Liontamer Posted October 7, 2008 Share Posted October 7, 2008 Contact info: Remixer name is Jabond23. Real name is Joe Nichols. Email address is jabond@optonline.net Website is http://www.myspace.com/nintenjoe64 UserID is 25151 Submission Information: I did a rock remixed version of the dungeon theme from the original Legend Of Zelda for the NES. It also includes very small parts of the magic whistle and the item discovery theme and ends with the classic continue/save/retry screen. But the overall song is the dungeon theme. Its an awesome song that always brings back the days of old. VERY IMPORTANT!! I used a keyboard with a virtual instrument found in Mixcraft 4 called Square Lead that has an old Nintendo sound to it, it is absolutely me playing the entire song. The virtual instrument has an almost identical sound to the old nintendo games. When i was making this song I really wanted to do an almost epic version of it by taking the original and making the riffs and solos soar. This is actually the 2nd submission for me for this exact song, but i did get some really good advice from one of your judges on how to touch up the song and make it sound better and more professional. So please let me know what you think? Thank you, Joe ------------------------------------------------------------- This one got form lettered before, and I commented on the soundscape being messed up. It was full of clipping before, as well as timing issues, but this was an improvement. http://www.zophar.net/download_file/9425 - Track 4 Opened up with some 8-bit stuffs, before adding in some rock at :19. The soundscape sounded cramped, but seemed OK until :38-1:16 blew that out of the water. You could only barely hear the actual lead, though the vox was fairly audible. Still, this was a huge mess when it came to the mixing. 1:16 was beefy while at least being somewhat pulled back in comparison to the previous section. At 1:36 though, the 8-bit stuff was pretty audible, while the guitar on countermelody was buried. Then back to the same grimyness of :38's section at 1:55, and yet again at 3:26. 2:34 used a jingle to move over into some freestyling over the foundation of the original, played pretty balls out like the rest of this. Still, the mixing was just a wall of sound, in a bad way. I'm not trying to be insulting, but how is anyone supposed to take 5:25's worth of this? You really can pull this back a LOT and better balance the parts, and it could still melt someone's face off, so pull it back. There's good energy here, but it's too loud and indistinct sounding to be appreciated. I'm not a rock god. Maybe you'll listen to zyko more if he votes on this. Like I alluded to when I listened to the first version, you've got potential, Joe, but you've gotta improve your mixing choices in post production after you lay down your tracks. Once you get more disciplined with that, your work will sound a lot stronger. NO Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
anosou Posted October 13, 2008 Share Posted October 13, 2008 Okay, right off the bat the intro sounds off. Some off notes and timing issues and because the two squarelead-melodies are in the exact same frequency they kinda cancel eachother out. When everything enters this is a mess mixing-wise, like Larry said. Serious balance-issues: backing guitars too loud, riffing buried, too much high-frequency content, weak at times and too loud at times drums. I know it's hard to mix metal, especially one this heavy, but this just isn't cutting it. Arrangement wasn't half-bad. Some good ideas and the metal-adaption worked. Some sour notes during the intro and solo but nothing you can't fix. Another lead-choice would have been a better choice, the NES lead has a hard time cutting through the mix and it's not very interesting either. Some additional arrangement of the actualy melodies would also help the arrangement, show us you can do something with the source and not just play it! Overall this needs a lot of work before I can pass it. You've got the right idea on how to make something your own but it's still lacking in execution, especially mixing. I hope you take some time to read up on some general production-tips and talk to other remixers on the WIP-board for some advice because this would be quite cool to have on OCR. Good luck! NO Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Palpable Posted October 30, 2008 Share Posted October 30, 2008 Arrangement is not bad. I think your playing is good, and the parts you added offer a good interpretation. Transitions were very awkward, especially the use of the death theme at the end. It's got to sound more natural than one song stopping and another one starting. Overall, the song is a little repetitive, but interesting enough to listen to. With a clearer production, the nuances of each section would help mitigate the repetition. So yeah, the production. Sorry, but you have a long way to go here. The song needs help on separating the instruments and cutting off unnecessary frequency ranges (this will involve using EQ) and in balancing the parts. Just as a few examples of what I'm talking about: The two instruments in the intro cover each other, making the notes indistinct. Emphasizing different frequency bands or using more panning can help distinguish these. Drums and guitar lead need to be brought out in the 0:38 section. All you can hear there is the cymbals and the vox. Bass is barely audible in the 4:43 section, and lead synth is probably too loud. Listen to some similar music while mixing to get a better sense of sound "shapes" and volume levels. Good luck! NO Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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