Zelda: Twilight Princess 'Pseudo-montage'

[Spc1st]

I was working on this Zelda montage/remix of a couple of themes from the Twilight Princess, but it's not going quite the way I want it to (and I still have another theme or two to inject). I'm playing with the idea of taking a section or two from this and expanding it into a it's own piece, or just continuing as is. Anyways, I just wanted to post this here so you guys can maybe help me figure out what works well and what doesn't in what I have so far.

Here's the link.

Edit: Latest WIP

[Skullbullet]

In the opening, I detected something that I couldn't quite put my finger on - wind effects or something. It was ruining my experience of the opening. Other than that, I particularly like the atmospheric approach - the first half in particular made me feel like I was in the woods, and you've got some great instrumental choices. The duet at the end was also well done.

I think if you add one more theme (maybe a melody/counter-melody theme?) and structure a nice build-up to, say, the duet at the end, you would have one amazing Zelda piece on your hands.

Overall, I loved it. (Does it show?)

[Spc1st]

Mmm, yeah the effects were a bit tacked on. I was trying to sort of emulate the effects usage in the soundtrack, but came up pretty short on that end. I'll probably end up getting rid of a lot them by the end.

So all in all you still think this works well as a montage/medley? I'm a still a bit unsure about the pacing in this piece, mostly that it feels a bit too slow-paced overall. Maybe I should concentrate more on the melodies than the other aspects for conciseness. Thanks for the comments in any case though; I'm glad you found it to be quite enjoyable.

[Skullbullet]

Don't underestimate the power of a good slow piece. If it's done right, it can be really awesome. I didn't detect any problem with pacing; if you really want to speed it up, you could end on a very upbeat note, but overall I think it sounds just fine as a slow piece.

Yeah, I'd say try and work one more song in to make it a medley; I've not heard all of TP's OST just yet, but as it's Zelda, I'm sure you've got plenty of material to pick from. Good luck; can't wait to hear where you go with this.

[Spc1st]

Alright, well I've added a few more changes: Tried playing around with re-articulating the melodies (which worked well for the first melody, though not so well with the second); redone the drums for the second section, so it should be quite as cheesy; also, started sketching out the next bridging section (basically the second half of the intro theme, so it can also count as a sort of recap section). Thing that are obviously missing are continuous controller stuff, and the mixing is pretty rough at this point too.

[Skullbullet]

[i'd like to apologize in advance for not having exact locations of the sections I'm talking about; I promise I'll edit this post later when I can download the track to my computer.]

Still something about the opening that I don't dig. Might just be some more of those background effects - whatever it is, something's muddying up the lead in the intro. (Maybe it's volume?)

I think you could bring the volume on the flute (that IS a flute right?) down a bit; it's a tad overbearing. You could also try bringing the volume up on the drums, but that might kill the atmosphere.

Volume on the lead after the choir leads needs work - it's muddy and covered. When it joins with the flute, though, it's fine.

I'm not convinced on those cymbal crashes during the duet. The one at the end of the duet is beautiful, but the rest... ain't buying 'em. I would ask someone else's opinion on the (overall) drum-writing as it's not my forte, but the cymbals were painfully noticeable, which shouldn't happen in such a beautiful duet.

I think I would take the ending more in a solo piano fashion rather than retread the strings again. Probably just my personal preference, but the strings in the beginning aren't convincing enough that they're worth reusing. (Holy crap, reusing isn't a hyphenated word!) Duet female vox w/ piano would sound pretty, too, but I don't know if you could secure that much.

Did I say before how much I love the atmosphere? The bird chirps in particular are fun; I think during the choir creepy section you might consider some crickets chirping or twigs being broken by footsteps; that would REALLY add more atmosphere to that section. The piece overall reminds me of Stephen Melillo's "StormQuest" - a young hopeful boy dives deep into a forest of evil and, in a final battle, comes out triumphant. The duet has a very hopeful quality to it - that's probably what prompted the comparison. In any case, it's BEAUTIFUL.

I like where you're going with this piece (obviously, since I'm keeping my hawkish eyes on it). Keep on chugging, I'd like to see you finish it.

[Rozovian]

Skullbullet, you're doing fine with your feedback.

Now, the wip... Intro choir and strings clash. Not pretty, despite the effect you were going for. And they're both kind'a high, you could bring the choir down into a lower range. I recommend finding other choir samples too, stuff that don't sound so sampled on the short notes.

Flute gets a bit to sampled-sounding when sustained, add an envelope-controlled volume modulation via lfo if you can, it'd give it a more human quality. Drums are a little too sampled-sunding too, tho the drum writing is really cool.

Transitions are a little too harsh, you might want to work on blending stuff together better. The flute that starts with Midna's theme is dragging, which makes it sound terribly out of synch with the rest of the track. Around then, the drum writing take a turn for the worse, and are more weird than serving theire purpose.

Ending feels a bit tame compared to the range of themes you've used.

The overall sound is okay, but you'll need to make it more cohesive. Many of the individual parts are great, but the way they're meshed together isn't. It follows an intelligent progression (for most part, last transition felt forced), but the transitions themselves are a bit too harsh and the sections having too little in common, making the track an example of emdley-itis.

I recommend tieing together the segments with overlapping drum rhythms and other backing writing, as well as getting rid of the current ending and going back to the Ordon theme (or whatever the birdsong segment was). You should probably also revise the Midna segment, making it sound more fitting for the overall sound. The intro might need some additional instruments or revising, as its sound quality is far less than that of the rest of the track.

Still, it's a good track, and has potential to get on OCR, but it needs to be far more cohesive. You seem to know what you're doing, tho, so good luck with the track.

[Spc1st]

Very helpful comments here, guys - there's lots of stuff I want elaborate on, but I'll drop this update here and ask more later in an edit or something. For now, let's just say I inadvertantly taken this piece into a somewhat different direction, for better or for worse.

[kobuu]

ok, the flute has come a long way. felt it haunting into my head....so good. there is a little dischord right at the beginning with the choir transitions. i think it's intentional tho so no complaints really. i agree that the drums are written extremely well. some of the "trips" (for lack of a better term) and the synchopations are incredible. at first i thought you totally just messed up...but THEY WORK!!! keep going. can't wait to hear the submitted version!

[Skullbullet]

[Riffing based on what I'm hearing in real-time - LIKE THE OLYMPICS IN THE WEST COAST RIGHT NBC RIGHT??]

The intro is MUCH improved. Very cool.

The flute lead and drum writing underneath was AWESOME. I instantly started grooving, and it didn't feel too artificial.

The piano part after that was great, and the duet sounds fantastic.

The choir/piano section near the end might be tinkered with in terms of volume. I'm curious as to what you're going to do with the ending piece - sounds kinda "out there" compared to the rest of the song.

I see the makings of a great song here. The drums have added some excellence, so now you should focus on giving the piece's lead melodies some coherence - give the song some structure so it doesn't feel so meandering.

As Rozo said, you seem to know what you're doing, so I'm confident you'll come out with the winner soon.

[Spc1st]

[Riffing based on what I'm hearing in real-time - LIKE THE OLYMPICS IN THE WEST COAST RIGHT NBC RIGHT??]

The intro is MUCH improved. Very cool.

The flute lead and drum writing underneath was AWESOME. I instantly started grooving, and it didn't feel too artificial.

The piano part after that was great, and the duet sounds fantastic.

The choir/piano section near the end might be tinkered with in terms of volume. I'm curious as to what you're going to do with the ending piece - sounds kinda "out there" compared to the rest of the song.

I see the makings of a great song here. The drums have added some excellence, so now you should focus on giving the piece's lead melodies some coherence - give the song some structure so it doesn't feel so meandering.

As Rozo said, you seem to know what you're doing, so I'm confident you'll come out with the winner soon.

I'm glad you liked the changes in general - to tell you the truth, even I thought it might have been a bit too out there hehe. I started adding some automation to the piece as you may noticed, so hopefully that'll make instruments (particular the lead ones) sound a bit more natural. But in terms of balance, there are still problem spots (for one, the choir still needs some work, as you noted).

It's definitely apparent that the melodic sections are kind of weak right now, though I'm a bit tentative about expanding on them too much as I still have another section or two to go (so the section at the end isn't going to be the ending just yet ). I don't want to inflate the length of this piece too much, and if I do end up focusing on the melodies too much, it may be a better idea to just do seperate mixes of them. I'm still trying to find the right balance now.

ok, the flute has come a long way. felt it haunting into my head....so good. there is a little dischord right at the beginning with the choir transitions. i think it's intentional tho so no complaints really. i agree that the drums are written extremely well. some of the "trips" (for lack of a better term) and the synchopations are incredible. at first i thought you totally just messed up...but THEY WORK!!! keep going. can't wait to hear the submitted version!

The transitions for the newer parts thing do probably still needs some more work, though I'd rather not work on them too much if I can get away with it . Oh, and I actually did mess up at the end - the whistle thing is out of tune as I forgot to pitch bend it back up after the beginning. Should be fixed in the next version though.

Skullbullet, you're doing fine with your feedback.

Now, the wip... Intro choir and strings clash. Not pretty, despite the effect you were going for. And they're both kind'a high, you could bring the choir down into a lower range. I recommend finding other choir samples too, stuff that don't sound so sampled on the short notes.

Flute gets a bit to sampled-sounding when sustained, add an envelope-controlled volume modulation via lfo if you can, it'd give it a more human quality. Drums are a little too sampled-sunding too, tho the drum writing is really cool.

Transitions are a little too harsh, you might want to work on blending stuff together better. The flute that starts with Midna's theme is dragging, which makes it sound terribly out of synch with the rest of the track. Around then, the drum writing take a turn for the worse, and are more weird than serving theire purpose.

Ending feels a bit tame compared to the range of themes you've used.

The overall sound is okay, but you'll need to make it more cohesive. Many of the individual parts are great, but the way they're meshed together isn't. It follows an intelligent progression (for most part, last transition felt forced), but the transitions themselves are a bit too harsh and the sections having too little in common, making the track an example of emdley-itis.

I recommend tieing together the segments with overlapping drum rhythms and other backing writing, as well as getting rid of the current ending and going back to the Ordon theme (or whatever the birdsong segment was). You should probably also revise the Midna segment, making it sound more fitting for the overall sound. The intro might need some additional instruments or revising, as its sound quality is far less than that of the rest of the track.

Still, it's a good track, and has potential to get on OCR, but it needs to be far more cohesive. You seem to know what you're doing, tho, so good luck with the track.

Well, I turned off the EQ for the choir in this release, so I think it clashes a bit less. The preset had an EQ added on to give it more of a "sizzling" effect, but that ended up making higher registers started sounding too stringy. Also, I've drop the top voice down an octave, which may or may not sound better. In any case, I probably won't be able to actually procure any new choir samples (unless perhaps you can recommend me some decent free ones?), though I don't mind the quality of the sound right now too much.

What do you mean by "envelope-controlled volume modulation via lfo"? I don't think I've explicitly heard of this technique before. I tried to add some volume swells and drops for an extra bit of humanization, but I'm certainly interested if there's a better way.

I finally noticed the dragging in Midna's section, and had to start the notes about a half-beat early to get it better synced. The instrument is proving really troublesome to work with, but I really do like the dark, breathy quality of it.

The structure is really a bit of a mess, but I think I'm starting to get a better idea of how I want it to be. I'll elaborate a bit more in the general comments at the end. I'm not exactly sure what you mean by "emdley-itis," but I'll assume it probably means a really botched attempt at medley writing.

General comments:

You might have noticed the new bridging sections I've added in the beginning and before the reprisal of the of the "Intro" section. Basically, I've used those spots to inject some melodic/motific interplay and variation to hopefully help the overall piece sound a bit more coherant (thematically, at the very least). The main themes used in the piece are "Ilia's Theme," "Midna's Theme," "Agitha's Castle," and "Reencounter with Zelda" (the latter two are only mostly hinted at so far, though the section I'm working on will be focusing on the "Agitha's Castle"). Heck, you can almost look at is as a "Princesses Suite" or something (though I guess technically Ilia really isn't princess) - heck, I even have four seperate wind instruments so far to represent them almost in a character fashion. The bridging themes used are "Intro" for one, and also the more coherant part from "History of the Goddesses." Oh, and this started off as a request of sorts, so that's why these specific themes were chosen.

I think I'm going to try to keep the character themes fairly similar to the original in terms of atmosphere. This means I might have to change up Ilia's section, as it's a bit too melancholic or at least heavy in tone. It's a bit of a shame as that section is probably the best (self-contained) one so far, but it may work better in the end, at least in terms of overall coherance. This is how I see these themes so far, but feel free to suggest better characteristics.

1. Ilia's theme: Calm and peaceful.

2. Midna's Theme: Lamentful and cynical.

3. Agitha's Theme: Playful and carefree.

4. Zelda's Theme: Nostalgic, tinged with a bit of melacholy - one could even claim that it has certain fatalistic pathos to it, thinking about the series as a whole.

I think I'm going to also try to keep the current pace overlaying more and more melodies - directly so in during the main sections, and collage-like during the bridging sections. Don't know how well this will work out, but it'll be pretty darn neat if it goes through nicely.

[Rozovian]

What do you mean by "envelope-controlled volume modulation via lfo"? I don't think I've explicitly heard of this technique before. I tried to add some volume swells and drops for an extra bit of humanization, but I'm certainly interested if there's a better way.

...

The structure is really a bit of a mess, but I think I'm starting to get a better idea of how I want it to be. I'll elaborate a bit more in the general comments at the end. I'm not exactly sure what you mean by "emdley-itis," but I'll assume it probably means a really botched attempt at medley writing.

Some synths and samplers have the option of controlling some parameters via lfo and/or envelopes (other than volume and pitch, thatis). You'll find this a good way of spicing up a lead, or to jsut add humanzation, depending on how you use it. Another Soundascape used it here to spice up the lead in a very evident way in this remix. Using it a subtle way would make long sustained notes overcome the sound of the samples of being looped.

What I meant was that you'd have a long sustained note. Towards the end of it, an envelope would allow it to start a volume modulation (tremolo) along the waveform of an lfo. It takes some trial and error, but if your sampler has the option of routing stuff together like that, learn to use it.

You're right about medley-itis. It's probably a term OCR has coined. It's when a medley doesn't blend the themes together, effectively making it several different songs stacked after one another without a coherent structure or possibly even a unifying soundscape. In your case, it's mostly the structure and some transitional issues that get your mix that label (for now, anyway). My favourite medley is the protrific BrainsickMetal, which has a unifying sound and fairly good transitions. It doesn't blend the themes together, but with a unifying sound and decent transitions, it doesn't have to.

The name "Princess Suite" is actually a good one, as this features the female characters' themes.

Your idea for transitions might work, tho I recommend you also consider the pacing in the transitions, making sure it doesn't stand out as a "there's a transition again"-type segment. Two types of good transitions, might be more, but these I know: buildup into the next section (or a reverse buildup), and a blend where an element of the old continues with an element of the new.

Anyway, I'm looking foward to the update. Good luck.

[Spc1st]

Here's another update, which mostly extended both Ilia's and Midna's sections. I'm not completely happy with the latter, however, as it turned out a bit too abstract. But it'll do for now until I can come up with something better ;P.

[Spc1st]

Don't think I'll have time to update this weekend, but can I get some comments on the last WIP, please?

[Rozovian]

You got run over by a myriad of other wips. Btw, the filesize can make it a bit daunting to download - 12 megs!? 320 kbps is twice as much as it needs to be. Besides, you can't submit stuff over 6 megs to OCR anyway.

The flute in the 1:10 section could use some longer notes, just to make it more varied.

First snare hit could be softer. In fact, the drums could all be soft before really getting started.

Transition to 2:28 was a little weird, you might want to dampen the contrast between the key signatures by finding a chord they have in common, or finding a good intermediate chord to base some backing on.

3:28, weird drum drum writing. After that, there's some clashing going on in the background (I assume the foreground clashes are intentional). At 4:03, and even more so at 4:10, you've got some really weird key structures that I recommend you take a look at. it's one thing to write stuff like that so it suits the atmosphere, it's another to write it so that it annoys people or sounds bad to them.

5:07 section feels too different. I recommend bridging it with the 1:10 flute melody put into the piano somehow to tie it together. Also, if that's how you're gonna end it, you better introduce that soundscape earlier or have it run longer.

Overall, the progression suffers the medley-itis in some of the harsher transitions. It's pretty long as it is, so I suggest working on making it more cohesive in terms of themes and sound. The mood changes a bit too often, and most themes are only represented in one mood. See if you can make this sound a bit more unified.

I've only got some crits about the writing. Production is about as good as I can get it, tho as you can see, I'm not posted on OCR yet.