First post, here- you can find my Remix here:
Stone Palindrome V3
(
)My first foray into digital music production was a remix of the Stone Tower Temple theme in FL Studio- I picked something simple to learn with and the result was pretty good (or so I thought, at the time). I (unfortunately) submitted it here before realizing how much the song could have been improved and before asking for any real feedback or analysis. That was two years ago. Since then I've learned the program better and while most of what I know is still self-taught (I've never taken the time to look up tutorials or anything and I don't really have any good excuse as to why I haven't), I have improved.
Unfortunately I'm at a point where, with the death of my poor laptop, I'm unable to produce- but that's not to say I can't look for feedback on the last rendition of my remix and hope I can improve it further in the future. "Stone Palindrome" is my effort to stylize the Stone Tower Temple theme with a bit of a darker, more powerful feel to it and give it some of my own personal spin. I'm not doing anything overly dramatic to it and have mostly stuck to the source material, but I have begun to add more variation to the melody itself in V3.
Some self-critique here I will mention is that I do have some habits:
-Firstly I am notoriously susceptible to overpowering the bass tracks in my songs, something that carried over from when I was composing music with only earbuds or terrible headsets to rely on (that was... horrible). I do not know how most of my tracks sound on actual speakers setups, nor how the base might distort or otherwise mess up the song as a result.
-Additionally I am not very good with drums and tend to forget about them leading to a serious lack of variation- something I've been working on changing (This track is pretty minimalist regarding drums anyway)
-Finally, I feel like all of my music could use some additional variation using filters/effects/what-have-you on repetitive parts of the melody and it's something I've been trying to learn- this also encompasses use of volume in general and I feel that I could improve greatly in this regard.
Now.... About this track, specifically.
-Upon completion and rendering the track I almost immediately regretted forgetting about the guitar piece that starts up 30 seconds in- I'd like to keep it in because it paces the song nicely, but it desperately needs variation as it pretty much just loops for a little while before the melody moves past it.
-Orchestral instruments are unfortunately the basics that come with FL Studio, and for that reason I really don't like using them (though I've learned to make do) and would likely swap them out for something better given the opportunity. Everything else is Toxic Biohazard.
-Specifically the guitar I may look into having my brother play them personally and have them actually recorded. primarily because it's the most notable part of the second half of the song and it falls into the "I-suck-at-making-things-not-too-repetetive/unvaried" category.
-As a sort of addition to this, the background strings that fade in at 2:00 suck, and I'll definitely be making them more than just a single predictable note at each step of the progressing chord.
Finally, I don't believe this track is OC-worthy for most of these reasons, but most of all that I don't think it varies the source material enough to qualify- I probably won't submit this unless convinced otherwise by how the track eventually ends up. However, I have been debating on using another Zelda track to compliment the Stone Tower Temple theme and making it a combined mix... I'll get more into that in the event that I'm actually able to start composing again.
At any rate, apologies for being a bit too long winded, and thanks in advance for those who take the time to leave feedback. Majora's Mask is far too under-represented here so maybe I can help to change that.