StarTropics 2 'Battle with Zoda'

[grahf677]

Well I have worked on this for a short time and with techinical difficulty but i would like some feed back on this song Its for the NES Startropics 2: Zodas revenge. it is short but im still working on it

Zoda Battle

Zoda Source

[Rozovian]

An interesting track you've made of an interesting source. The remix is most definitely tied to source, but I'm concerned about the amount of interpretation. At times, it just sounds like a slowed down version with the instruments changed around and with some additional backing and rhythm, but I wonder if that's enough.

Too much reverb on the piano. The synth in the bg in the intro, is louder than the piano, it seems. It steals the attention. It also doesn't quite fit in with the rest of the soundscape, at least at that point. You may want to tweak it, or use another instrument for the intro backing.

Bass in the dnb-ish section :14-27 can barely be heard, and that section comes as too much of a surprise to work, imo. Going from a rich high-range piano melody to processed drums is too sharp a transition to sound good. If you'd have a section with both, either where the dnb is instroduced or where the piano is still around, you might have a betetr transition, but I recommend rewriting the intro to give the listener a more clear idea of the soundscape of the track.

The following section is repetitive and messy, and tho the :48 piano serves as a good clear lead, the rest of the soundscape remains... boring. There's some interesting synths, but it all blends together into a mess that doesn't sound good. You could clear it up with some panning and a lot of EQ, but I'd vary the writing too.

At 1:15, a new rhythm comes in, one I enjoy. It lasts for 7 seconds. Then another section of dnb-influenced stuff, followed by halftempo of the same with a chippy synth.

Throughout, you've got some of the great stuff buried by other layers. You really need to get those up front... or at least up out of the mud. Do EQ cuts on stuff that's just backing, volume cuts if you have to, and raise the more elaborate things if you have to. Work on separating the tracks from each other in the soundscape.

The big problems I can hear in this are 1) sound design and choices that don't work well together, 2) uninteresting writing or writing that makes it difficult to listen to it and/or 3) poor mixing.

Source content seems ok, but the arrangement seems to stick a bit too close to source. The writing is different, but the arrangement not so much.

There are a lot of interesting bits a pieces in this, and I hope you back this version up so you'll be able to go back to those and copypasta into a newer version, one rearranged and not just rewritten, one mixed more clearly, one consisted of more coherent instrumentation. It's a source worth working on, and there's a number of things in your wip that I feel would work well in a remix of this. Don't misread me, I think you could make this great, especially now that you know some of the problems with it. Good luck!