Emunator
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Posts posted by Emunator
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This is gorgeous across the board - like Rebecca's best work before this, this is led by some incredibly expressive performances from a variety of collaborators and bolstered by some tastefully-written orchestration and a great variety of supporting percussion. The sources are mixed organically and transition quite seamlessly. Are those bird calls being played on an ocarina or are those actual samples?
The only thing that sticks out like a sore thumb is the tambourine 1/16 notes that start at 2:55 and cut off abruptly - it doesn't feel like that was faded in or out properly. It comes back in elsewhere in the track and just felt detached from the rest of the percussion section. Very minor gripe.
I really dig this, nice work Rebecca!
YES
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You're definitely onto something with the concept here - your arrangement takes the more energetic Tikal source material and breaks it down to its core components and crafts something that's very brooding and ominous. This approach could definitely work, but unfortunately, the production quality is not up to the level that it needs to be at.
First and foremost, it sounds like there is very little processing or effects on any of the percussion, which combines with a very static groove that doesn't have a lot of rhythmic variation to give this a very unpolished feel right from the start. There's a lot of room to adjust the velocities and patterns for your drums to help build a groove that pulses and flows more, rather than riding the same energy level the entire time. Some reverb, saturation, and EQ cuts on select elements could also help the sound of the drum samples themselves shine.
The synth patches that you use throughout the arrangement are great choices and fit well together, but again, there's a lack of processing or effects to properly pad out the soundscape. The lone drum breaks with no other effects or texture on the intro/outro especially feel lacking in layers. There's a lot of empty space that could be filled with pads, additional instrumental parts, reverb, delay, or sound effects. As it is, your soundscape feels underdeveloped.
Keep working at it, and if you haven't yet, make sure to hop in our Discord Server or the Workshop forums to get more specific feedback on future arrangements. You've got a good ear for inspiration and did a good job with making Tikal's Theme your own, so keep practicing and improving your craft and you'll get there!
NO
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This was one of my early favorites from the FF8 album. As is the case with the source material, everything is constructed essentially from a series of loops, but the vocals absolutely elevate this to the next level. The backing chord progression is so dramatic and supports the vocals perfectly. I found the glitching at the end to be a little more hit or miss in terms of execution; some of the effects felt a little too random, and I sometimes wished that it fell a LITTLE more in-time with the beat, but I get what you were going for so it's not a big deal in light of all the other amazing things you brought to the table.
YES
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Too easy - you managed to squeeze a TON of juice out of these source tunes but craft it up into something wholly unique and fresh. I didn't feel the need to timestamp this, but it definitely passes the vibe check to me with regards to source usage. The melodies have been twisted up and often rely on the chord progressions to bridge the gaps, but you come back to the source material frequently enough that, even with the very jammy, improvisational approach to arranging, you're never far from Metroid material for long. Production is clean and polished, the sequenced instrumentation fills a solid supporting role, and this is generally firing on all cylinders from a technical standpoint.
You're definitely on my radar by now, your recent submissions have been consistently stunning and showcase a diverse range of talents.
YES
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I've gotta be honest, this is one of those times I look back on an older vote of mine and feel like I would have flipped if I listened to it again today. Despite the slightly weaker intro, the rest of the track is just so good. The keychange, the pulsing synths, and the lush soundscape by the time it hits the climax are just rock solid. It's a lovely remix
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Remixer: Emunator
Performer (Credited): Marissa Turnage (website: https://www.marissa-turnage.com/violin.html) Violin performance, violin arrangement
Mastering: ChimpazillaName: Ancient Relics
Game: Donkey Kong Country, Donkey Kong Country 3 (GBA) [cameo]
Sources: Aquatic Ambiance (primary), Water World (GBA) [cameo]Comments:
When considering making (yet another) remix of Dave Wise's classic "Aquatic Ambiance," it's hard not to question whether or not you actually have anything unique to contribute to the canon of legendary arrangements that already exist. Even if I did have a vision, were my skills up to the level they needed to be to execute? For a long time during the process, I didn't even have an answer to those questions for myself, but I kept trying anyway. Eventually, around mid-2019, my skills as an arranger and producer finally started to catch up to my ambition, and things started to take shape.
When composing this arrangement, I had a very clear visual in mind that influenced nearly everything about final product - one of a decaying, post-industrial civilization that had sunk to the bottom of the ocean, surrounded by marine snow and bioluminescent creatures that were slowly reclaiming this as their home. I built a sound palette that reflected this contrast, merging the organic sound of vocal pads, piano, and belltones with an array of warped and rusted industrial percussion, a warbling synth lead, and a gritty resonant bass.
From a compositional perspective, I wanted this to be a slow burn, using only glimmers of the original source material at first. It's not until nearly 2 minutes in that the iconic Aquatic Ambiance melody shows up in full. I let the lead synth fall deliberately behind the beat to capture the feeling of drifting along in an ocean current, guided only by the soft glow of the sea life around you.
Past that point, the arrangement takes a more dramatic turn, tethered by the persistent harp and piano arpeggios and the steadily rising pulse of the electronic/acoustic drums. At 3:36, a string section makes a final climactic run through the source melody, led by some stunning solo violin performances from my good friend Marissa. It's no exaggeration to say that this track would have never seen the light of day without her contributions - my sequenced strings were simply not cutting it, and the sharpness and expressiveness of her performance made all the difference. Words simply fail to express my gratitude to her for helping bring my vision to life!
From there, the arrangement closes off with a major key reinterpretation of Aquatic Ambiance's melody on the violin one last time, which serves as a grounding presence as everything else around it drifts away into formlessness and serenity.
My first demo of this track dates back to November of 2017, and since then, I've clocked over 130 hours of working time on the project file. I've learned more about the craft of music production and grown more as an artist through this project than any other I've done to date. It's no stretch to say this is the most intensive, challenging arrangement I've ever attempted, but I also think it's turned out to be my best. Now here's hoping I never spend this long on another arrangement ever again!!
Sources:
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Sharing some additional comments/arguments that I think may help contextualize my vote, as someone who listens to this genre a lot:
I would encourage everyone to use Viking Funeral For the Damned as a reference track - that was direct posted and in my opinion, is OCR's best example of orchestral black metal currently. I feel like this track actually exceeds that quality of production in a lot of respects.I think if the entire track was mixed like we hear at 3:20, I would have NO'd it on the grounds of lack of overall dynamics. However, I would argue that sections that are intentionally walls-of-sound, nested in context of a more dynamic arrangement, is a valid approach and an important component of the extreme metal formula. The remainder of the track demonstrates a great deal of technical competency, maintaining good frequency separation and balance between instruments and is much more than a smushed wall of sound.
With regards to the argument that the lead melody in that section is being buried, I'd also make the case that that's a feature, not a defect - melody lines are often, for a lack of a better word, implied during these blastbeat sections, and aren't intended to be audible in the traditional way that you would expect from a guitar lead. It's meant to sound like a cascading wash of sound that alludes to melodies but is more grounded in riffs and an overall feeling of intensity.
Is there room for the clarity of the 3:20 section to be improved? For sure. I don't disagree with the critiques given by any of the other judges here on an objective level. Particularly, I do agree that the drums are mixed too loudly and the bassiness in the kick is probably contributing more mud than necessary.
But, considering that we are a hobbyist community, without a presupposition of access to professional mixing engineers and recording studios, I would argue that this is, at the very least, good enough for our hobbyist community. I feel that expecting anything more cleanly mixed here is essentially requiring professional quality from our artists, because I don't know how much more could be squeezed out of this one without bringing in an expensive mixing/mastering engineer, or effectively compromising the intensity of the mix and no longer adhering to genre norms. I still stand by my YES vote here.
One more reference track/album that might help - Shade Empire features a heavy slew of orchestral instruments along with guitars, and employs a wall-of-sound blastbeat approach to some parts of this song. The lead guitar is definitely sidelined during those sections as a stylistic choice, and the orchestral instruments aren't always super crisp, but it demonstrates a similar level of dynamics when the arrangement is viewed as a whole, even if some individual sections are lacking dynamics and clarity on a micro scale.
Even if this ends up being rejected, maybe these reference tracks will prove helpful in adjusting the mix to clean it up further. Or, at the very least, hopefully someone reading this enjoys these songs
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Requested resubmission of Valorous Heart, Onward! Micro Mages - Heroic Remix. Judges' concerns have been addressed, and followed up with a judge to evaluate the corrected track pre-resubmission.
LT EDIT (7/10): Treyt also sent us a source breakdown in video form:
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Your ReMixer name: Lucas GuimaraesYour real name: Lucas Guimaraes
Your email address:
Your website: https://twitter.com/Thirdkoopa - knew nothing better to link for this
Your userid (number, not name) on our forums, found by viewing your forum profile: http://ocremix.org/community/profile/33965-thirdkoopa/
Name of game(s) arranged: Chrono Trigger
Name of arrangement: Tyrano's Stash
Name of individual song(s) arranged: Tyrano's Lair (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rwKprnunn8c)Collaborators:Lucas Guimaraes: Arrangement, Saxophones, Synthesizers, Organ, BellsCory Johnson: GuitarImAFutureGuitarHero: Bass, Drums, Auxiliary PercussionBrandon L. Harnish: Sousaphone, Additional ArrangingThisIsJayC: MixSource Breakdown:0:00 - 1:00 - Intro from Source
1:01 - 1:41 - A section from Source
1:42 - 2:26 - B Section from Source
2:27 - 3:04 - C Section
3:05 - 3:24 - Combo of sources
3:25 - 4:12 - Chords from Intro, mostly original.
4:13 - 4:41 - Intro from Source motif returned; outro"ever since the departure of both Sixto Sounds and Danimal Cannon I have felt like there wasn't any good representation when it comes to remixes with guitars of any kind but it looks like these 3 fellows have arrived just in time to change all that for the better and what a mix to do it with I love the slow methodical playing that just lets you simmer on the awesomeness of this particular source tune it does my heart good to hear such nice playing on this remix which I already enjoyed immensely I hope these boys go on to do more, much much more"This was a comment I received years ago on YouTube for Hallucinatory Province.Okay, so, flashforward to like, 5 years ago from when I originally made that track and 3(?) years ago from getting that comment. It's April 2023 for Dwelling of Duels (it placed 25th, if you're curious), and I knew I had to do something safe for that month. Why? Two reasons. The first: I had a whole set and panel to prepare for VGM Con. The second: Moving. I wanted to do something in one of my two main genres (Synthwave and Psychedelic Rock). I didn't have time to do much other than arrange and play some instruments/program some VST's. I WANTED to throw some guitars on this one, but didn't have the time. This arrangement was very much in a "I'm tired of everything I write" phase before I sent it off to collaborators.I recruited ImAFutureGuitarHero and Cory Johnson early. JayC was down for mixing this track, and we vibed what we wanted the tone to be. We settled on something that sounds a bit 60's (ala Deep Purple, The Doors) and something like King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard's slower paced tracks. Once we knew the tone, ImAFutureGuitarHero recorded bass and drums as soon as he could. Cory followed with guitars quickly, and then we ended up recruiting Brandon, threw some Sousaphone, and went back and forth, from minor arrangement edits and tone, to the final mix well after DoD. I did add a bit of Bari at the suggestion of Hemophiliac and some bells at the end.The whole track works to tell a story: They're heading into Tyrano's Lair, everything is spooky (I've always thought the original track is a *little* too fast for Uematsu trying to match Mitsuda's composing), there's a final battle, and just like the game, no matter who wins or loses, it all ends in destruction. (Who could forget the this classic Chrono Trigger ending?)To circle things back: That YouTube comment is part of the reason I've dived into psychedelic rock. I know I haven't got around to much of these psychedelic rock tracks, but there will indeed be many, many more. And the reason I started with that comment is to show the importance of commenting. I don't know how many OC ReMixes you can chalk up to "This wouldn't exist without a comment on a previous ReMix" but this is one of them.Thank you to my amazing collaborators. You all rock and I can't wait to keep making more music with each of them. I hope you all enjoy! -
Once again, Ly surprises and impresses with their ability to arrange in nearly any genre. The approach here is more understated, but the source is always close at hand, and there's plenty of sonic expansion over the original. The tone of the spoken word vocals fits really nicely, though the words themselves feel non-sequitur and cheesy, though I can't argue against the fact that cheesy is genre appropriate for synthwave.
No reason I can think of not to push this through!
YES
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Damn, the lead synth work here is stellar! There's so much going on that's worth highlighting, but this is an element that immediately jumped out to me. Crazy arpeggio fills all around. You really committed to the syncopated rhythms with some very aggressive gating on nearly all of your instruments, which gives the mix a tremendous amount of punch during the breakdowns. The guitar work is such a fantastic way to bring this home.
Absolutely sick work.
YES
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Where's the beef?
This is a killer arrangement sorely lacking in low-end presence. I can hear it with my ears alone, but the dip around the 80-100hz range is incredibly obvious when viewed through SPAN. There's definitely some sub beneath it, but the bass and kick are just not filling out that space like it ought to. Around the 1:55 mark, it fills out a little more, but even then, the balance seems distinctly skewed towards the high frequencies.
Aside from that, this is a solid retro club throwback that I would be happy to sign off on otherwise, but the notable lack of bass in the mix is really keeping this from getting going for me.
NO (resubmit!)
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This feels much more like a sound design showcase than a traditional arrangement, but I don't necessarily think there's anything inherently wrong with that approach either. The scraped metallic tones evoke a feeling of exploring an abandoned industrial complex that has been buried under an intense frost. Despite going through several different motions as you approach the source from different angles, all of the sound design feels incredibly cohesive. On repeat listens, I found myself loving the subtle rhythms that percolate up from the granular clouds. For those brave enough to stomach it, I do feel like this is rewarding on multiple listens.
Not everyone's cuppa tea, but it works for me!
YES
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Quote
I trust Larry when it comes to needing to timestamp, though — at least, I trust him not to be too generous!
Ain't that the truth?
Stunning job all across the board! This really benefits from the wide breadth of live instrumentation, and you demonstrate a great level of technical prowess on all of it. Where have you been? Let's get this posted!
YES
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Lovely variety of sounds here - I wasn't sold on the intro, but once the various winds came in, this arrangement came alive. The interplay between each of the different lead instruments gives this a fun call and response feeling.
Everything feels a little heavily washed out in reverb and not totally clean, but it's sufficient at creating a good atmosphere. I'm not hearing any reason I can't sign off on this!
YES
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Remixer: Emunator
Name: Meditations on a Beam of Light
Game: Minecraft
Sources: MinecraftComments: I've always wanted to create and submit a fully ambient track to OCReMix. While I have never actually played Minecraft, the hypnotizing soundtrack from C418 felt like an obvious place to start. I took inspiration from artists like Jon Hopkins, The 1975, Sigur Ros, and Olafur Arnalds, who are all masters at fusing electronic and organic textures into something otherworldly and transcendent.
With this arrangement, I decided to keep the underlying piano loop nearly intact (only broken up by a small bridge of my own original writing at 1:49) and instead let all of the personalization come from sound design and original string arrangements that build on top of that foundation. My goal was to craft something fleeting, formless, and delicate. The repetitive nature of the arrangement, which may be somewhat polarizing when measured by OCR arrangement standards, was very intentional, meant to reflect a mantra that you might repeat over and over during a meditation session.
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This absolutely rips on every conceivable level. The heavy guitar tones, the quality of the orchestration, the amount of creativity in the arrangement, and the overall mixdown suggests that you've been honing this craft for a very long time. You don't usually come out of the gate swinging like this on your first attempt, but I can't seem to find much of anything else that you've worked on out in the world, so for a first submission, this is actually incredible.
The highlight for me has to be the final section starting at 3:20, featuring some massive orchestration and intense blastbeats that evokes Knight of the Round's "Viking Funeral for the Damned", which is one of my all time favorite remixes on the site. I have no reservations saying that this stands right beside it in nearly every regard. You wear your influences from other artists on your sleeve, but those styles are woven so well together that it ultimately feels like something totally unique that stands apart from its inspirations.
Really killer work. I'm not sure where you came from, but I'm glad you made it here.
YES
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ReMixer Name: Pixels & ParadiddlesReal Name(s): Seph and Josh BrownEmail Address:Game Arranged: Final Fantasy VIIName of Arrangement: StrifeNames of Individual Songs Arranged: Judgment Day, Mako Reactor
(If you are unabled to access the .mp3 file hosted at the link above, please see the attached .mp3 file)Comments:
This arrangement ties together the BGMs of Mako Reactor 1 and the Great Northern Crater, the opening and final "dungeons" of FFVII. It also brings in arrangement influences from Harry Gregson-Williams (specifically his works on Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater and Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots) mixed with a heap of The Way of All Flesh era Gojira. We were shooting for death metal meets dungeon noir. Or something like that.
Special thanks goes to Clint "its_CLINT" Allday for his help with the final mix.
To make the two pieces mesh better, we transposed "Judgment Day" into C Minor, the initial key of "Mako Reactor." In doing so, we could easily move from the intro of the latter piece into the intro of the former, quoting the rhythmic motif of "Mako Reactor" underneath "Judgment Day." Better still, it was an opportunity to quote "Vacuity" by Gojira in the drums, alternating choked and open crash cymbal hits over a stiff four-on-floor backbeat to punctuate the thundering pulse of "Mako Reactor." Rather than run the Imin-IVmin harp arpeggio from "Judgment Day," we consolidated the arpeggio into a stacked extended chord in the choir and dropped a molto crescendo on it.
Once into the A section of "Judgment Day," clean guitar is joined by woodwinds and melodic percussion on the melody line while strings hold the harmony. HGW-inspired low brass stings and a moving bassline groove over electronic drums drive this section. Trumpets and horns soon join the party while melodic percussion quote the descending arpeggio figure from "J-E-N-O-V-A" to hint at the boss rush to come at the finale of the game, culminating in the modulation party of Judgment Day's short B section. Winds and strings quote the ascending "Shin-Ra Co." leitmotif under the melody line as the harmony cycles keys.
As the winds, brass, and lead guitars fade, "Mako Reactor" kicks into its A section in the low strings, mallet percussion, and a fuzzy Virus lead over chuggy guitar, bass, and drums. We tried to marry aspects of the original composition (synth and percussion melody in the upper octaves, ping-pong delay, triplet-tremolo woosh FX) with Shotaro Shima's FF7 Remake arrangement in this section, right up until the extended Cmin-Bbmin vamp.
Speaking of, the "J-E-N-O-V-A" quote returns underneath lead guitars (including a very "Vacuity" inspired guitar countermelody supported by brass and synth).
Taking one more nod to Gojira, bowed guitar swells through the fading orchestra into the finale of "Mako Reactor" in a nearly direct quote to the middle section of "The Art of Dying." Shimmering tremolo articulations match thundering double bass drums as choir and trumpets cry the baleful motif in G Minor to Bb Minor. Ending on a final C Minor chord, the music slowly dies... But for the mournful bell and heartbeat-like taiko drums marking the intro of "Those Chosen by the Planet." Jenova and Sephiroth lie in wait. -
There's a lot of creativity to the arrangement here. I'm hearing a ton of unique adaptations and syncopation that gives this a personalized spin on the original source material. The plucky mallet leads really suit the melody well. I like the concept here a lot, but the execution is falling short in a couple of key areas that I think need to be addressed before this could be posted.
First, there's some notable panning issues where the right side of the stereo field is much louder than the left, which makes this an uncomfortable listen on headphones. Even if you are panning things left or right to create more of a stereo space, the final result needs to be more balanced overall. Typically, elements like bass, which are there to ground your soundscape, shouldn't be panned too much off to one side - this is definitely throwing things off. You can still achieve greater stereo presence by double-tracking instruments with slightly different recordings and panning them left/right, which might be great for the guitars in this case.
The drums unfortunately sound very stock in terms of quality and don't really have a lot of personality to the tone. There's some fun syncopation and grooves throughout the track, but I would encourage you to seek out other samples or consider applying more effects/processing to your existing samples, such as compression or saturation, to punch them up and give them a little more flavor. The same could also be said about the bass sample, which is a pretty basic tone that doesn't have a lot of personality to it.
The last critique I have is regarding the structure of the song. Your transitions between the Overworld and Underworld themes are not very smooth, and feel like a hard jump every time you switch sources. Beyond that, once you hit 3:27, the track doesn't really introduce any new ideas or concepts, but still goes on for nearly 2 more minutes, which causes the arrangement to feel like it's dragging. I would also say that the Underworld theme section in general feels underdeveloped and doesn't go anywhere - it just finds a groove and rides it for nearly a whole minute. If you want to use this section as more than just a cameo, it needs to have more to say. Countermelodies, original soloing, or additional instrumentation are all ways you could explore fleshing out this segment of the track.
There's a solid foundation here, but I'm afraid there's a number of issues holding this back from its full potential. I would suggest seeking some feedback from our community via the Discord or the Workshop forum to get more specific tailored feedback if you choose to pursue this track any further, or for future submissions.
NO
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Remixer name: byrdbass
real name: Leland Byrdemail add:website: https://twitch.tv/byrdbass or http://nuggatron.comUser ID: 37736Genre: ElectronicaName of arrangement: MarioSkaName of original: Super Mario Bros Overworld/ Underworld ThemeComments: This was made as a celebration of the Mario Decathlon hosted by TheSalsaShack on twitch. -
There's a great deal of subtlety and restraint at work here, this is not the kind of remix that jumps out and immediately demands attention. That said, the fusion of source material here is really seamless and yields some downright beautiful results. The melody treatment is the star of the show, but your sound design is also very immersive, and the production is clean as a whistle.
Cheers to many more from here!
YES
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· Your ReMixer name
o Kyaku
· Your real name
o Richard Westbrook
· Your email address
o
· Your website(s)
o N/A
· Your userid (number, not name) on our forums, found by viewing your forum profile
o 38541-kyaku
· Name of game(s) arranged
o Sonic 2 and Super Metroid
· Name of arrangement
o The Brinstar Chemical
· Name of individual song(s) arranged
o Sonic 2: Chemical Zone and Super Metroid: Brinstar Jungle Floor
· Additional information about game including composer, system, etc. (if it has not yet been added to the site)
o Both are popular songs for remixes so I imagine I can’t add much more here, though please let me know if I need to. First timer!
· Link to the original soundtrack (if it is not one of the sound archives already available on the site)
o Sonic 2: https://youtu.be/-LYB7iLZNWE
o Super Metroid: https://youtu.be/tVUYyVfydqY
· Your own comments about the mix, for example the inspiration behind it, how it was made, how the source material was referenced in the arrangement, etc.
o I attempted a little bit of a mash up, and though I started out with a vapory 80’s theme in mind, it probably isn’t too true to that genre in total. This is my first submission after being a lister many years past, so here goes nothing! No matter the outcome, not planning on this being my last. Thanks for your time!
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Remixers: Emunator, Chimpazilla
Name: Beginnings
Game: Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time
Sources: Title Theme (Primary), Lost Woods (Cameo)Emunator Comments: "Keeping it simple" is not a virtue that comes naturally to me in any aspect of my life, but everything about this arrangement felt so easy. I took a simple source tune (which I didn't even listen to during the creation of this song, opting to recreate the track from memory) picked out samples and drums, and within 4-5 hours I had a full arrangement 90% done.
I showed it to Kristina, who had added a few finishing touches--specifically, the Lost Woods bell melody and bell countermelodies later on, the lush pad at the :52 mark, and some transition effects to tie everything together--within a day. I mixed everything together, she mastered it, and it was all done. Even the title (which she came up with in 30 seconds) is an exercise in simplicity. All said, there was collectively less than 10 hours of work done on this track over only 3 weeks, and I don't think the quality of the final product was compromised one bit.
I love working with Kristina so much, it feels like our creative synergy reaches new heights with each new track we work together on. I'm so grateful to have such a kind, creative, and talented partner in musical crime!
Chimpazilla Comments: I'm always so happy when Wes wants to do another collab! "Beginnings" came together quickly and naturally. Wes had written a simple yet lovely lo-fi remix in just a few hours, and he shared it with me. I loved it! I felt like the track only needed a few subtle textures, some minor melody/countermelody work and finishing touches. I did my part in only a few hours, and everything fit together extremely well. This track gives me confidence that Wes and I can put a lovely emotive track together much more quickly than ever before, and more collabs will be coming after this one!
OCR04538 - *YES* Final Fantasy 9 "Terranian Faith"
in Judges Decisions
Posted
As expected, Larry is a hater and this track is gorgeous. The macro dynamics across the entire arrangement are incredible, and the blastbeat sections are well sequenced and appropriately massive. The clean sections provide some much-needed contrast. This all sounds exactly like it should for the genre.
I think there's an element of this that feels a little less organic than I would like because everything is presumably sequenced, so the drums don't quite have the organic variation in timing that you'd get from a live performer, but it's certainly above my personal bar.
YES (quit hating, Larry!)