*NO* Nightshade 'A City in Darkness'

[Liontamer]

Real name: Paul Robinson

Remixer name: Ninja Bro

This song is from Nightshade

Platform: NES

Released: 1991

Developed by Beam Software

Published by Ultra Games

Song's remixed name: A City in Darkness

Songs I used:

From darkness comes Nightshade

Cancer eating through the city's heart

Mark Gray is Nightshade (at the very end)

You can find these songs at .

Comments:

I love video game music and have been an OCR fan for a while; I had to do a remix for myself. My goal is to do songs that have never been done before or not very often. As much as I love Chrono Trigger and Final Fantasy 6, I won't be doing them. Nightshade is a great game; unfortunately, it is one of those games that got overlooked. The villain in the game is Sutekh, who is Egyptian, so the instrument for the main theme in my song sounds a little Egyptian. I also wanted the song to sound dark and mysterious, yet intense. Sadly, many great songs, old and new, have never been remixed. I hope this song will help others realize that there are great songs out there that are waiting to be remixed.

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http://akumunsf.good-evil.net/N/Nightshade.nsf - Tracks 1, 4 and 15

On the arrangement side, I liked the style in which you interpreted the source tunes, though the execution left a lot to be desired. The percussion writing was OK, but felt too repetitive in the long run.

You also had some good concepts for the sound choices, but the way everything was put together sounded pretty mechanical and sloppy, with many of the other samples being pretty low-quality. When the textures got thick (e.g. 3:01-3:33), you had a lot of instruments fighting for space, yet nothing properly supported and meshed with the lead.

A decent first sub, and it's always good to see underappreciated soundtracks getting remixed. This needs lot of work to fully realize the ideas here; hopefully some other Js can provide some more detailed criticism and advice. Sorry, bro. ... ninja bro.

NO

[Palpable]

I think you came close to capturing the mood you described, but this still needs a lot of work on writing and producing. Seems like you want this to sound organic, but some of the parts (the bass guitar, the percussion, the violin) are too mechanical. Some of the other instruments sound alright, but you need that level of detail with all your parts, if you intend to leave them so exposed. The section at 1:29 is quite dissonant. I'm giving you the benefit of the doubt that this is intentional, but I'd tone that violin down there, if that was the effect you wanted. 2:08 sounds dissonant too.

Sound quality of some of those samples is very low. I think with some better samples, this will improve a lot. Also, stick to a more traditional panning setup, because your song sounds very disjointed, the way things are panned hard left and right. Bass especially is good to keep center, because it's your anchor in this song. I'd actually recommend comparing your song to songs similar to the one you want to make, because your song could also use some EQ badly. A lot of the parts conflict, and comparing it against other songs will help you figure out what ranges your instruments should fill. Once you skim the unnecessary parts off, you'll get a much cleaner sound.

Make use of the WIP forums and keep improving!

NO

[DarkeSword]

Timing in the harpsichord is really sloppy at points. There's not a lot of balance between instruments and everything else sounds really mechanical. Violin sample's weak attack really gets exposed. You need better samples dood.

I get kind of a Danny Elfman vibe from this around the middle, which is cool, but its really lacking in the execution department. Work on humanization and balance.

NO