Zelda OoT: Play With Me (Saria's Song and Song of Time)

[z130]

Okay, let's try this again. After about a month of negligence, I finally went back and "finished" this one up. For those that didn't hear it the first time, this is a remix of "Saria's Song" with a bit of the "Song of Time" thrown in. I wrote it as a sort of ode to the Skull Kid, hence the title "Play With Me." I need advice on this before I try to submit it, specifically the intro (does it need more of an intro?) and ending (I'm torn between keeping the final piano DUUUMM or going without). And yes, I'm aware that the file size is too big, I'll fix that later.

Anyhoo, here it is:

Play With Me (update 2): http://www.mediafire.com/?zzznzjzymxm

And the sources (sorry about Youtube, but the melodies are extremely simple anyway):

Saria's Song: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Dt3QWsJ0Bs

Song of Time: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C6oZSp49Oss&feature=related

If you're going to take the time to listen to the song, please at least give me some feedback.

[Theophany]

I think the composition and arrangement here are pretty good. It's a bit schizophrenic at times, but I think you have a lot of strong material here. There are parts in here I am really liking, I especially like the nostalgic overtone to the lost woods theme, it's an interesting take on an otherwise happy theme that really works well for me. You need to work on your production though; better samples, etc.

[Plazmataz]

Your samples are really bothering me, but I think with some higher-quality tools this song would really shine. The arrangement is terrific, but it needs a better vessel. Right now it feels like barely a step up from MIDI.

[z130]

Yeah, production's defintey not my forte. I'm using VI.one instruments ($200 for "a step up from midi") on Cakewalk's Music Creator 3 (both cheap and dated), and being the broke teen that I am, what advice do you have for squeezing all the quality I can from what I've got?

About it feeling schizophrenic, that's a result of fitting it into a reasonable time length, so I'd be hard-pressed to elaborate on sections, and the way it is now, I'd hate to see anything go.

[Nubioso]

even experimenting with reverb and delay could help this out a lot. It's completely dry from what I can hear. There's a little reverb on the guitar parts, but I'm assuming that's probably just the sample itself.

Definitely need some spacial tonality in that regards. I'd say a big part of why it really sounds like a "step up from midi" is because of it just sounding dry and in your face.

I'm not saying that "oh, to make a good song you gotta have reverb and delay!" but, on that same note, you're not going to hear a song today that doesn't have some sort of sense of "space" to it given by reverb and delay.

The only reason I'm kind of stressing the importance of that is because of the fact that what you have is what you got in terms of "hey, I only got this software, what else can I do?" type thing.

The piano parts, put some nice reverb on em, add in some other accompanying elements, just enough reverb so that you can't even necessarily distinctly hear it drowning out, but that it gives it the illusion these are all seperate instruments sharing the same space instead of feeling like completely seperate entities coming out of nowhere.

That's just me though.

As others have said, your composition and arrangement are good. Musically you got something good here for sure.

Also, might I suggest the use of tindeck for hosting. I really hate downloading a file and generally skip over peoples that make you download something instead of streaming, but that's just me being nitpicky =P

[Nabeel Ansari]

Yeah, production's defintey not my forte. I'm using VI.one instruments ($200 for "a step up from midi") on Cakewalk's Music Creator 3 (both cheap and dated), and being the broke teen that I am, what advice do you have for squeezing all the quality I can from what I've got?

About it feeling schizophrenic, that's a result of fitting it into a reasonable time length, so I'd be hard-pressed to elaborate on sections, and the way it is now, I'd hate to see anything go.

Looking around for FREE samples can be quite rewarding.

Expensive samples don't make the music; the arrangement does.

But your samples can drag you down, which is why I again suggest looking around on the internet for free high quality samples.

Everything i wanna say has been said already;

Lack of reverb, samples a little low quality, etc.

Everything just sounds real dry-ish.

[Emunator]

The song starts off a bit too abruptly, I'd lead into it with a solo instrument, or at least start everything off a bit quieter. It's at points like these where your instruments feel most exposed though, and the song suffers as a result of the amateur production. There's a few moments later in the song where this happens too; the parts where you don't have as many instruments playing to cover each others flaws need some extra attention, if you get what I mean.

Still, I personally love the schizophrenic styles and the moving guitar... that really carries the mix through the upbeat parts well! Your arrangement is really quite stellar, and I don't want to beat a dead horse but you definitely need to throw some reverb and effects on this. Your samples are probably workable, but your production isn't. This whole mix feels very organic and it feels very humanized (with the exception of the strings and piano at times. Especially at 2:01-2:03, the strings sound way too fake) The instrument dynamics give the feeling of a live performance, but that kind of breaks the illusion.

This one feels like it's almost there, though. This is a solid foundation and, although it feels pretty liberal, I think it would break the 50% benchmark that a lot of judges use. Just needs a bit of TLC on the production side

[z130]

Yeah, I’m definitely gonna go back and tweak stuff here and there. I also agree with the idea of an intro, but I scrapped my earlier attempts. I guess I’ll try to think of something to put there without it sounding tacked on.

It’s funny how everybody has said “more reverb.” The reason I used so little reverb (I did add some, I promise) was to avoid using too MUCH of it, which is apparently a common noob mistake.

I’ll post an update as soon as I get everything to sound right. Thanks for all the feedback so far!