Liontamer Posted May 31, 2008 Share Posted May 31, 2008 Your ReMixer Name: XenoCross Your Real Name: Alexander Choeng Your email address: choengalex@yahoo.com Name of game(s) arranged: Xenosaga Name of individual song(s) arranged: Pain (Files are attached) I can't believe it's already been 6 years since my last submission! I have always wanted to do remixes on the 2 vocal songs from xenosaga and here is my first attempt at a non-piano arrangement. I hope you guys like it. Lyrics: Kindness is something I don't want or need The sunshine would just dissolve me into light Give me a pain as pleasing as your sigh So I can feel you all the day and night And keep me from fading away First we touch, and we hurt each other Then we tear our hearts apart We are too close and I can feel the pain Fill my empty heart Is this pain too much for me Can I stay the same When this pain consumes my heart Will I be able to hold on to my soul When this pain consumes my heart Then we tear our hearts apart Kindness is something I don't want or need The sunshine would just dissolve me into light Give me a pain as pleasing as your sigh So I can feel you all the day and night And keep me from fading away Even when we behold each other Somehow our eyes do not meet And when you hold me in your strong embrace Still I feel no heat But it gives me such delight To feel you closer now I know I am true to myself Though it cuts deep into my heart somehow When this pain consumes my heart Will I be able to hold on to my soul When this pain consumes my heart Then we tear our hearts apart ---------------------------------------------------------------- Man, that source tune is absolute cheese. Xenosaga Original Soundtrack - (218) "Pain" Can't say I'm feeling the direct sampling of the original vocals. In that sense, it borrows way too extensively from the original game audio. IMO, that right there is a NO. Unfortunately, the synth design was lackluster and generic sounding. The music was too loud and poorly mixed/balanced with the vocals, and didn't have any flow or synergy with the vocals. Also, the instrumental here was seemingly arranging "Pain" (according to DarkeSword, it "kind of follows the chords with all those arpeggiators"), but it didn't have any of the melodiousness of the instrumentation in the original, and ultimately ended up sounding pretty scattershot/directionless. It's good to see you still checking out the community, Alex. I wouldn't be discouraged by this, since it was a misunderstanding on what fits with the guidelines in terms of the amount of sampling you could use. But maybe you can make a new, more cohesive instrumental while also getting a talented female singer to provide the vocals and give a new spin on Joanne Hogg's style. Or you can focus on arranging and entirely new piece. But either way, I'd love to see you submit something again. I liked some of the tricks you pulled off in Sorcerian "Cursed Piano" and hope we hear something new from you. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DarkeSword Posted May 31, 2008 Share Posted May 31, 2008 The synths in this song are terribly generic, thin and buzzy. There's no depth to the soundscape, no balance between elements. There's also this really weird polyrhythm triplet-vs.-16th-16th-8th going on that doesn't really work. The percussion is very repetitive and generic. Not a fan of the sampled the original game audio the way it's used here; nothing about the instrumental is really locking with the vocals. It's just a lot of syncopated lines with her randomly coming in and out. Not feeling this one at all. NO Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Palpable Posted June 2, 2008 Share Posted June 2, 2008 I really wasn't feeling this one either. The backing track was not bad on its own, but it seems completely unconnected to the original, and the backing track and vocal just didn't sound good paired together. There are also parts where the vocal timing goes well off from the music timing. The mix of triplets and 16th notes was distracting - that kind of stuff can be hard to pull off well. It also started to get repetitive towards the end, and the ending was abrupt. To be honest, I've heard plenty of remixes like this which sort of invent a new backing track for a vocal, ignoring the original completely (to amelodious results, intentionally), but I don't think OCR is the right place for it, given how we discourage direct sampling that extensively. In this case, it's nearly the only thing tieing it to the original. I probably came down on this a little hard, but I hope to see new stuff from you, Alex. NO Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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