OceansAndrew Posted November 30, 2009 Share Posted November 30, 2009 CRAZY OLD FALLTHROUGH- I guess they assumed it was a DP which is why they are bringing it up 2 years later as a fallthrough. - OA Original Decision: http://ocremix.org/forums/showthread.php?t=11678 Hey dude here is the original submission email. FYI when i moved to Ireland in the fall of 2008 my computer blew up. So the project files for this song don't exist anymore. New link for the song: Thanks, ~Shaun ---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Shaun Wallace <avaris.studios@gmail.com> Date: Wed, Feb 27, 2008 at 8:53 PM Subject: Xenogears - Defective RESUB To: submissions@ocremix.org name: Damon Campbell / Shaun Wallace email: avaris.studios@gmail.com remixer name: Blue Magic / Avaris 88369 game: Xenogears source: The One Who is Torn Apart Remix: Defective (old link removed) (The mix is part of the Xenogears: Humans and Gears Proj. The mix should not be released until the project is.) After tweaking this to death for months here it is. THANK YOU soooo much to the countless number of people who listened to the various revisions and tweaks of this song. Blue and I tweaked the sound on the lead synth at :51 to oblivion; if there are any issues with it please let me know and I'll fix it in a jiff. Thanks! ~Shaun Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
big giant circles Posted December 1, 2009 Share Posted December 1, 2009 I'm always a huge fan of so many of the individual sounds/textures that Shaun picks out and uses in his work. Whether they all coincide perfectly or not sometimes remains to be seen, but I'm pretty sure I can honestly say that every single one of his tracks have been filled with tons of individually fascinating sounds and I've enjoyed them a lot. Source melody is pretty simplistic and sparse. Not a whole lot of melody going on, mostly it's a sustained root with some strings initially, and then a crystal/chime arpeggio panning back and forth on repeat until the glockenspiel thing kicks in around 1:05 or so. The remix is definitely a much more upbeat and energetic take on such a mellow tune. The chimes and strings starting out are identifiable enough. I had some difficulties clearly identifying which parts were referencing what later on in the track, simply because as I listened to the source numerous times, it was just kind of difficult to latch onto any particularly outstanding parts besides the sustained bass note, the chime arpeggio, and the minimalistic melody. And since there's so much more going on in the remix, it just really sent my analytical brain on a bit of an easter-egg hunt. Here's the deal, this is honestly going to take forever to break down, and I just don't have time to do it. If we can get a breakdown from Shaun, that'd be great, but in the meanwhile, I'm going to go ahead and ask for a resub based more on the production than the arrangement at this point. Assuming that the arrangement checks out ok, I really dig the structure and approach of the song. My main gripes would be that it seems to be a little heavy on the low end, and it kind of overfills the space, pushing other frequencies a bit farther back than they should be. I liked the half-electro-groove-half-IDM drum approach, but I felt like they should be a little beefier mixwise (the sequencing I thought was pretty rad). I liked all the glitchy stuff and stutters. And the only other critical gripe I had is maybe, use a different lead. I didn't mind the one the detuned saw thingy, at least not if it were not present for so much of the track. I guess I think it just overstayed it's welcome and should have morphed into something else a little eh, creamier, perhaps? Would have countered the sharp, short textures (like the drums and the percussive-synth sound that was going on in the arpeggios.) Hope all that makes sense. So to recap, -Need a source breakdown -Tweak the mixing (less low end overall mostly) -Drums should be beefier -Changeup lead periodically preferalby (less detuning would probably be good.) Love ya Shaun RESUB Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Palpable Posted December 24, 2009 Share Posted December 24, 2009 We'll get the positives down first, and there are many. Great style that holds the sullen tone of the original, expanding it something much denser. Great drum programming, and I was totally grooving to the 1:40 section. I liked how the melodies from the original were traded off on different instruments, and used in different ways. Torn Apart is a pretty subtle source, not that easy to get a grasp on. The only parts of the source I heard were the bells that open the song, and the bell melody from 1:05-1:10. Those definitely get used at: 0:00-0:04 0:08-0:21 1:15-1:36 1:40-1:55 2:01-2:17 2:51-3:06 4:03-4:18 4:29-4:36 Sums up to 40.4%, when I round in your favor. But they also cameo a number of times throughout the song in the background for a second or two, sometimes just half the phrase. Going by my gut, I'm willing to say this is borderline passable. By having near-constant cameos and keeping the mood similar, I thought the source stayed dominant, YMMV. I think this would have been a much stronger arrangement with a fuller tie to the source, not just the cameos. I was looking out to see if you used the string section that opens the Xenogears track but I never heard it - that would been cool to use. That's the breakdown part of it. As my esteemed colleague pointed out, the production is too bass-heavy, and I was feeling that criticism (literally hur hur). The lead starting at 0:34 was sort of an ugly, lo-fi sound to use so much, and it's especially bad when it drowns out the rest of the track, like at 0:51-1:06. This is just under the line for me. A stronger arrangement or production could make up for the other, but with both a little lacking, it's a NO. Sorry gents! Might be an easy resub though. NO (resubmit) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Liontamer Posted December 25, 2009 Share Posted December 25, 2009 Weird. Yeah, checking the inbox, this fell through alright, though I'm not sure why. Unless this got changed dramatically from the previous version, the source usage of the arrangement was fine, so I'm not sure where those reservations came from. As I said a long time ago in the previous vote on this, all that was needed was for some production fixes to push this over the top. Instead, this version sounds worse. What can ya do? Y'all made this a while ago and the project files went poof. Too bad, because if the percussion were fleshed out and the track didn't sound so muddy and lo-fi (which were issues last time), we could have ran with this. As is though, it's an unfortunate NO. Too bad, I was always a fan of this one, but the potential was never realized here. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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