely phenomenal.

I like what you've got started, but you definitely need to work on fleshing out what you have before you work on adding more to the rest of the song. As far as arrangement goes, it really is lacking in terms of similarity to the original. If you're remixing Kefka's theme, I have a real issue with finding much of it in this piece. Is this really Kefka's theme, or is there something else in there? What you've got sounds vaguely familiar, but I can't really place it. The piece itself is fairly well-done, but I have real issues with the way you're handling the drums. From the kit you're using, it sounds like you're going for more of a rock beat, but your actual drum-work is far too low-energy for a rock beat to work. Add some more snare and hi-hat! With that four hi-hat lead in, I was expecting 1 beat of a hard snare roll followed by a hard rock groove, but what you've got is fairly, well, bland. A good drum track could really spice up this song.

Great work so far. I don't have much familiarity with the source tune (never owned a Saturn, so I missed out on this game), so I can't comment on your arrangement in terms of the original. While I understand that this is still rather bare-bones, here's my critique so far: The 8-measure break at measure 17 feels like it should be 4 measures. Nothing is happening during that part, and euro-house songs that have sections with nothing going on in them usually cut them down to about 4 measures to serve as a break or a bridge. Don't fall into the trap of having consistent 8-bar segments! For the chorus, I would recommend adding more harmony to the vocals. Usually dance and house songs with vocal tracks have either minimalistic or rich vocal harmonies, typically in the 2nd and 4th quarters of a chorus. I think a more minimalist harmony would work, try play around with the fifths and the octaves. Edit: After listening to this on some better headphones, I noticed you actually did have some harmony. This should probably be brought out more or brought up an octave. Finally, the key change seems rather sudden. You really need some sort of harmonic buildup in there to make the transition a bit smoother. As of now, everything just jumps up to C# with no warning except a snare roll. Other than that, it's a great start and I'd definitely like to hear more!