Palpable Posted September 11, 2009 Share Posted September 11, 2009 ReMixer Name: Sockpuppet5 Forum userid: 27176 Games Arranged: Donkey Kong Country Donkey Kong County 2: Diddy's Kong Quest Sources: Kanon's Klaim (Also known as Mining Melancholy) - Donkey Kong Country 2 Life in the Mines - Donkey Kong Country Donkey Kong Rescued - Donkey Kong Country 2 ReMix Title: Life in the Shaft Lane Link: This is my first submission, hope I'm doing this right... This was originally a ReMix of Kanon's Klaim with a brief cameo from Life in the Mines, but I extended it into a 3-source ReMix. It was made entirely with Reason 4. Geoffrey Taucer helped this ReMix out a lot by giving some great advice on how I could improve it. ----------------------------------------------------------------- http://snesmusic.org/v2/download.php?spcNow=dkq - "Mining Melancholy", "Donkey Kong Rescued" (dkq-10.spc, dkq-28.spc) http://snesmusic.org/v2/download.php?spcNow=dkc - "Life in the Mines" (dkc-12.spc) I liked the arrangement ideas and effects here and the song has a good direction, but production-wise this could be improved a lot. The samples aren't that great, especially the guitars, but humanizing the sequencing on the piano would help too. On those repeated notes, it sounds very stiff. The song is also a little muted, and the piano and drums could use more upper-frequencies to cut through the mix. Drums should be brought up in volume in the mix and some fatter samples would add life. On the arrangement end of it, you could stand to change up the backing pads and drums more. Those play the same way nearly the entire song. Overall, some good ideas though, a promising start. It's up to you to improve the production on this to make it reach its potential. NO (resubmit) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
OceansAndrew Posted September 14, 2009 Share Posted September 14, 2009 For source usage this is pretty good to go, but there are some arrangement and production issues that are holding this one back. Most noticeably are things Vinnie touched on, being the stiffness of a lot of the sequencing, and the overuse of some of the backing pads, making things seem a lot more repetitive than they actually are. I suggest finding either a different pad for certain sections, or maybe piano backing chords. On the mechanical front, velocities are really similar throughout; you'll need to mix them up in a more natural manner. Humanizing some of the tracks would be really helpful too, though depending on what software you are using, that could be as easy as pressing the humanize button, or as difficult as moving each note around. The main culprits here are the guitar and piano, and though the samples aren't jaw-droppingly amazing, if they were properly humanized, they'd suffice I think. This has some great ideas in it, and the different source tracks work very well together. this mix shows some great promise, but the execution isn't quite there. Getting advice from Taucer is a good start, perhaps you could take this to the WIP forum and see if any mixers who focus on primarily synthetic tracks could help you take this to the next level. no Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Liontamer Posted October 4, 2009 Share Posted October 4, 2009 That name's pretty n00b. Drop the 5 at least. All of the sequencing was pretty mechanical (literally every part), which would have been enough to kill off any track on the panel, IMO. Once things picked up at :42, I thought the sound was too muddy and indistinct, and the vanilla drum writing lacked energy and didn't fill out the background adequately. The arrangement was otherwise in the right direction as far as creating a different mood from the original and presenting your own style, so you really just need to fine tune your details here. That said, you're new, and it'll probably take you a while to be good at that; but I'd say try your hand at touching this up for the learning experience. NO (resubmit) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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