Liontamer Posted January 20, 2008 Share Posted January 20, 2008 Dear djpretzel, It is with great satisfaction that I submit a recording of my arrangement of the Chrono Trigger tune "Undersea Palace," called "Lit by Anglerfish," to OC ReMix. This project has entailed a great deal of labor, frustration, and learning; to hear its complete end product and share it with you gives me a wonderful feeling of closure and accomplishment. The piece is a heavy metal version of "Undersea Palace." The original idea came to me as I imagined an electric bassist playing the distinctive, piercing synthesizer part that underlies much of the original piece. In my mind I sped the part up, and I added an electric guitarist playing power chords that followed the main harmony that the strings play in Mitsuda's tune. The idea sounded cool in my head, so those were the first parts that I wrote and I built the rest of the piece from them. "Undersea Palace" is a big, dark, foreboding piece, so it lent itself to the idea of metal. Strangely, my arrangement sounds more lighthearted than the original to me. The two electric guitar parts and the electric organ part were played live by me, and the drums and bass were programmed using soundfonts. Making a five-part record single-handedly is one hell of a method of recording music; I don't think that I could recommend it to anyone. Better to have five real players, a recording engineer, and a studio. Unfortunately Tohru Iwao and Motoi Sakuraba were busy when I called them. Here is the link to my MP3: Sincerely, Alex Stuart (remixer name: Linearity) linforthewin@gmail.com OCR forum member #9791 ---------------------------------------------------------------- http://snesmusic.org/v2/download.php?spcNow=ct - "Undersea Palace" (ct-308.spc) Dunno if that's supposed to be some sort of mallet percussion in the background, first used at :45, but it sounds like an ultra-muffly Windows sound. Which one, lemme look. ... "Ding." It sounds like you machined-gunned the "Ding" sound effect. In other words, it can't get any more bootleg than that. Let's never speak of this again. In any case, not bad. The lead tone is kind of weak; couple of the notes felt odd (around :35 and :37, but everything resolved fine). The way this is produced, the lead guitar, rhythm guitars and organ bled into each other, with the rhythm sounding pretty drowned out. Up until 1:16, (though the non-stop hats were annoying) the percussion writing was serviceable but flimsy-sounding and plodding in some ways, doing a poor job of driving the song forward. Plus it wasn't very audible. Sections like 2:19-2:34 and 3:05-3:57 felt empty as the textures got fuller, in part due to the percussion not getting the job done. For the latter section, you're relying too much on the rhythm guitar to fill out the soundfield. Everything needs some EQ love to better separate and balance the parts. The guitar Js would have some better crits on the electric guitar performance. Balance the parts better and strengthen some of the weaker aspects of the percussion and this would be in a lot better shape. The arrangement was ok, but it definitely overstayed it's welcome, with the sounds, textures and production techniques not really evolving in any way and repetition dragging things out. A lot of fat could have been trimmed off this. Beyond using the WIP resources here, you should have also given something like this a shot in Dwelling of Duels, since you played most of the parts live. As long as you ask for feedback there, you could get some from guys with a ton of experience making rock arrangements. With all that said, Alex, this was a pretty decent base that shows that you have the right ideas about interpretation. You've gotta get the energy level and dynamics working more in your favor, as well as the production, though the performances and/or multitracking could have also been tighter. Lots to work on for the future in terms of building up your core skills, but this is also a lot better than the typical first/beginner sub. You may want to see what criticism and advice you could incorporate into improving this track, but may want to move onto other work. In either case, keep improving and stay hungry for learning more. NO Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Palpable Posted January 27, 2008 Share Posted January 27, 2008 I think you had some decent ideas in arranging the original material. This is one of the last songs in Chrono Trigger I would expect to get the hard rock treatment, and you've pulled it off not half bad. There were some parts where I found it difficult to connect to the source, but enough where I could. My biggest problem on this end was that some of the writing (the guitar, the organ) was intricate and others (the percussion and bass) very simple. It felt like you focused too much on the leads without giving the support the same attention. This isn't always a problem, except that you have sections that highlight these underwritten elements. Definitely spend some more time on the WIP boards, because you have much room to grow as a producer. The entire mix is missing a lot of low end, making it sound thin. Those rhythm guitars and drums especially need some power, and in the case of the guitars, the recording might be part of the problem too. Also, make sure your parts are balanced well (compare it part by part to other songs in your genre) and use EQ if things conflict. Most importantly, just keep at it. NO Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Vig Posted January 28, 2008 Share Posted January 28, 2008 Oh boy. I'm hearing some serious issues with the performance. Gotsta tune up that guitar. Furthermore, your playing is choppy. Gotta just drill it until your notes move smoothly. Just practice scales with a metronome as slow as you have to so that you can play each successive note one right after another without stuttering. NO Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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