Liontamer Posted June 8, 2008 Share Posted June 8, 2008 Hey guys, Game: Castlevania II Track: Bloody Tears Remix Title: Bloodshot Dawn After more than a year of trying to self teach myself the program, I think I am happy with this track and have decided to try my hand at submission. I like to spend the free time I have toying around with music composition and this song just seemed to want to have the Bloody Tears theme in it. It just seemed to fit. I have limited mixing/mastering knowledge, so I tried to fix the levels beforehand. I hope you enjoy the results! Thanks! The Green Tentacle Nathan Froehlich aarekmg@gmail.com (n00b) ------------------------------------------------------------- http://www.zophar.net/nsf/castle~1.zip - Track 2 ("Bloody Tears") The deep sound in the intro seemed like it was leaving a slight distortion trail; kind of hard to describe, but maybe another J can better isolate the issue. The textures were on the cluttered/imbalanced side. The rim hits starting at :35 were too dry and upfront compared to the other sounds, IMO. The organ style stuff was OK, but droned and otherwise didn't really grab my attention. The countermelody to the source positioned in the foreground did grab my attention from 1:04-1:35 though. 1:35-on went into pretty liberal territory, with the source tune taking a back seat, before returning to it at 2:07. The energy level at 2:07 was pretty underwhelming. The drums could have been a lot more progressive to drive things forward, plus the soundscape was still pretty cluttered. Once the drums dropped out at 2:53, the track felt very empty/hollow despite everything else going on and the various effects on things. The ending cut off abruptly at 4:13. The rest of the track basically had the same issues with sound balance and textural cohesiveness. I think the arrangement was generally alright, Nate, but you're gonna have fix up those issues before this is good to go. Hopefully the other Js can give you some more specific criticisms and advice. Keep working on this though, it has potential. Hope to see you at Otakon this year! NO (resubmit) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DarkeSword Posted June 10, 2008 Share Posted June 10, 2008 Trying to hard with that low bass harmony. There's too much going on down there and it's muddying up the soundscape. Organ sample sounds like it's being played backwards; the weak attack is no good here. 16-note rhythms aren't balanced and start bouncing all over the place. Your drums are lost in that low bass drone. There's too much wooshiness everywhere that's distracting from the actual music. It doesn't feel like you paid enough attention to how the sounds and parts are supposed to lock in with each other until the end. Everything sounds like a mish-mash, and the worst offender is that low bass droning synth. Get rid of it. Don't even bother trying to scale it back, just axe it and try something else that isn't going to pervasively overpower everything. This needs a lot of work; the arrangement kind of meanders around and never really focuses on a single idea. Some people call that avant-guard; I call it sloppy. Think more about locking things together rhythmically, balancing your instruments, and listening to your piece as a whole, not just as a collection of separate parts. Synergy is key in almost any piece of music. NO Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Vig Posted June 15, 2008 Share Posted June 15, 2008 I agree. There's a lot of clutter in the low mids, and the arrangement is too dense. Nothing else to say. NO Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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