Sage Orpheus

I had never heard of the Etrian Odyssey series before until a random video about the "Dancer" class popped up on my news feed on my IGN phone app. I ended up watching the medic video in the article instead without really reading much and it was playing this song: Now I'm hooked. I read up on the game and watched a video or two and I'm really intrigued - and the icing on the cake is that this song is the battle music. I totally can't wait to buy it now, haha. So I guess this topic is: Had you heard of Etrian Odyssey before? Are you into it? And also - isn't this song awesome?

Really good advice, thanks everyone. Lots of good "exercises" I can use to help with this now. I think mainly the conclusion I've reached is that I've been over thinking it. So to summarize a lot of what you guys said, I went back and instead of trying to vary for the sake of being varied I'm mainly just making an effort now to make sure my drum matches what I want to bring out in the song, which ends up making the drum varied.

I'm looking for advice regarding creating variation in my drums. I know having drums that are too repetitive is a common newbie mistake,and I'm working on my first remix that uses drums. It's just a Djembe rather than a drum set in the song I'm working on, actually, in case that is relevant to your answer. I've edited my drum pattern into oblivion so I'm going to start over later. I started out by writing an 8 measure pattern that I liked, then just copied it to repeat throughout the portion of my remix I've written so far...so about 8 times. Then in an effort to keep it from being repetitive I scrolled throughout to make little changes. Then when I listened I realized I had mainly just added a couple notes in various places that just made the rhythm even busier and suddenly the drums had become distracting. So I tried again and this time instead of adding notes I changed a few rhythms in each repetition - added a syncopation here, changed a syncopation to a straight rhythm there, etc. But then when I listened to the whole thing it didn't have a consistent enough groove - I had varied it too much again. So do you guys have any helpful rules of thumb? Is there ever a point where you do just copy and paste? Maybe 16 measures is enough to avoid noticing it is repetitive? Longer? Shorter? Or if that isn't your approach, roughly how many changes do you make? One or two per 4 measure chunk that started the same? One or two per 8 measure chunk that started the same? I'm guessing a "less is more" approach is probably appropriate with this, but I don't want to err in the other direction now of being too static. TL;DR - I am editing my drum patterns so much to avoid repetition that they feel awkward. How much variation is necessary to avoid it feeling static, but not be so varied that it is awkward?

First post ever - be gentle. http://tindeck.com/listen/gpdc Here's some specific feedback I'm interested in: Arrangement: -Do you like the eight melody theme from Mother 1 being brought in during the minor portion, or does that take you out of the moment? I'm especially curious to hear answers from fans of the series. -Does the first variation, with the 16th notes in the right hand, keep your interest? I was toying with the idea of making it 16th note triplets instead wondering if that would "keep it moving" so to speak, but I also worry maybe that would err in the other direction - too busy. -I had an idea for another variation...it'd be another simple one, but I could modulate to the dominant key to keep it fresh on the ears hopefully, but I also don't want the arrangement to end up being too long to keep interest. -I was also thinking maybe I could add the new variation after the 16th note portion, then have a 16th note triplet variation after THAT. If I decide to remove the Mother 1 theme this is more likely, because I want to make sure there is enough of an aural journey for the romantic octave section to feel like a dramatic arrival, which was a problem in my earlier drafts. Mastering: -I'm very, very new at mastering. All advice welcome. How is the reverb? How is the quality of the instrument? I can change it to a "softer" attack, but then that took away from the impact I wanted in the big romantic octaves section. Thoughts? Looking forward to your insights - thanks!