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Sauraen

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    [Updated 2/20] Xenogears - 'Final Convergence' Remix

    in Post Your Game ReMixes!

    Posted · Edited by Sauraen

    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

    [Updated 2/20] Xenogears - 'Final Convergence' Remix

    in Post Your Game ReMixes!

    Posted · Edited by Sauraen

    The production is okay, but the sequencing is very mechanical on this one. You'd be rejected on the panel based on that, so you need to find a way to humanize your instruments better

    The sound quality is average, and the mixing is not great but OK. However, I agree with Gario that the sequencing of many of the orchestral elements is fake and/or mechanical (especially the horns and strings).

    Thanks, I will go through and try to improve this.

    The drums could either stand out a little more or be removed (opting to just have the percussion, like the cymbals would be nice), since they just don't stick out at all, right now. Find a way to bring them out more, or don't bother with em'.
    The drums are a bit buried... The kick is pretty far back, and the snare is barely audible. The cymbals work though.
    - drums need more transitions/variation, and could also be brought a bit more forward

    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.

    - pipe solo is kinda buried, you may wanna raise their volume there

    - the bass has a bit too much reverb, you could try high-passing the reverb to leave the bottom frequencies dry

    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.

    ...the pacing is so-so. The entire track is basically one mood without any change-ups in energy, and mostly little to no change-up in atmosphere (mainly Celtic dance-like, it seems). Five minutes is quite a bit to burn through without pausing the track for repetitive pacing.

    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.

    and if at all possible find some better samples (in some cases I swear I hear GM). It sounds really good even now, but it could sound so much better with more humanized instrumentation.
    You can certainly automate volumes, overlap notes, and do other tricks to make free samples sound more realistic. It also couldn't hurt to get better samples. FluidR3 is an example of a good soundfont, IMO. Its harp is great, and with some careful EQ it can be even greater.
    I have to say instrument quality/sequencing didn't come off to me as bad.

    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. :P Edit: Here you go: https://soundcloud.com/sauraen/fluidr3-vs-eastwest-ccc

    [Updated 2/20] Xenogears - 'Final Convergence' Remix

    in Post Your Game ReMixes!

    Posted · Edited by Sauraen

    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!

    Zelda O.O.T - Town Theme + Kokiri Forest: Solo-Piano

    in Post Your Game ReMixes!

    Posted

    Maybe it's the different key-signature and all those reharmonized chords that makes it a bit hard to hear?

    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.

    What? I didn't hear that! :-o
    Bb-gb-gb-gb-f-eb-db! (Ab-F-Db.) [Too bad there's no bbcode for musical notation...]
    Ha, ha :). No, it's actually from that famous movie with the dinosaurs from the 90s. :wink:
    Oh. Yeah. Oops... :oops:
    Well, I played it in with my digital-piano via midi. The most part of the arrangement was played live but I edited it after the recording (Deleted mistakes, edited some velocities and note lenghts etc..)
    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).

    Zelda O.O.T - Town Theme + Kokiri Forest: Solo-Piano

    in Post Your Game ReMixes!

    Posted

    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?

    Ocarina of Time - End Credits Theme - Remastered

    in Post Your Game ReMixes!

    Posted

    Definitely an excellent arrangement! Even better than Zelda Reorchestrated's take on the theme.

    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!

    Your "Melodies of Mabe Village" is more like the kind of arrangement that would fit the OCReMix submission guidelines.
    "Melodies of Mabe Village" has been in the submissions inbox for months. :)

    Mario Kart 64 Ending Theme Piano Arrangement

    in Post Your Game ReMixes!

    Posted

    Dayamn. Wish I could afford that much for E/W... I'm just a lil jealous is all :3 I drool at the thought of one day owning E/W q.q

    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...)

    looks like you'll have no problem getting posted on OCR, once you get the humanization down

    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! :D I think the judges are good enough musicians to not just accept a piece because it uses expensive samples, though!

    Mario Kart 64 Ending Theme Piano Arrangement

    in Post Your Game ReMixes!

    Posted

    Did you actually buy E/W or did u pirate it =p

    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'd reccomend that you add a string quartet or something else

    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.

    Mario Kart 64 Ending Theme Piano Arrangement

    in Post Your Game ReMixes!

    Posted

    Make sure to link a source tune as well, so ppl might be more inclined to comment.

    Edited -- thanks.

    The expressions and timing are actually not too bad imo - this feels very real...if you told me it was played live I'd believe you lol. Either that or that is 1 powerful piano sample lol.

    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!).

    The speed up area about 3/4 into the track felt a bit mechanical

    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.

    Mighty No. 9 - "Backported" (Main Theme) (Remix)

    in Post Your Game ReMixes!

    Posted

    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).

    Zelda: Link's Awakening: Melodies of Mabe Village

    in Post Your Game ReMixes!

    Posted

    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!)

    Zelda: Link's Awakening: Melodies of Mabe Village

    in Post Your Game ReMixes!

    Posted

    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?

    the automation is nowhere NEAR as precise and easy to use as it is in FL

    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.

    I don't see any reason why you can't do great sequencing in FL or Logic or Reason or WHATEVER if you have the know-how and the sample power.

    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.

    And hey, to your credit, I just found out that James Horner (composer for Avatar, Titanic, etc.) uses Sibelius to compose and then exports the MIDI to Pro Tools to dick around with. So there's that

    Yeah. I knew about that. That's one of the reasons I was considering Pro Tools.

    Zelda: Link's Awakening: Melodies of Mabe Village

    in Post Your Game ReMixes!

    Posted

    I'm pretty sure there IS a free demo version of FL

    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?

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