Xenogears -- Awakening

[Nekofrog]

Edit #3 (March 4th): Rerecorded it entirely, eliminated the clipping issues that I could tell.

Wrote a completely new intro, wrote an actual ending instead of just the abrupt stop.

http://media.putfile.com/Xenogears---Mechanical-God

If no one can find anything hugely wrong technically or melodically, I am going to resub this tomorrow.

Comments? Thanks.

[Torzelan]

I love what I hear and would really, really, really like a copy of this when it's done. Haven't heard the original so don't know how much it does or does not deviate from the source, but what is here is sweet to listen to, great feeling.

[Tensei]

Sequencing, playing and production is all very much up to par. Only thing I'm a bit worried about is the arrangement. As far as I can you only use that one part from Awakening, and all you're doing is playing a different melody over it, the rest is mostly original. I know this is a hard source to remix, but I really can't help but feel that the melody from Awakening is 'tacked on' on an otherwise pretty decent piece of Metal.

[Nekofrog]

I think this is leaps and bounds beyond anything I've done before. Both in terms of the production side (sequencing, mastering, EQing) and musical. It probably helps that I have some of the best source material to work with in Xenogears, too.

I think it's pretty much done, melody wise. Just have to tweak a few instances of clipping and I think it's ready.

Here's the newest (finished) version:

http://media.putfile.com/Xenogears---Awakening

And here's the original from the game for comparison:

http://media.putfile.com/Xenogears---Awakening-92

[Geoffrey Taucer]

Conceptually, this is really nice. Guitars are well-played.

However, both guitars and percussion are really lacking in punch; the whole mix is quite muddy. Cut the reverb a tad, and EQ the elements so they aren't all battling for the same frequency ranges. Right now it seems like the entire mix is in the upper-mid range, with absolutely nothing of note in the rest of the spectrum.

Is there a bass in there at all? The mix could really use one.

Percussion is not as interesting as it could be; in fact, it's a bunch of bland 2-measure loops. Granted, it switches between a number of different bland 2-measure loops, but I still think it needs a bit more variation.

Transitions are abrupt, and most of the ideas really aren't developed enough. I'm not sure if this is deliberate or not; it does sort of suit the style to have abrupt changes. However, the sheer number of abrupt, zero-warning transitions throughout the piece makes it feel like a montage of ideas, rather than a cohesive mix.

The mix definitely shows promise, but work remains to be done before it's OCR-ready, imo.

[Nekofrog]

Thanks for the input, very helpful.

There is no bass because I don't own a bass (yet -- it looks like I'll be purchasing EdgeCrusher's in just under a month), so there's always been that issue.

As to the drums, yeah. I'm no drum sequencer.

[zircon]

Guitar tone to me seems a little too thin.. needs more chunk and low-end. Almost sounds like just noise on the open powerchords. IMO, with properly mixed metal guitars, you practically don't need a bass because the chugs are taking up tons of space. The stereo spread is really nice though, as are the performances across the board. Drum sequencing indeed could be better, but I don't think that's a major issue as you can always find someone else to help with that. In general, things could be louder and more 'full' but I'm sure the lack of bass has something to do with that. I can hear a decent amount of "Awakening" here but I think it would really help to use more of it. Some of the most recognizable main riffs are nowhere to be found, which makes it hard to connect to a lot of the time. Adding some of those in some form would really help. Backing synth/string pads outlining the chord progression would also be useful.

Overall though this is a cool concept, and the execution is on the right track. I look forward to the finished version.

[Martin Penwald]

Heh, this is really nice. The drum-part starting at 2:00 kicks ass.

But I have to agree that this is rather lacking in the low-end department. And the arrangement could really use some more source material.

[Nekofrog]

http://www.ocremix.org/forums/showthread.php?t=14329

WHAT THE HELL THIS IS BULLSHIT WHAT DO THE JUDGES KNOW THEY CAN PISS OFF

Just kidding. Their input was great and has reinvigorated me to polishing this thing up until it's accepted (it was this |-| close). I own a bass guitar now, so it shouldn't be too difficult to finish it all up.

Extremely grateful for the advice judges, will begin right away of polishing up. Unfortunately it's going to take another 2 months to get the new version reviewed

Edit: The only hard part now is the fact that I have to rerecord the entire thing from scratch because I didn't back up all the necessary files when I formatted my hard drive a few weeks ago. Got a minute or so re-recorded but it's pretty difficult getting it all to sound almost exactly like the original track.

[Nekofrog]

Rerecorded it entirely, eliminated the clipping issues that I could tell.

Wrote a completely new intro, wrote an actual ending instead of just the abrupt stop.

http://media.putfile.com/Xenogears---Mechanical-God

If no one can find anything hugely wrong technically or melodically, I am going to resub this tomorrow.

Comments? Thanks.

[Rozovian]

Intro strings... distorted? Cool, but they kind'a sound like bad midi guitar sometimes, like poorly processed midi strings at others, imo. Fading in the effect might work.

Once the track gets started, it's just good. It gets a little repetitive, consider recording a solo over one of the repeated sections, even a simple slow one might be enough, and I don't think that's the time for a crazy solo anyway.

Towards the latter half, it's more varied, but there's still some repetition you can cut out. I recommend either cutting on varying it more. The break followed by another heavy section could need a bigger punch for the intro, a crash might work. Speaking of crashes, why aren't tehre any big crashes in the last section?

The fade-out, while functional, feels a bit like a cop-out from not having come up with a more organic ending. I can sympathize, I have a WiP without an ending. Consider adding a solo that you fade out slower than the rest of the tracks. Consider adding some higher range melody, regardless of fade. Could be a guitar solo, but just as well a piano, synth, bell, organ, ukulele, anything that give this the feel of having an ending and not just ending because you ran out of material, which is how it feels right now, sorry man.

But overall, this is way more impressive than I thought it'd be from the ending demo I heard on #ocrwip. I couldn't spot any production issues, but I'm no production expert. This is impressive, it's good, it's gonna be interesting to see how this fares with the judges.