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OCR01941 - Banjo-Kazooie "Wallachian Prince"


djpretzel
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I was gonna gloat about my PRBC request being posted, but I realized it could have been anyone who submitted a source track for the competition. It was more of a lucky lottery on my part. :P

Also, fun fact: there is a brief rendition of Tooty's theme in minor during the opening story sequence of the game, when Tooty gets kidnapped.

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The strings and piano can feel a little stiff/mechanical at times, and I would have liked some more variation in general on their runs, but it is a cool set of runs, and I can't disagree with wanting to hear them a lot in the mix. It would have been cool to hear a change up in the middle to them though.

Symphonic rock is cool, so you win points just for considering it. OA goes beyond that, though, and makes this really work well with the song. The parts play off of each other very well, so that it doesn't feel tacked on or anything. The guitar work is what really brings this together, and the wall of sound the produce at times is really good. I'm also liking the piano run in the background at 0:59. Cool stuff.

I will say this isn't your strongest track (NOTHING compares to Fabul, sorry), but it's a great listen.

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I've been looking forward to this one ever since I saw it queued a while ago. Banjo-Kazooie can't get enough love :-) I can't say I was a fan of the key change at first compared to the source, but in time I was able to forget about that and appreciate the song for what it was worth. Once I made it that far, I actually enjoyed it a lot. It's not quite as edgy as Audix/Neko's BK mix but the energy level definitely suffices.

Like DA, it's not my favorite piece from you but it's a wonderful treat from a highly overlooked source.

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I actually don't even remember this song from Banjo Kazooie, despite having played through the game twice and listening to the USF quite a bit!

I don't want to sound too negative here, because I think this is well arranged and I like how the melody is dispersed through a lot of different instruments. I just don't like all that marcato violin/orchestra hit type stuff. Everything is so stiff and staccato. It feels like it lacks musicality and any kind of phrasing. Not that phrasing is really necessary for a lot of electronic music, but when you're using a lot of instrumental samples, it comes off as kinda odd, especially when the note length of a lot of the samples is so short.

The combination of all these different kinds of instruments sharing the melody mixed with the very staccato in-your-face nature of this just doesn't really do it for me at all. Sorry, man :(

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I'm fairly sure the it's in the same key as the original...

It could be, I might have just misidentified a key change when in reality I was hearing something else. Either way, something sounded different about the melody to me when I first heard it, I just assumed it was a key change since I'm pretty new to this music vocab stuff :tomatoface:

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A little on the short side for me, but still like it all the same. Would've loved to seen a g'tar solo rip out of nowhere and a little more variation with the strings, but this piece still holds in own.

I'll echo DA as well in saying while this track wasn't your strongest, it's still a great listen.

Props as well for going the Symphonic Rock route OA.:nicework:

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Also, fun fact: there is a brief rendition of Tooty's theme in minor during the opening story sequence of the game, when Tooty gets kidnapped.

Ha! I own the game and had forgotten, though maybe on some level I remembered.

I stuck this song on our Halloween party playlist this year and it fit right in.

It could be, I might have just misidentified a key change when in reality I was hearing something else. Either way, something sounded different about the melody to me when I first heard it, I just assumed it was a key change since I'm pretty new to this music vocab stuff :tomatoface:

It's dropping from a major key to a minor key, but I dunno if that's usually called a key change. The root stays the same.

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I like the mix of violin and electric guitars; it gives the mix a distinctive feel. Admittedly there's not much of an intro here; while I feel it would benefit from a more developed intro, I don't think its current status harms the overall mix either. Huh....

This one's interesting to listen to because it plays with the stereo. It reminds me a little of something Trans-Siberian Orchestra might perform in both theme and concept, except a little more tame. Very nicely done.

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I actually like the strings. The guitar parts seem a bit sudden on entry. A lot of hits. Guitar's very good though.

The string parts sound a bit thin, especially the strings at 1:11-ish. But I don't feel that they're as mechanical as some of the others have reported.

The main theme motif is repeated quite often. I think the two breakdowns really help with the variation. It does seem a bit short because the ending is a bit abrupt - the main theme is repeated four times, almost verbatim after the last breakdown.

I enjoyed it, definitely worth listening to.

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Some background on the track besides the fact that it was the freshly baked remix challenge track assigned to me:

* I used the orchestral samples so extensively because I wanted to break away from my typical synth leads. I think it worked pretty well, but I wish that I had more time to polish some of the exposed parts to make them sound more natural. It's better than I usually do, but usually I use orchestra as BG.

* I think the world would have exploded if I did a song this happy in major. It needed to be in minor.

* I like the breakdown the best; the violin lead is still a bit fakey, but I like the parts there.

*ending is a bit weak, and i've learned from it. Usually my endings are a lot stronger- i dropped the ball here.

*everyone should try the freshly baked remix challenge next year, it was fun. :-)

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