Shenmue - Sedge Flower

[Denloch]

From the Sega Saturn game, Shenmue. The title of the piece also might be known as "Shen Fa" or "Sha Hua", depending on where you look.

In any case, the original is a rather pretty orchestral piece with a focus on chinese fiddles. I suppose it's a rather obscure choice for a source, and I don't know why I decided to brutally violate it in such a fashion, but I did it anyway and this is the result.

I really haven't worked with anything musical for a few years now, and this is only the third piece (and the only remix) I've worked on since I've started playing around again. It took me forever to get the mixing to a point where it didn't sound like a complete and utter failure, but I'm still not happy with it, so if anyone has any special input on that front, It'd be greatly appreciated.

Also, would love input on instrumentation, since I'm still very much a noob where that's concerned, as well.

Cheers,

Remix (WIP)

Original Source

[Rozovian]

Pretty sweet source, the remix isn't what I expected of it. And it's much further along than most wips here are at the first post.

Hat panning is a little too strong, and the right channel seems too delayed. Not sure what, but something's off about the panning.

I'm wondering how much source there is in the middle of the wip, cuz I couldn't recognize much there. There's a lead melody but that's about it. If the rhythm guitar uses source then you'd probably be in the green as far as ocr's source quota is concerned.

And there's a weird frequency balance issue that I can't quite put my finger on. Can't help you with much else, but I suggest you take this to #ocrwip and ask the guitar guys for their feedback on it.

[Denloch]

Thanks for the tips! I'll work on the panning a bit. I don't know why it didn't click with me before, but now that you mention it, the hat does seem way off.

I'm a little confused by your comment on delay. Is there something specific that sounds delayed, or just the whole channel in general? I haven't used any delay effects, and I don't really hear it myself.

As far as how much source there is in the middle... well, it's in the same key. That's about it. I didn't want to completely copy the original melody, so I invented a bit of filler. It's relatively short, so hopefully it won't be considered "too liberal".

The frequency balance is what I've been having the hardest time with. I've tried all sorts of compression, EQ and band filtering on the various instruments, and this is the best I've been able to get. I'll check out this #ocrwip, if I could correct the frequency issues, that'd make me a happy camper. Thanks again for the input!

[Rozovian]

Basically, the delay I was talking about was a right-channel hihat sound. Probably a part of the sample or some auto-function in the pan knob to have the right channel delayed slightly to make the thing sound like it's coming from the left side. Phase shift. It's an additional technique to just changing the channels' volumes (which is what the pan knob does). If there's nothing like that on it, I'm just gonna assume my speaker setup is messing with me. In any case, it's not an echo-type delay which is probably what confused you.

[Denloch]

Ah, I see what you're getting at. After a bit of tinkering, I've noticed that the entire drumkit is recorded in fairly wide stereo, and I expect it's the residual sound on the other channel, picked up from the opposite mic that's probably causing the phase-shift sort of effect. Simply panning the hat back towards center only worsens it. I'll try converting it to mono and giving it a slight center offset, and see how that sounds.

Again, thanks for the input!

[John Revoredo]

Sounds great. The drumkit is pretty realistic!. Great work!. The arrangement is pretty nice, good fingering and technique. There are no flaws, or anything particularly bad about the piece that stands up. Good work.

Talking about instrumentation : is there a bass? (Maybe you should try to amplify it in case there's a bassline). The bass helps a lot in defining the beat section.

It's very likely that you might have to work a bit on the production. High freqs seem to be a bit loud. Also, a dinamics processor might help to provide "strength" to the drums. In case you don't know what that is, i can help out.

Keep on it!

[Denloch]

Sounds great. The drumkit is pretty realistic!. Great work!. The arrangement is pretty nice, good fingering and technique. There are no flaws, or anything particularly bad about the piece that stands up. Good work.

Talking about instrumentation : is there a bass? (Maybe you should try to amplify it in case there's a bassline). The bass helps a lot in defining the beat section.

It's very likely that you might have to work a bit on the production. High freqs seem to be a bit loud. Also, a dinamics processor might help to provide "strength" to the drums. In case you don't know what that is, i can help out.

Keep on it!

Thanks for the response! I do play the drums, though not nearly well enough for this kind of piece, so I have an appreciation for percussion and tried very hard to limit myself to things that are actually humanly possible, with a few small exceptions.

There is a bassline, which is mostly just backing for the guitar, but I found I had to pull it back a bit to avoid the piece getting overwhelmed on the low end frequencies. I'll play with it a bit more and see what I get.

Production is absolutely a very weak point of mine. I know what dynamics processing is (compressing, expanding, limiting, gating, ect) and the basic purpose for using these things, but I've almost no experience or idea how to use them properly or effectively, so any advice you can give me on the subject would be great!

[epilis]

From the Sega Saturn game, Shenmue.

You mean DC?

btw, can you re-upload this?