Sauraen

New version, significantly better mastered (especially evident in high quality): https://soundcloud.com/sauraen/xenogears-final-convergence-2

Here's an updated version of the remix. Soundcloud really kills the bitrate, so please download it to hear it in full quality: https://soundcloud.com/sauraen/xenogears-final-convergence-1 Issues improved: Mastering: drums, strings Humanization: uilleann pipes, french horn solo, high strings, rhythmic parts New, slightly longer, intensity-breaking transition section at 3:50--do you like it, or does it distract from the continuity? Oh, and by the way, here's a comparison between this remix being played on FluidR3 versus the cinema-quality EastWest samples I used: https://soundcloud.com/sauraen/fluidr3-vs-eastwest-ccc

Thanks, I will go through and try to improve this. I'll try just using percussion, but the drums provide a driving force for the piece, so I'd rather keep them if I can. I know what you're talking about the drums being buried, I'll do what I can. Noted, thanks. I didn't want the pipes to be too in-your-face (considering their timbre), but if someone else (you) thinks they could be louder as well, I'll do that. When you say "bass" I assume you mean "double bass", since the bass guitar has no reverb. I'll take care of that. This'll be the hardest thing to address. I've been unsatisfied with the transition at 3:50, and this would be the perfect place to add in a few more measures with a lower energy, before it starts building up again to the finish. I'll try that and see how it sounds. This is really ironic. I did a MIDI arrangement a couple years ago of some themes from Link's Awakening (called "Melodies of Mabe Village"). I downloaded every free soundfont I could (including Fluid), spent a couple months sifting through all them for the best patches for each instrument and writing configuration files for Timidity to combine all those patches, rendered the piece with those, and was immediately rejected--didn't even make it to the submissions inbox--on the grounds of poor sample quality. So I co-opted my roommate to help me, rendered some virtual instrument tracks in Sibelius and some with SONAR's sounds, mixed them all in the latter, and was rejected again on the same grounds. So I saved up for half a year and bought the EastWest/Quantum Leap Complete Composers Collection, a 1 terabyte iLok-secured cinema-quality sound library. Then of course I had to build a computer that could handle it, and then get a DAW (I'm using Reaper) that could load 16 GB of virtual instruments into RAM without crashing. A version of that piece made with these sounds is currently in the blue judges' queue, and these sounds are what you're hearing in this arrangement. Now, I suppose the joke is on me if my humanizing/mastering skills are so terrible that I'm able to get a $1000 sound library to sound like GM, and be recommended to upgrade my "free" samples to Fluid! (The only upgrade to the samples I'm using that I know of is $14,000!) I'll do my best with humanization, but if you would like, I can provide a version of the piece actually rendered with FluidR3 for comparison. Edit: Here you go: https://soundcloud.com/sauraen/fluidr3-vs-eastwest-ccc

Haven't been getting any additional views (let alone comments) for the last few days, so bumping and switching to Mod Review. Enjoy, whoever winds up listening to this!

Thanks! Glad you enjoyed it. Hopefully some more people will comment, otherwise I'll just go for Mod Review.

Sauraen - Xenogears - 'Final Convergence' Remix https://soundcloud.com/sauraen/xenogears-final-convergence-2 [updated 2/20/2014] (Now that the mastering is better, the low-quality streaming version is also better, but please download for full quality) Since there's 22 songs referenced here, I might as well just post a link to the entire OST, and you can find all the songs there: Original Composer: Yasunori Mitsuda Primary songs remixed: Star of Tears, Small Two of Pieces Songs referenced: 0:00 - Aveh, Ancient Dance 0:25 - Star of Tears / Emotions [Overworld Theme] 1:25 - My Village is Number One (uilleann pipes) 1:29 - The Sky, The Clouds, and You [Chu Chu's Theme] (glockenspiel) 1:33 - Singing of the Gentle Wind (flute) 1:48 - Bonds of Sea and Fire / The Leftovers of the Dreams of the Strong (horn) 1:56 - Flight / Gathering Stars in the Night Sky (brass) 2:04 - Shattering Egg of Dreams (strings, low whistle) 2:34 - Small Two of Pieces (uilleann pipes shredding) 3:22 - Faraway Promise / Small Two of Pieces A Theme (glockenspiel) 3:43 - Back to Sleep V1/V2 (harp) 3:50 - The Wounded Shall Advance into the Light / Pray for the People's Joy 3:57 - In a Dark Sleep / Small Two of Pieces B Theme 4:13 - Lost... Broken Shards (flute, glockenspiel) 4:28 - The Treasure Which Cannot Be Stolen 4:58 - Wings (uilleann pipes) 5:02 - Ship of Regret and Sleep (glockenspiel) 5:06 - Dazil, City of Burning Sands There will probably be a few minor mixing/mastering edits before I want to submit it, but it's mostly done. Enjoy!

Yeah. The melody is simple enough that it makes a huge difference, at least to my ears, that it's played on jazz piano at a quarter the speed rather than shamisen (or whatever) and tambourine. Bb-gb-gb-gb-f-eb-db! (Ab-F-Db.) [Too bad there's no bbcode for musical notation...] Oh. Yeah. Oops... No shame, that's how I have made piano-arrangements too. I'm not good enough to play it live like Bladiator, and manual note input is woefully mechanical (not to mention tedious).

DEFINITELY OCR material! For some parts, especially those based on the Castle Town Market theme, it is hard for me to hear the source tune (and I would consider myself extremely familiar with the OoT soundtrack). This is not necessarily a bad thing, the arrangement is excellent, I just wouldn't notice that it was that song unless I was looking for it. 4:49 to 4:58: This key change smacks of (all right, is almost identical to) the one from "Oh Say Can Yoshi". 5:15 to 5:21: Stretched version of the Super Mario Brothers death tune 5:21 to 5:27: What is this "fanfare" from? The third Brandenburg concerto? By the way, how did you make this? Recorded live performance or MIDI keyboard into DAW with piano virtual instrument?

Thanks! I'm sure everyone knows this already, but (with the exception of their wonderful Twilight Symphony project) most of ZREO's "covers" are MIDIs stolen from vgmusic.com, imported into Finale or Sibelius, and played with their default sounds. To be fair, it is possible that some of their songs were made by ZREO people and then they put the MIDIs on vgmusic, but there's too many of them for this to be the majority. In any case, I had transcribed this piece a couple times in the past, but now that I have the software to do arrangements of this quality, I figured it needed to be done properly. Still don't know how to make my version stand out online from all the MIDI versions! "Melodies of Mabe Village" has been in the submissions inbox for months.

This might not count as a ReMix, since it sticks very closely to the source track, but I think it's a very nice arrangement: Synchronized with a hi-res capture of the video from OoT's end credits: Higher audio quality, download in mp3 320: https://soundcloud.com/sauraen/ocarina-of-time-end-credits Do you think I should submit it?

I saved up for half a year, but it was worth it. It was the Complete Composers Collection, and it included a full orchestra, choirs that sing words (albeit crappily), a GM-equivalent collection, some nice ethnic sounds, four ~20GB pianos, and a bunch of action movie-type drums--about 85% of the 1 TB hard drive they shipped me. And it was on sale for $100 off and free shipping, so I sprung for the upgrade to everything in 24 bit. Basically the only samples I will need for five years if I only want to emulate actual instruments. As far as I'm concerned, the quality is equivalent to some libraries that are many times that expensive! (And I was tired of the $200 Sibelius default samples...) Well, I've not exactly had an easy time in the past--see http://ocremix.org/forums/showthread.php?t=40239 , which is in the submissions inbox right now. So we'll see, but hopefully you're right! I think the judges are good enough musicians to not just accept a piece because it uses expensive samples, though!

I actually bought it. I'm against piracy except under exceptional circumstances (e.g. original item is no longer available for sale). And besides, from what I've heard about how difficult it is to crack iLoks, it might even cost me more than the $1000 I paid for the collection of EastWest's sample libraries. I'm working on adding another source tune, the Rainbow Road theme. Pressed Record on the project and jammed for fifteen minutes, and one part of all that came out very nice. I think it's coming together stylistically as well.

Edited -- thanks. It's some of both. I played it live into a MIDI keyboard, edited the MIDI because I'm not quite good enough at playing piano, and then rendered it with the Bechstein patch from EastWest's QL Pianos (23 GB, so yeah!). If you mean 2:37 until it slows down, that was barely edited at all. If you mean the sections immediately before that too, I edited that a little more because I felt my live timings were too awkward. I can always re-perform parts until I get them more natural, though, if you think that would help.

https://soundcloud.com/sauraen/mario-kart-64-ending-theme Source: Mario Kart 64 Credits: Probably not remixed enough to qualify as a ReMix. Do you suggest I leave it as is and post it elsewhere, or try to make it into a ReMix that would be accepted here?

Thanks guys! I hope they release other songs before the final game, so I can remix those as well!

NES-style chiptune remix of the main theme from Mighty No. 9! mp3 320 version and download button: http://soundcloud.com/sauraen/mighty-no-9-backported-main I don't think the arrangement in this is diverse enough to qualify for submission as an OC Remix--I imported the original song as the first track, synced the tempo, and arranged alongside that, which is a no-no if you want to make a semi-original remix. Also, with the synth plugin I'm using right now I don't have control of vibrato, so I'm going to have to write a new plugin (I'm using Reaper, which I'm otherwise very happy with).

Amazing--especially the Majora's Mask one!

I worked on the EQ and instrument placement a little more and I would say it's about as good as I can make it at this point. I did the actual arranging of this piece two years ago, and while I won't claim that it's the best arrangement I have ever done, I'm satisfied enough with the musical aspects (chord structure, drums) that I haven't really wanted to change any of that for the last two years. Most of the chords are from the original pieces, and I couldn't take out the drums without making an entirely new remix. https://soundcloud.com/sauraen/melodies-of-mabe-village-3-9 So I submitted it. If it is accepted, then all is well; if not, I'm not going to be able to work on it for a couple months anyway because I will not be near my computer. (I'm going to Hawaii to live up to my username and learn to soar!)

It's been a LONG time, but here's an updated version. I'm much happier with the mastering. Think I should submit it? https://soundcloud.com/sauraen/melodies-of-mabe-village-3-8

...Thanks!

So I noticed that Koji Kondo is artist ID #2 and Nobuo Uematsu is artist #3. Who's #1? I tried searching some big names but only got spots farther down the list. Sorry, just curious.

It might just be me, but at 5:13, Majora's Mask Stone Tower Temple!

Here's the most recent version: http://soundcloud.com/sauraen/melodies-of-mabe-village-3-5 Thanks for your feedback!

I don't know... I've been trying to figure out FL and I can't seem to do a bunch of really simple things: see a list of what instruments are running, see a list of what patterns exist, get ANYTHING (instruments, patterns, audio from file, automation graphs) to go in a track, connect the audio output of anything to anything (e.g. the output of a track to the input of an effect, and the output of the effect to Master), automate anything that's not a knob (e.g. MIDI data to send to a virtual instrument; the help file seems to indicate this is not supported). Obviously I'm missing a few big things, because clearly these are things that have been done in the demo songs. Is there some tutorial you would suggest? I've used Sonar on a friend's computer, and it seemed a lot easier to pick up than FL, though it was tedious in some places where FL seems smooth. I'll grant you that editing automation curves in the demo songs of FL was much easier than in Sonar; but creating and connecting them, or even seeing where they were connected to, seems much harder. When I right-click on the automation graph's title bar, in hopes of selecting "Open wiring dialog" or something, that deletes it! Looked up Nuendo. $1800? Next please. Yeah, I guess I should just keep downloading demo versions of these programs and trying them until I find one where everything works how I would expect it to. Yeah. I knew about that. That's one of the reasons I was considering Pro Tools.

I just downloaded the demo. I was also looking into ProTools, because it uses Sibelius as its notation editor, but the price tag discouraged me there. First, I just wanted to say it feels a little weird to see a song by zircon and pixietricks as one of the demos, even though I knew their work was going to be in it. It's even more strange that all the things I can hear in the music are supposed to be right before my eyes, and I have no idea how what I see is making what I hear. Second, the interface is much better than LMMS--I can see what LMMS is trying to copy, but it's not even close. It appears that you can even edit the song while it's playing, which is something I've never seen in any program before, though I'm not entirely sure why you would want to do that. But I think the biggest thing is that it feels completely and absolutely foreign to me. It appears to be designed for a sort of music that has lots of exact repetition in the inner voices, and music that heavily uses samples and synthesizers. There is an editor that seems to be dedicated solely to one-measure long patterns like a hardware sequencer, but no editor that will display those notes on a staff. I don't think I've ever written a piece where that pattern editor would have helped me; for instance, in my remix, the drums are varied enough so that the whole thing only repeats every 16 measures. In short, it seems that making the kind of music I do in FL would be about as contrary to its purpose as making electronic music in Sibelius. To be clear, I don't think there's anything wrong with electronic music, and I've been listening to OC ReMix for two years, which seems to be predominantly music of this type; it's just not the kind of music I know how to write. That said, FL is obviously a powerful DAW, and if I had it I would certainly do the final stages of production of a piece in it. But it doesn't seem to be exactly what I'm looking for. Have you heard talk of any software that is more focused on sequencing for high-quality virtual instruments? For instance, when film composers buy big sound sets like the CCC or the Vienna libraries, what programs do they use to edit and produce those pieces?