arglactable

Well, I had never heard of this guy or the music attributed to him (not that much, to be honest), but this story is pretty bizarre.

This is a great idea. I would love to give it a shot if I can find the time. That track would make for a very interesting palette.

I think that the intro is really solid. The middle section isn't awful, but it does get a bit grating for me for a couple of reasons. First, I would add some reverb to the piano and string parts here (and maybe the snare as well), because they sound really dry compared to the atmosphere in the first section. The percussion is also really static, which makes it a bit tiresome for me after a while. Adding some swing and some interesting fills could make it a lot more interesting rhythmically. I don't think I would worry too much about panning, since it's predominantly kick and snare (which should be centered anyway). I think it sits adequately in the mix. Another issue is the articulation of the strings. Especially in the coda, they sound pretty stiff and mechanical. First, the accompanying progression/rhythm is pretty noticeably the same sample repeatedly at the same velocity. Adding some note emphasis (probably at beats 1 and 3) would be a start. And second, the melody line has a bit too much attack for the start and stop nature of the melody being played, which makes that instrument feel a bit behind, especially once the pizzicato unison comes in. Overall, I like it.

My pledge was confirmed before I even knew what was going on... And then I watched the video.

And for everyone one of that top 50 NES soundtracks, you have several that sound like this. I don't think anyone is arguing that there were no great classic soundtracks and the only reason anyone likes them is nostalgia. The point is that nostalgia is no excuse to pretend that one way of making soundtracks is inherently better than another. The only real justification for saying that is closed-mindedness and childhood attachment to classic games. People in general are biased in favor of what they grew up with, like how people who grew up in the 80's insist that all of the best music was released in that decade, but bias doesn't really make for a solid argument. Your generalized top 50 example doesn't really prove your point. There were plenty of soundtracks with extremely memorable themes this last console gen, just as there were the gen before. The main difference is that there are bigger names and more powerful audio tools involved. I strongly suspect that the music of this console cycle will be looked on more favorably once it's older and people can complain about how all of the new stuff on PS4 and X1 is so much worse than music used to be in games.

Eh. There's some grinding at the beginning, but it doesn't take very long after that until the boss fights come in (there are several in the demo) at which point the Brave/Default system shows its stuff. It's surprising how fresh it feels in combination with other pretty standard classic FF mechanics. The boss fights are awesome. I wish they did a bit more to put everything in context, because the demo kind of felt like a proof of concept, bland map with 3 dungeons kind of chucked in there, but the mechanics are definitely solid.

Frankly, I think the difference is that music is less catchy, memorable melody-focused than it was when the instruments and audio tools were far less advanced. I don't think "catchy" is always synonymous with "good." In terms of mood-setting and kick-ass sound design, I think games are in many ways better than ever (I would cite Deus Ex HR as a good example). The first 2 Fallout games in the mid nineties have some of the most interesting and memorable music/sound design ever, IMO, and there isn't a single "hum-able" melody throughout. Games are able to focus more on incidental music and sound design now, because they actually have effective tools to do so. They can set the mood far effectively than the Uematsu soundtracks that are apparently still considered the definition of quality. On the NES, your sound design was a noise channel. Now there is FMOD and Wwise to make engrossing, reactive soundscapes. In short, no, game music has not lost its way. It just isn't doing exactly the same things it was on 90's consoles.

I didn't mean to infer that I was upset or offended in any way. I really do appreciate honest feedback. Anyway, here's a... significant new revision of the track. https://soundcloud.com/andrewmushel/a-coalition-united-v2

These are very nice. Well composed and with good attention to color and contrast. The comparison photo in particular has a really rich color palette.

I probably wouldn't use an SSD for file storage in general, since their performance is generally geared towards Reading and not writing (and they have a theoretically limited number of writes) nd the cost to storage space ratio is pretty poor. The performance gains from putting your OS on a nice SSD can be huge, the advantage of putting samples on one less so (especially given that they will be in RAM when in use). I mostly use mine for the OS and really important software As for the Read/Write speed differences listed below. SSDs can be substantially more impressive than that. I have a 128gb Samsung 840 Pro Series and those things are rated at 520mbps/320mbps read/write. The 256gb and 512gb have even better write speed. On a SATA III or Thunderbolt connection, you should be able to get optimum performance out of an SSD like that, for a pretty reasonable price. If you want to store samples, you might be better of getting a high speed HDD, because higher capacity SSDs can be REALLY expensive.

Sweet. I never got to play that one.

Really cool stuff. This kind of reharmonization is something that just eludes me. You have a really excellent foundation here (the bass and piano are mixed quite well, the guitar part doesn't do much), and the abrupt ending kind of works for me (you could probably make it a bit less surprising by building up to it with a bit in the bass/guitar). it'll sound awesome with a more meaty guitar part.

Thanks for the feedback. To be honest, the reason for the key change is probably just that each section is in the key of the original track (aside from the second UNATCO reference). I put most of this together a few months ago and just recently picked it back up again. Changing the intro might not be to difficult to mess with given that it just takes a whole step down. The ending wouldn't be much of a problem either. To be honest, I kind of like the way the guitar part falls away for the coda section, leaving only a synth in the bass that continues through, but I will look into revising that along with the first crossfade transition (which I do think is a bit awkward). As for the guitars, you might say that's a "known issue," and it's the reason I put this on the back burner for a while. It's WAY better sounding than it used to be (it was truly awful), but the palm muting could definitely use some work. I don't think the issue is velocity so much as timbre. I agree that the snare is a bit weak, but the kick is about where it needs to be. A real bass drum isn't anywhere near as forward in the overall mix as the snare. I can hear the kick clearly on pretty much anything from my monitors to my garbage built-in laptop speakers. I'm really not sure what I would do to improve it beyond excessive compression. I don't want an EDM kick here. I think one of the biggest problems related to this, as I've looked at the track, is that there are two arpeggiated synths playing in roughly the same octave with pretty much the exact same timbre in both the intro and the middle section. I need to work on keep those out of the same space in terms of both soundstage and frequency range.

I've recently ironed out a few major issues I had with showing this to other people, so here's my first attempt at a VGM remix. It's still rough, but reasonably presentable I hope. https://soundcloud.com/andrewmushel/a-coalition-united Source tracks are, in order of reference, UNATCO, Versalife Conversation, and Main Theme.

Greetings, OCR. I've been a musician for most of my life (primary piano and vocals and later a bit of violin and guitar) and having somewhat recently found direction for my life, this is a cool community that I've known about for quite a while and I want to get involved with it. I've only really been dedicating a lot of time to digital audio/music production/composition in the past year or two, but I'm a fast learner and it's a lot of fun. I hope I'll have a good time here.