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Final Fantasy 8 'Devotion & Deception'


derako
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I don't have the sheet music in front of me, but I'm sure that the latter movements feature more sophisticated writing and harmony on top of the original.

I think when I first downloaded this track my version cut off at 2 minutes, and I was seriously wondering what craziness was going on (With derako being all proud of the piece).

Then I downloaded it again after, and listened to the whole thing.

Wasn't entirely a fan of the first movement (or Variation as Sil calls it), as it sounds quite minimalist and almost coverish. But the implementation of other Final Fantasy VIII motifs later in the piece really save the piece and turn it into another orchestral blockbuster by the duo that we've all heard from before.

Great work guys, I do hope it passes, so a wider public can enjoy this piece, but otherwise, I'm just very happy with the 320kbps copy I already have on my playlist. =]

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I don't have the sheet music in front of me, but I'm sure that the latter movements feature more sophisticated writing and harmony on top of the original.

I think when I first downloaded this track my version cut off at 2 minutes, and I was seriously wondering what craziness was going on (With derako being all proud of the piece).

Then I downloaded it again after, and listened to the whole thing.

:) We wanted to surprise everyone with the whole piece so I'm glad you listened to the whole thing and enjoyed it. Jeremy wanted the piece to start like the original but then get more different over time so if people just listen to the first couple of minutes they're really cheating themselves... Even though I feel the first half is awesome in it's own right. It also was the most challenging part of the piece since the instruments were close mic'd and intimite sounding. Not much room for mistakes in sample quality there.

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  • 5 weeks later...
I just listened to this and the two halves really are like night and day. They might as well be two completely different arrangements. I think the second half would easily be a direct post, but the samples in the first half really need work.

Yes I suppose the dry small sounding ensemble didn't work out as well as we had hoped. You'd be unsettled if you knew how long it took me to get it to sound THAT good. But actually remixing it will give me an opportunity to improve on a couple areas that needed some help. Just adding reverb will make a big difference in the quality of the samples in the 1st half. The biggest change we're making is in the strings in the 1st. We're going to make them more ensemble like instead of solo strings. I'm still going to keep some of the solo elements there for dramatic effect but overall I think everyone will be happy with the result. Then everyone who listens to it won't fast forward through the 1st part hopefully :)

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  • 3 weeks later...
Hello all,

I wanted to update as I'm almost finished with the first half edits. It was a complete overhaul basically. Also since I'm working full time again I haven't been able to work on it as often as I would've liked so it may be just a little longer before we submit it again. Take care and be well.

-Derek-

Thanks .

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Cool, I really like this track as it is. Good to know you're still tweaking it.

Thanks. To be honest so did I but the judges didn't appreciate the first part so I'm re-doing it. It will also give me change to change a couple of things that I noticed after production so it's for the better. But thanks nonetheless.

-Derek-

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Meh, all it needs is some reverb. What we were attempting to do is not possible with samples in our price range; that is, give a small-sized orchestra a natural "dry" sound. In the end it just sounds like we forgot the reverb. That means the issue of certain samples being incompatible with reverb arises, so you have to go back and play with the volume/velocities/instruments and that takes time, and anyone who knows me knows I hate spending time catering to samples. Time spent trying to make a computer sound realistic is time not spent composing other things.

OC ReMix might need to consider a new (special case) standard for small-ensemble orchestral sampling because the available software and samples are severly limiting in that area. It's easy to forgive a piece that uses a 12-piece horn section and 70-piece string orchestra because the reverb will cancel out the unnaturalness of the sound. But reduce that to a few soloists and a string quartet and suddenly it's 6 hours of sampling for every 1 hour of composing just to make it sound passible for realness. So if anyone is confused as to why this one sounds "off" in comparison to Derek's and my previous arrangements, it's because this intimate small-ensemble sampling stuff is 100 times harder than the wall-of-sound, epic orchestral stuff.

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OC ReMix might need to consider a new (special case) standard for small-ensemble orchestral sampling because the available software and samples are severly limiting in that area.

I can see how small intimate ensemble is way harder to pull off with some samples, but the problem with double standards is that if you make even one exception, people will start wanting more.

btw, really looking forward to the resub :)

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All I'm saying is that you can't hold small-ensemble stuff up to the same "realism" standard as large-ensemble stuff, which makes sense considering realism isn't the end goal in the first place. I agree that reverb would help in our case this time, but if it doesn't, then we're looking at a whole new set of problems. For example, if I wanted to write a sonata for violin and piano, there is just not a real enough sampleset for a solo violin, no matter how well it was written or how long you spend making it sound real, to compare to the "wall-of-sound" orchestral samplesets that can be thrown together in seconds. That's kind of forcing my hand to write towards the large-ensemble, reverb-heavy stuff I've always done in the past if I wanted to get posted here.

But let's just see how it goes before I complain any further. :D

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It's really nice despite how some parts sound unnatural. It's really a shame how you chose to do it small ensemble, because it could easily be done in a large orchestra too.

Then again, it does shift to a somewhat fuller orchestra toward the end...

Overall, it's very good, but it seems it's lacking a strong bass presence in some certain sections. Especially toward the full ensemble section, it sounds great, but seems to be really lacking bass. The timpani sounds like it's struggling to be heard against the orchestra.

Yeah, but don't stress too much that you cannot achieve perfect realism with synths. We wouldn't want to obsolete real orchestras now would we?

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It IS a great remix; one of my best orchestrated ones yet. It's already over the bar in terms of both arrangement AND sampling. Of course if you focus on the shortcomings, you're not going to like it as much. It's going to seem like it could be better. Like we're holding out on some special sampling technique that magically ups the realism (aside from the reverb issue.) The impression I get from the judges isn't "this sucks compared to Valse Aeris" but "we can't post this until it's 100% where right now it's hovering around 98-99%." They want it to fly over the bar instead of just inch over. Maybe that's possible; I don't know. If you consider all those remixes that get resubmitted over and over until they can just inch their way over the bar it definitely makes me feel like I've been typecasted, and I'm sure Derek is feeling the same way right now. The funny thing is that people have complained about my sampling abilities in the past and still thought the music was arranged well enough to forgive me for them.

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It's really nice despite how some parts sound unnatural. It's really a shame how you chose to do it small ensemble, because it could easily be done in a large orchestra too.

The timpani sounds like it's struggling to be heard against the orchestra.

I don't think it's ashame at all. I think the first half sounds very good as it is. It's almost like people have forgotten what a small chamber ensemble sounds like close mic'd. Also the timpani was one of the loudest instruments in my opinion. I set the volume so high on the timpani in the begining of mixing that it almost dround out everything else. So I decreased the volume ever so slightly.

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  • 1 month later...

EDIT!

Well maybe I spoke too soon. I have just finished up the 1st half of the resub and it does sound better. I changed a few things like the clarinet and made the strings sound more full at times. I pollished off with a nice layer of reverb and it adds a lot of depth. SO! I hope that this time the judges approve.

-Derek-

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