CoolBeets

I present to you my latest creation, it comes straight from the depths of hell I used three different guitar synths to get the sound right, my goal was to match the tone of the original midi video game music as closely as possible, within reason. I know that the guitars doesn't sound all too realistic, but I still think the track sounds pretty good, have a listen and see for yourselves.

Thanks for the constructive criticism, I get what you're telling me but what you're hearing is the best that I can do currently, I'm no Hans Zimmer and I only do orchestrated music for fun, I'm not classically trained. Of course I can tell that there are improvements to be made to most of the stuff that I make, but I also know that it'll take time for me to get there.

This is version 3, I've done some EQing as suggested, I also added a compressor. It sound a bit better now but I think I might have gone a little too far turning down some of the elements, tell me what you guys think.

Amazing, great job! I have a couple of good Kontakt libraries, if you send me an FLV or midi I'd be happy to render something for you.

What would you have called it then? I admit I hade trouble with this one. You're right about the percussion, I actually removed some because it sounded too messy, this is not a genre I have experience in.

I'll see what I can do, stay tuned

You're absolutely right, I changed it and added some swing and now it sounds way better. I also changed up the choirs a little and I think that did it, take a listen and tell me what you think

I always admired the musical style of Hans Zimmers in the Dark Knight trilogy so I decided to try and recreate one of my favorite game soundtracks in a similar style. A buddy of mine has this synth in his DAW called Zebra which is the same synth that Zimmer used when working on those movies, there's even a preset pack that Zimmer released called "Dark Zebra" which has some of the actual sounds from the films, that's what I used to create most of this track. I picked the battle theme from FF7 because it worked well with the dark tones of the Zebra synth, mixing something like this while also trying to stay true to both the original song and emulate Zimmers style is really difficult, it's basically all bass so sound separation was a nightmare, not to mention sound selection. I'm really happy with the end result and I hope you guys like it as well, this was a lot of work and more than a few called in favors.

This is the new version of my orchestral remix of Guile's theme. I Started over completely from scratch and have taken the critique I received on the old version into account, but I still feel that it isn't quite "there" yet, somethings missing. I'd love some feedback on this, maybe you guys can point me in the right direction. [EDIT: link below has been updated, the old version is still available on soundcloud of anyone wants to listen and compare.]

Here's the link to the updated version for your convenience, I've removed some of the percussive instruments and just generally changed the whole mix to get rid of some of the imbalance. So I decided to make an acoustic version of this classic Zelda tune, I did my best with the filters to make it sound like an old latin song that you might have heard on the radio. I used something like 10 different percussive elements some panned, all with customized velocity and slight time delay, did my best to separate all the instruments as much as possible, but the filters and compressor does kinda make it hard to hear them all, it's a trade off I had to make to get old sounding effect. Nothing fancy on the guitar style, I used what I had in Nexus and used some effects to tweak the sound. I know that this style of remix has been done before it just fits this song so well. Hope you guys like it. There's a link in the video description if you want to download it.

That's the one. You're right about the release, the reason that I haven't done it is because I was lazy and made all the choir one track in FL studio. To get it just right I'd have to chop it up into several tracks, each with sections with longer and shorter release, or I could use automation, I'll do that and more in the next version. I also have a reverb send in addition to the reverb from within the plugin, which in retrospect was too much.

They are not free samples, they are part of the Nexus plugin, so I can take all effects off but then it sounds too flat. I almost never use free samples as they mostly suck.

@JohnStacy It is clear that you are well educated in the intricacies of musical theory. I'm flattered that you would give so much thought to what's essentially me rambling in the dark. I don't have any musical education, in fact I just started self-learning little over a year ago, mostly focusing on Hip Hop and EDM, and I guess you probably know that most people dabbling in those genre's aren't really classically trained. I don't disagree with any of your points, it's true that, I stuck pretty close to the original and just changed the instruments to orchestral ones as, I didn't want to mess up the song or make it unrecognizable, perhaps I should have called it something different, maybe "Guile's theme played with orchestral instruments and sounds" but that isn't a very good title. I read the post in the thread that you linked to and found it very interesting, come to think about it, just changing up the sound and calling it a remix is probably what people do most of the time, it's really hard to bend a musical piece to another genre and still make it sound good and stay recognizable when played against the original. What the uneducated would call genre blending is in reality just switching the sound to something that resembles another genre because actual genre blending would mostly sound terrible. That being said, what I learned from doing Hip Hop is that sometimes you can borrow sounds from another genre and it still works even if it's not "stylistically true", just listen to some of Kayne Wests eariler songs and you see what I mean. It's not really genre blending, it' still just Hip Hop, but the vast majority of people would still call it that because they don't know of a better way to describe it. @Gario What mostly limits me aside from the lack of a classical education is just tools that I have to work with, as I don't really do this kind of music I haven't invested hundreds of dollars in getting sampled choirs that can give nuance to every note, I agree that it sounds "too wet" but as I'm working with a sample there's not much that I can do to it that will make it sound any better. As for the second track, if you listened to it's pretty clear but, I probably should have said that what I was going for was to just re-make the original with more "real" sounding synths, to give people an idea of what it would sound like if it were part of a new game like Street Fighter V or if they remade the old game today. Thanks for your thorough and thoughtful feedback, I've been inspired by both of your posts, and I'm going to attempt to re-write this track as an actual film score, though I won't try to emulate any of the classical masters, Strauss, Brahms, Beethoven, I'll stick to to movie composers like Gairo suggested. I'll post it here when I'm done and I'd be very happy if you'd listen to it.

As I started working on some of the music from Street Fighter 2 I got inspired to try something different, this is the result. I was just going to do a version that was true to the original (below) but, I had a hunch that this particular theme would work as an orchestrated piece. Second track, a re-make the original in FL studio, to give people an idea of what it would sound like if Capcom remade the game with modern technology.

This so so wonderfully weird sounding, I love your choice of instruments, very unique!

Here it is, axlanians guitar skills took this song to another level! I hope you guys will love this as much as I do

Nice arrangement, It really works.You nailed it man!

You've mixed it really well, sounds like a studio recording, impressive work!

This is a really fresh idea, I've never heard Saira's Song in this kind of style, it's really nice. That said I think the song needs a shorter build, it just feels a little too long and then if you are able to change the tune of the distorted guitars, maybe a little less pitch bending and try to get some more energy into the notes. Mix sounds good for early stages, sound separation is very good and clear. Hope that helps, keep up the good work!

Sounds great, very professional. Was it all recorded with real instruments or did you make it in a DAW? I can honestly say that I like it better than the original, great job!

Sound good to me I'll pm you the track.

Thanks for your constructive criticism and thoughtful comments axalanian. I agree with everything you said, especially concerning the guitars, I was never happy with any of them to be honest, but it was the best that I could do with the tools that I had. if you're really serious about helping out with some live guitar I'd really love to do a collaboration! Tweaking the velocity was something I didn't do mostly out of laziness but also because I wanted to get all the songs done quickly and uploaded on the 20th anniversary of the game's launch, they also sound really quantized because I used the original 1997 game midi which was designed to be played on limited hardware. I used the midi in order to stay as true to the original sound as possible, that is why I call it a remaster rather than a remix because I didn't change anything musically (except for on one song, and on the new original song that I wrote) I just tried to modernize it and get it to sound closer to a real recording. I only started with any kind of music production about a year ago, and this project was a way of learning to use FL studio and improve all round, and having people like you give me useful feedback really helps, I really appreciate it!

Very nice, sounds like a real medieval song.

Pretty cool man, I like it. Maybe you could try to switch to a more stubby kick and a shorter snare, I feel like the 80s sounding snare is a bit long for hip hop. Keep up the good work, I like the vocals.

Yesterday, August 25th, was the 20th anniversary of one of my favorite games, Goldeneye. I got it for Christmas as a kid, and It was the first game I ever owned. I must have played that game for hundreds of hours, both single and multiplayer, loving every minute of it. Of course it helps that I was a huge James Bond fan, but even to this day it's one of the games from my childhood that I have the most fond memories of. What stuck with me the most though, as the years passed by was the music. So to celebrate the games 20th anniversary I decided to "Remaster" the entire soundtrack. I used something called N64midi tool to extract the original game midi and imported it into FL studio, that way I could perfectly match the rhythm and individual note length of each track, instead of just playing it by ear, which I'm not very good at. It took me about three months to get this project finished in my spare time, most of the time spent mixing and carefully picking the right instruments to strike a balance between mirroring the original sound and making it sound like the tracks were recorded with real instruments. I even got so inspired that I wrote a new original track in the style of the games soundtrack. I've uploaded the whole project onto my newly started YouTube channel, along with links to mp3 files in the description of every track. I really hope you guys enjoy my work as I have enjoyed listening to the various works posted to this site over the years.