Liontamer Posted May 3, 2008 Share Posted May 3, 2008 Contact Information Willior Will Graham-Simpkins willior47@hotmail.com Submission Information Chrono Trigger/Chrono Cross Memories of Green/Plains of Time Lots of classical guitar and ethnic-ish percussion. Stays true to the original pieces... hope it doesn't stay TOO true for you guys! Cheers and thanks for listening Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Vig Posted May 14, 2008 Share Posted May 14, 2008 Mechanical sequence of unnatural sounding samples. The percussion is pretty good. Panning the bass that wide is usually a bad idea. Unfortunately the arrangement is also way too conservative. Again, the percussive elements are cool, but it's definitely not enough. NO Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Palpable Posted June 2, 2008 Share Posted June 2, 2008 The first couple minutes sounded quite similar to Plains of Time - the parts came in and out, but all the melody lines were the same and the instruments were similar. I think having such a large chunk of your song sound so similar hurt. The second half got a lot more creative and I liked your structural and chordal changes and added melodies, and especially the ways you played with the rhythm of the original melodies. Nice approach to the material. I just think you could have gone farther with the variations, especially in the first half. (Minor note: 6:24 has a dissonance for a few seconds that sounds unintentional to me. Think about clearing that up if you're going back to this.) Production is a little problematic. With such an organic sound, the stiffness of the instruments detracts. Some rhythm and volume imperfections would make the material more convincing, and a higher quality sample for the guitars would add a lot. There's also some mixing problems. Many of the instruments sound too close to the forefront, and at times, the sound gets muddy. I think especially when the drums and strings come in, clarity is lost. Taking down volume levels slightly will help a little bit (I think the percussion sounds like it's at the right level), and EQ might help some of the rest. You've got a good ear for arranging, Will. I like many of the ideas here and I want to see you take another shot at this. I hope you hang around the forums and try to work on improving your production skills. NO (resubmit) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Liontamer Posted June 2, 2008 Author Share Posted June 2, 2008 http://tzone.org/~llin/psf/packs2/Chrono_Cross_psf.rar - 104 "Time's Grasslands - Home World" http://snesmusic.org/v2/download.php?spcNow=ct - "Memories of Green" (ct-105.spc) Lots of classical guitar and ethnic-ish percussion. Stays true to the original pieces... hope it doesn't stay TOO true for you guys! Well, you seem to already know you were gonna encounter that criticism. The piece is cool, but yeah, structurally and instrumentally it's too similar. You tell as soon as it gets started with "Time's Grasslands". The mechanical sequencing sounds cribbed straight from the original. I thought the area around 2:53 needed something else added into the picture to fill out the track more. The textures felt too thin, but picked up later at 3:09. From about 4:09-onward, the overall volume felt too loud and there was a muddiness to the whole piece with the different elements fighting for space, like Palpable pointed out. Definitely re-EQ things to give them more space in the soundscape. I liked the idea of meshing the two sources together with the intro of "Memories of Green" at 3:50, but it was more of the same issues with the overall structure and instrumentation of "Memories of Green" being too similar. This is a cool combo of the two themes, but the renditions of both aren't interpretive enough compared to the originals. Combining them together fairly effectively (well, not the mixing/levels) doesn't really change the lack of substantial interpretation. There's some instrumental changes and personalization here, but as you already sensed, we're looking for more. If you can take it to the next level, and really add your own flavor to this, I'd love to hear a resub. NO Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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