Sam Ascher-Weiss
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Posts posted by Sam Ascher-Weiss
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There is little interpretation of the source here however it is not a cover because many things have been loaded on top of the original stuff. The piano plays the same pattern over and over never once changing rhytmically and only rarely changing melodically. Most of the time the notes being played don't line up well with the bass and bells. In the same vein the things being layered on top of eachother are often completely unrelated and what results is a whole bunch of crowded cacophony.
NO
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Good Ideas.... Poor Excecution.... Too Short......
Turning the entire progression into Dminor, A7 works well especially with the accompinament figure at 0:56 outlining the chords. The melody starts to fade but then returns with the same voicings as the original now outlining Dminor and C#minor. The drumwork here is good fun for me. IN YO' FACE sixteenth notes out of nowhere when the rest of the song had a swing feel. Then the song ends having only just begun. This Ambuish the listener strategy could work well if you kept it up. Have things stay relatively plain for long stretches of time and then every once and a while SMACK 'EM UP with some wild unexpected stuff.
The sounds are far too simple to be doing so little. If you want this sort of sparse instrumentation then you need your sounds to be fuller to make up for it. Just things as simple as chorus and reverb can go a long way in this direction. I would also recommend that you replace that static sound with a real snare drum.
This could really turn into something special!
NO
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There are many things wrong with this mix.
You start off with a bunch of 1 5 1 stuff in the left hand and simple chords in the right hand. The Eb Ab one [spells out a minor 7th when combined with the bass] sounds nice. Then you have your left hand playing root chord chord chord chord chord [all 2 note chords outlining triads] with a simple version of the melody in the right hand featuring the ocassional partial triad.
At 1:00 you have a repetitive figure in the left hand once again consisting mostly of triad fragments. There is alot of sloppiness in the right hand here. Strangely placed accents and confused inapropriate phrasing. At 1:50 you take the 1 5 1 5 1 stuff to the extreme. This creates an incredibly bland feel. Then come some choppy sounding stuttered fifths. You continue to use these stuttered chords throughout the remainder of the piece. If you're going to use stuttered chords you must gain enough wrist strength/control to keep them from sounding so jarring. Either that or adjust the velocities after your performance.
There are hardly any non triad based chords in the entire mix. The only exceptions are: at the beginning F-7 at 0:27 Csus at 1:04 Fsus2 at 3:17 Bbadd9 and at 3:56 C7b9. That's only five non triad chords in five minutes. Learn to use more than just triads especially when the source tune is this rich harmonically and find new ways to employ your left hand. You could have it play patterns that descend repeatedly rather than ones that primarily move up and then down again. You could also have it play figures that evolve as they progress rather than repeating the same pattern over every chord change until the next figure begins.
There is nothing I can find in this mix that would make me give it a yes so I have to say
NO
Keep at it. You have a very expressive playing style that could work great if applied more effectively.
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Castlevania Aria of Sorrow 2: Soma Cruz becomes Agent S and goes up against an army of evil alien Belmonts. As you mentioned the sections from 0:33 to 0:45, 2:03 to 2:16, and 2:27 to 2:40 all sound like direct quotes from the Men in Black soundtrack [the only difference being that yours moves chromatically up first instead of down]. That's a total of 0:38 seconds. The entire ReMix is 2:51.
So now let's do some math. 2:51 minus 0:38 equals 2:13. One loop of the source tune takes exactly 1:37 however your ReMix is slower than the original so I estimate that if we slowed the original down to the same speed as your mix it would be approximately 1:50. That means that even if you spent every non
MIB moment of your mix dealing with the source, which you do not, then you would only be spending 23 more seconds with the material than the original did.
Your actual coverage of the original consists of the following: From 0:50 onwards the staccato strings [which sound detuned] doubled by a harp play the accompaniment figure from the source. Starting at 0:55 a batallion of heavily reverbed orchestral instruments play slow lines outlining the chords. There are some nice harmonies here. The orchestration is particularly good at 1:25. Very good use of brass. Excellent sounding samples. Some of this sounds like what Michiru herself might of done had she chosen to orchestrate this piece. At 1:50 the main melody comes in with some charleston timpanis. You never leave the Fminor G/F Gb/F F progression here. There is alot more happening harmonically in this section of the original. That's it! That's pretty much all you use from the source. There are another 50 seconds of material in the original that you never even touch.
Your orchestration relies heavliy on the quality of your samples and reverb in order to make up for the lack of complexity. This alone is not reason enough for a rejection. All you need to do is pay more attention to the original and this would be fine.
NO
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Great work.... now finish it!
The simple 80's style synth works great here, especially the chords that come in at 1:27. The drums are pretty plain but they carry things along well with just enough variation though the constant high hats can become piercing at times but it's not something that needs to be fixed in order for the mix to pass. The rapid drum hits at 1:51 sound excellent and fit in perfectly with the whole 80's vibe. Fading in the synth line before 1:56 is a great way to introduce that part, allowing us to hear it by itself before it joins the ensemble making things fuller yet never too crowded.
At 2:54 when everything gets quiter and the piano takes center stage you have created an ideal situation for a transposition. It's a corny arrangement technique but this is one of those times when it would really work. At 3:23 you could bring the whole thing up to Eb with the original synth resuming it's role. You could then bring the drums back but have them play emphasises half as often as they did before.. that doesn't mean they slowdown it just means that the hard beats only come half as frequently. After about a minute of that you could switch the drums back to the way they were before maybe using something like what's at 1:51 to smooth over the transition adding another synth layer. At this point you'd be at about 4:30 and you could start to think about ending things. Obviously this is just one of many possiblities but you must do something to continue the developement and a transposition could help set things on the right path. I really like what you've got so far so please finish it up and send it back.
NO (Resubmit)
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I think the intro works great. It allows the listener to be caught off guard by the intensity that follows thrusting them headlong into the mix. Fun effect!
I really enjoyed the soloing from 2:11 to 2:35 and from 2:50 to 3:11 right after the sweet fast paced kick snare kick snare stuff. Even though there is little phrasing and almost no movement in larger than major 2cnd increments, the energy behind it is infectious.
That goes for the rest of the track as well. Not much complexity but there is nothing that doesn't work and lots of stuff that does, first and foremost being the contagious adrenaline charged atmosphere created by the song.
YES
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Yay Drumloops!! Those ride cymbals are really monopolizing the aural spectrum and there are only two distinct drum patterns in the entire song.
I play pulsewidth modulating bass in attack mode! Your analog sounds are simplistic and worse the only depth of timbre comes from envelopes that are all exactly the same length. Write your own drums, work on the complexity of your sounds and do more to interpret the source. You'd be in much better shape if you did. For what it's worth I enjoyed the energetic nature of the mix.
NO
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The Section from 1:14 to 1:35 is Hillarious! Sixteenth note high hats, kicks every quarter note and snares every other quarter note all heavily reverbed with a slow moving filter sweep in the second half. It's like being trapped inside of an evil drum machine. I could imagine a whole mix being developed around this claustrophobic feel... the same sort of drums but with fast moving ambient pads with 1/16th synced LFOs being cross panned against eachother. That would be crazy! But that's not what happened here. The rest of the mix is overly chaotic without any real cohesive elements to make sense of it all. Like Gray said this mix sounds flooded and is conceptually undeveloped. But you have inspired me so thanks for that
NO
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I HEARD YOU THE FIRST TIME!
0:43-0:56. I counted this section being repeated 8 times and this section in itself is really one thing repeated twice with a different ending the second time so that means one part of this is repeated 16 times.
Several other parts of the song were also copied and pasted throughout sometimes adding a simple yet heavily reverbed string part. The piano, as gray and liontamer said, sounds very mechanical which is made worse by the repetition because not only are the notes identical in each section but they sound EXACTLY THE SAME since there is no variation in timing, timbre or velocity.
Simplistic arrangement, way too much repetition and the robotic sounding performance make this a definite
NO
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Good Effort!
I am confused as to your reasoning for the new chord progression. It seems to me that it was done mostly to make the song easier to play because you moved it to E which is much less difficult on the guitar than Eb. Your new progression is really just four chords long: Emaj7 Amaj7[this is an A-6 every once in a while] C#-7 Amaj7. If you are using these new chords because the original ones are too difficult for you to play then I would suggest you find a source tune that is not quite so demanding. If not then I strongly urge you to listen to the original more carefully.
The arrangement is also pretty repetive and is limited to adding drums at 1:48 and then removing them from 3:33 until 3:58.
Here are some options. If you do not want to change the progression you're using for whatever reason, find other ways to make up for it. You could have the instrumentation of the melody change up more frequently or possibly add some more harmony parts. Another way to make this progression more interesting without changing it would be to switch the notes in the bass from the root to the fifth, major third, or even a whole step above the root [in the case of the C#-7 you would use a perfect fourth above the root instead]. For example the Amaj7 could have a C#, E or B in the bass, the Emaj7 could have a G#, B, or F# and the C#-7 could have E, G# or F#. Just making these substitutions every once in a while could go a long way.
Finally to make the arrangement more exciting the very least you could do would be to spend more time working on the drum part. Have it change up more often. My own personal preference would require alot more variation than that but the song would be nearly passable with just more complex drumwork.
Overall I agree with Liontamer in that it would probably be a good idea to move on at this point. The stuff I suggested could really be applied to any song and I think it would be easier to work with a clean slate. I get the feeling that you have alot of passion behind your music so I'm looking foward to hearing some more polished stuff from you in the future.
NO
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Glorified rip huh? Liontamer since you claim this is a near-violation I feel I'm going to have to go out of my way to prove why it is not.
From the beginning until 0:30 the melody is played with just the bass in the strings. The strings played chords here in the original. Also there is some ornamentation in the "double delay" piano that is nowhere to be found in the original. At 0:30 the melody is repeated this time with the harp playing a counter melody not found in the original. Here's the brilliant part. He keeps any one instrument from playing chords and allows the harp, piano, melody strings and bass strings to dance around the harmonies creating a full yet open sound. At 0:53 this is continued where the high string part comes in to help flesh things out with out ever having to play a full chord on it's own. None of that is in the original. In the original the clarinet plays a standing harmony part that follows the melody around and a harp is very busy doing it's best to fill in any missing notes. Much different feel created by that.
But wait there more!! At 1:00 the mixer uses nothing but a melody doubled an octave above, a strong bass line and one harmony part combined with some effusive perscussion to create a huge sound. Where is this sort of subtlety in the original? The contrast at 1:15 works perfectly. What we feel we lose in power from the quieter dynamic is instantly compensated for by an energetic obligato figure in the harp doubled by some staccato strings. I have scoured the original yet I have been completely unable to find this obligato part. At 1:30 the obligato part is joined by more "double delay" piano and an improvisational form of the melody played by the guitar which actually does come in at first sounding like a bowed string instrument. I love that effect. I must emphasize this point again. NEVER DOES A SINGLE INSTRUMENT PLAY A FULL CHORD! That takes so much more planning to pull off properly and this mix just absolutely nails it.
Starting at 2:25 I no longer have to prove that this is not a cover because Liontamer claims that after this point it is not a glorified rip. At 2:25 the trombone in the bass and a timpani crescendo make me think it's going to break into something like what's at 1:00 but instead we get some staccato string stuff with each note sounding isolated and deliberate which is great coming out of a passage that was much more flowing. At 2:43 a third staccato string part enters. This part plays perfectly off the other two creating a full sound again while only having to use 3 instruments and never resorting to making them play chords by themselves. At 2:57 the mixer pastes the section from 1:00 and then ends with the double delay piano part by itself. I suppose this ending could have been stronger but it works reasonably well and it is not a serious enough detractor to take away from all the great stuff earlier in the piece.
The orchestration is very original in that it never has any single intrument play a chord yet the harmonies are made apparent by the interaction between the multiple parts. There is a wonderfull give and take aspect of this mix where when one musical element leaves it is replaced by something else allowing things to progress nicely from start to finish without having to just build and build and build. The sounds themselves do not bother me the way they did liontamer so I have no objection there.
YES
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FUNNY! Unlike Zyko I feel no need to justify this vote.
There are no problems with the mix.... It's that simple. It is musically boring but that really has nothing to do with the point of this song and from 2:03 onwards I actually got into the multiple vocal track hotness. This whole thing is just so full of charm. What's not to Love?
There is no reason to say no and many reasons to say yes so...
YES
British People RULE!
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There are a couple serious harmonic flubs in the earlier portion of this song and a several more towards the end.
1:30 thanks to reverb the G is still present over the Emajor Triad here and it does not sound like a #9th. It sounds like a mistakenly placed minor third. 2:27 reverb cannot explain this one. Some of your instruments resolve to A while everyone else resolves to F#. Quite unpleasant. If there were tons of polytonal harmonies all over the place this would make more sense but right now it just sounds like an ametuerish mistake. 4:57 same exact problem as at 2:27 5:12 Piano plays a C# Triad while everyone else is playing A/C# ouch! 5:16 Piano plays G#minor triad which spells out an Emaj7 while the melody has a D suggesting Edominant. This is just plain sloppy 5:18 same thing as 5:12 5:24 same thing as 5:12 and 5:18 5:36 same thing as 5:12, 5:18 and 5:24This stuff alone is more than enough reason for a rejection so I won't even get into the arrangement issues.
NO
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That's Five Minutes right there and I'd say atleast two and a half of them were well worth listening to but there is way too much water in this lemonade son!
0:00-0:40 Bottled Water 0:40-1:15 Fresh Squeezed Lemon Juice and sugar 1:15-1:59 Tap Water 2:00-2:05 Gourmet Dj Scratch Artificial Sweetener 2:06-2:21 Flavored Mineral Water 2:22-3:00 Rhythmically Varied Interestingly developed Lemony Sugar 3:00-3:33 Repetitive Water Scooped out of a Toilet Bowl 3:34-END Lemon and Lime compositional power.
Except for the bottled water used to warm up your audience I don't see the need for the rest of these flat portions of the mix. There is some really tight stuff happening in the good sections. Bassline and drum interaction, grating yet well used sounds, and the ocassional departure from Bminor.
Ultimately I'm with Liontamer in that I really really wanted to give this a yes but those water section are so stagnant and undeveloped. It feels like this song was a collaboration between a good ReMixer and his narcoleptic twin. That's Right I SAID IT!
NO
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Oh man this is painfull for me to do! I really loved the sound of this, the percussion is tight, everything flows perfectly.
SO WHAT'S THE PROBLEM SAM?? I'LL TELL YOU! The source material seems arbitrary in this piece. Part of the purpose of OCR is to honor game music and you have basically just taken one motif from the song and used it to hold everything else together.
This mix would sound just as good with pretty much any simple melodic figure playing throughout!
There's a reasonable amount of variation on this ONE part of the theme. You'll notice that the original gives you alot more to work with. All this needs to pass in my book is more use of the source material.
Let me hear some of that bridge. Convince me that you have some respect for Uematsu and you're not just using him as a platform to show off your skillz.
so I guess that's a NO
Also WTF is with the Buju Banton? <- Aka Chipmunk Reggae
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TASTY OH SO TASTY!
There is a ton of great stuff in this song. The source tune is simple but you used it very well. I would have liked to hear some more harmonic variation but It is not a necessity. I love the range in the percussive instruments. While the rhythmic patterns don't really change that often, the sounds themsevles are switched up just enough to keep me interested
The effects starting at 1:30 are used tastefully and work very well in the context of this mix. That stuff keeps me from missing the drums when they become subdued and then when they return in full force they feel fresh and sexy again! I really like the sixteenth note white/pink noise stuff that starts at 2:45 [Even though that stuff first comes in at 2:15 it's not really audible untill 2:45]. You showed alot of restraint up untill that point so when we finally get some rhythmic excitement it's all the more satisfying!
YES
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inkbot's avatar is disturbing on many levels
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Edit 3:
Okay now I'm sort of lost. Why are you insulting my composing? You might be a genius musician Krale. Seriously you could be a brilliant composer/performer.... I'm not saying any thing about that. I'm just saying you're confused about the issue of time signature.
The reason I'm arguing about that is because I want people to apreciate what a master piece Zue [the original] is and you are down playing it.
As for my performing experience/composing/schooling I have sent you a private message concerning it since I don't think that belongs in the forum [and it does not help prove my point about ZUE]
I'm just fanatical about Miyoko Kobayashi and I hate to see her misrepresented.
PS: Who is Chopan.... I have never heard of this person. Is he at all connected to the polish composer Chopin??? Ok that was too far... but I couldn't help myself.
PPS: I was using the slang term ritarded meaning mentally handicapped. I was basically saying it would sound stupid. I was not talking about slowing the tempo
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Alfonso Ribeiro is a comic genius and the MOST underapreciated actor of all time!!!!!!!!!!!
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I have to ask something. Why did you pick Zue? There is plenty to like in your ReMix but I don't understand why you chose Zue.
If you look in my profile you'll notice that I listed Miyoko Kobayashi as one of my Interests. She is probably my FAVORITE VGM composer. [or very close]
I used to be obsessed with zue. It is rhythmically ingenius. It is 3 bars of 7 then one bar of 6. [that's the main sections] than there are 2 sections in six. The coolest thing is the way in which the sections are juxtaposed makes the 6's sound like odd time signatures.
Also in the original check out the the 7/4 bassline and how it switches back and forth to 6/4. The drums are also playing a VERY original 7/4 clave that I never heard of and that BRILLIANT organ line that really spells out the rhythm construction.
Zue [the original] has very little to offer in the melodic department [though the melody is phrased in a really cool manner]. It just basically hovers around ab minor but I think this was intentional on Miyoko's part since Zue was intented as a rhythmic composition. [she's capable of writing very complex harmonic stuff].
I actually Like your ReMix but I wrote all this because of the comment you made in your submission E-mail:
"The original is in 6/4 or 7/4 or some weird time signature and it took a lot of manhandling of the material to get it into the 4/4 breakbeat form it's in now"
The Whole point of Zue WERE the rhythmic constructions so if you go out of your way to throw those out.... basically nothing is left in the song so WHY ON EARTH DID YOU CHOSE ZUE?? One of my all time favorite songs. Please answer me.
PS: I actually liked you ReMix quite a bit [once I look past your choice of source tune]
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This song is so god damn good and it's gotten some "it doesn't do much for me" responses. That just annoys me. Ridiculously creative and I actually liked it much more than neighburgers. 7 out of 10??? What the hell is that? Thats like a C Minus. I give it 10 out of 10. There's no such thing as perfection, but it seems to me that this song gets all of it's "points" across flawlessly. That is the equivalent of perfection when it comes to composition. This basically means that anything you didn't like about the piece is an issue of personal taste and does not reflect on the quality of the song itself.
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I have nothing to say about the project. I just wanted to mention that Shariq's got some hot shit!
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AWESOME JUST AWESOME!!!!!!!!!!!
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I just want to thank djp for standing up to the panel and fighting for this mix.
It's no secret I've had issues with the panel before and often times I've hoped for something like this to happen.
It's nice to see when active measures are taking to get great music like this posted for the fans.
Great work to both Neil for a truly wonderful song and to djp for getting it to us.
this song was brought to you by the panel, not because djp fought for it.
EDIT: Thanks for not being a smartass, but I think I'll stand by what I said.
*NO* Star Fox 'The Wingless'
in Judges Decisions
Posted
The organ and bells sound pretty weak and things get a little bit crowded every once in a while but there's plenty of stuff here that easily makes up for that. At 0:37 the filtering on the drums helps to keep things progressing just when they were starting to become somewhat monotonous. You seem to have an intuitive grasp on exactly when to change things to keep them from growing tired like at 1:07 when the switch to 6/4 comes just in the nick of time [the bass and the lead seem a little bit out of sync here]. This goes on just long enough to provide an opening for the original drum pattern to return without feeling too repetitive. Here you start to do some really strong melodic sound programming which is a welcome change from the organ and bells.
At 1:36 the dotted, dotted, rest thing gets on my nerves a bit but I think that's a personal thing and it allows the piano to make an heroic entrance [yes that "an" belongs there] saving me from what almost became annoying. The layering at 2:29 works great when you remove the bass allowing us to more clearly here the rhythmic interaction between the two melodic parts and the drums but just when this starts to feel too open the bass returns. This melodic stuff remains until the end and everything builds nicely then sort of gets swept away by that swelling instrument like a giant broom brushing the song into its conclusion.
The strength of this song comes from knowing when to change things in order to keep them from becoming too repetitive and great use of contrasts.
YES
Purple is the color of champions!