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Ico - Beginning/Castle in the Mist


wildfire
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I've started a new project dealing with two melodies from Ico (ps2). I know I have a long way to go. I'm working with mostly just ideas so far, and I have a (very) rough draft right now. The drum loop definitely needs to go at some point, but for right now I stuck it in there cause its the mood/feel I'm going for. I'm trying to keep things simpler here, cause my last attempt at a mix is winding up getting too complicated, with too many instruments, so I'm only working with a few here: piano, distorted piano, and bells. Here's the mp3, please comment!

http://illusenmage.googlepages.com/ico-beginning2.mp3

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Sort'a on a roll so I'll crit this as things come to me.

Reverb on the piano sounds too small to fit the backing sounds. A hall reverb... or perhaps rather a delay would work better. Cool drums. Some repetition. Some overlapping sounds end up distorted, doesn't sound pretty. The distortion sounds good with the drums, but not with the other instruments, so you gotta clean those out and get something rougher in there for those parts... or fix the distortion.

Half way through I'm recognizing stuff from previous in the remix, and it sounds kind'a the same as before. More variation would be cool, tho I think the backing melody is more elaborate there. The drums are getting old. Do you have a different drum pattern with the same sound that you could change to now and then to keep things varied? If you do, use it.

The piano+synth bell+atmospheric pad combination is great. This sounds a lot more manageable than your Ecco remix. A few issues aside, this is very enjoyable. Make it awesome. :D

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Before I say anything I want to preface my post with this: Please finish this mix!!!

To me the piano feels a little flat. To me its begging for a more crisper sound, but that could be just my opinion. It definitely could use a little spicing up with a little reverb or delay though, and the distortion is crazy when two notes are played at the same time on the piano. The drums could use a little variation as well, I really wanted to hear the drums go somewhere but they stayed consistent throughout the entire mix. The cymbals sound great and really emphasize each part. I like 'em.

Keep at it please.

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New edition today! I removed the distortion on the main piano, and added some new instruments/sections. I know theres a lot of distortion on some notes just because they're too loud, especially in the bells, but I'll fix that later, I don't want to spend the time right now to re-render it again. The drum is still a FL Studio preset, I'll work on that later too. Like before, comments and suggestions are welcome!

http://illusenmage.googlepages.com/ico-beginning4.mp3

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Oooh, update. :D Aaah, ARGHLOUD! :P Seriously tho, it's hard to judge stuff when you have to turn it down so the clipping don't tear up your ears. You're doing yoruself a favor by doing some basic end-stage

You should do something a little more at 0:49 when the drums have come in, like adding a bassline. The piano writing could also get more elaborate there. Cool as what you've got so far is, I don't think it'll hold up to a whole 4 minutes without getting a bit more interesting in some places.

This has serious groove potential. :D Keep at it.

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Waaaay too much clipping on the Piano thing. You should compress that or something. You use a LOT of FL presets here. That pad at the start is called 'LightWaves' if I'm not mistaken? I'm not too sure how the judges will deal with that...

You'd have a nice track here if the instruments weren't so dominating... Here's what I'd do. I'd find youself a nice piano soundfont and soften it a bit, FL Keys (or sitrus or whatever you're using) just isn't doing it for me. Perhaps distort and wetten the drums a little and stereo seperate the pad in the background. I'm really thinking you could give a nice mellow groove to this- it matches the game perfectly. Compositionally it's pretty good it's just the production needs some work IMO.

(Oh and more variation on the drums, one loop isn't going to cut it ^o^)

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  • 10 months later...

A little heavy on the reverb, some triplet delays might work better. The drums in the intro might benefit from some soft delay as well to make them blend in better. There's quite a disparity between their electronic sound and the rest of the instrumentation. That piano isn't that great anyway, sounds thin, metallic (prob a bad reverb plugin) and sounds like it's missing bass.

1:44 first seemed like it was gonna pick up and get into more of a groove there. A bassline and double-tempo drums is something I imagine would work well, but that's me.

Careful with the crescendos, I thought I heard some clipping on one of them. They're overly loud anyway, you could cut back on their volume by a couple of dB.

The piano needs humanization, the track needs more of a backbone, you gotta work out the sound disparity. There's a lot in the instrumentation that's good, so figure out how to bring out the good and what to do about the bad.

But it's another step forward. Nice work. :D

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