Palpable Posted March 1, 2010 Share Posted March 1, 2010 Remixer Name: 4 Keys Real Name: Michael Dangremond Website:http://www.myspace.com/4keys USER ID: 22714 Name Of Game: Crystalis NES Name Of Song: Opening song Comments: Remix composed, performed, mixed, mastered and written by: Michael Dangremond. Additional Guitar tracks provided by: Adam Amos (Contact: http://www.facebook.com/home.php?ref=home#/profile.php?id=515716143&ref=nf) My personal tribute to one of greatest Adventure RPG games on the NES (My opinion). Playing the game now leaves me stupefied at how I once beat it as a kid. Man! This game is difficult! Anyways, I hope you at least enjoy this rendition of mine. My good friend, Adam Amos provided some of the Lead Guitar Harmonies, Which I felt helped the tracking out. I am currently organizing some future tracks to submit depending how well this one does. Check out my band's myspace, We're also found on OURstage.com. ------------------------------------------------------------- Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
OceansAndrew Posted March 2, 2010 Share Posted March 2, 2010 Awesome game and song choice, and the arrangement is pretty amazing too. I loved the glitched out bits, and the overall sound ideas were excellent. Drums were cool as well. The issue I have with this mostly, is the production and balance. There is a distinct lack of some high end, or perhaps the low end is being flooded and your compressor is working overly hard to keep things from clipping. Some surgical EQ cuts in the low mids, and rolling off the sub bass frequencies would help, and some of the balance issues. The leads seem a little too buried, volumewise, at almost all times, whether it be lead guitar or pizzicato strings. Panning is used decently, but could be exploited even more for a larger sounding track. Arrangementwise, the only critique I have is that some of the transitions to different sections lose too much energy, like the first cut to the strings after the metal. Everything else is pretty damn solid as far as arrangement goes. The ending is a little weaker than it has to be , but i'm definitely sold on the arrangement. This remix has the potential to be absolutely phenomenal, but the production issues are holding it back. If you have any questions on this, please hit me up via PM or on IM, I'd be happy to help you out personally to get this track fixed up. no, please resubmit Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DragonAvenger Posted March 7, 2010 Share Posted March 7, 2010 I can see OA's enthusiasm on the arrangement, but I think there are a few things aside from the transitions I'd like to see tweaked. I'd like a stronger connection in the first minute to the source, and there are some times (like 3:45) where the source get's a bit lost under everything else going on. However, as it stands, I'm still impressed, and I think this is above our standards for passing arrangement-wise. The glitched guitar is pretty awesome. I'm going to have to agree with OA on the production. The leads need a little push to be more prominent. On the same lines, I feel like most of the time the instruments are being pushed so hard that it is losing a bit of the more concentrated energy that would really make this shine. When everything is so close to clipping there's no where else to go, and some energy is lost. I think this is close, and it has the potential to be really good if this was polished up. NO (resubmit) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Palpable Posted March 7, 2010 Author Share Posted March 7, 2010 My fellow judges have laid out the issues with this pretty well. Arrangement: cool, production: problematic. I thought transition and structure-wise this was fine, the drops in energy didn't bother me. The main problem is there's too much competition for what gets heard, and you need to clean up the low-end especially. The drums or guitar (or both) is taking up way too much space - compare the 2:46 section with the 2:56 section. It sounds so smooth and clear in the former, so hard to hear in the latter. Remove the compression, figure out what's causing the problem, then gently re-apply compression. I also think the articulations in the orchestral elements could be less blocky. The intro was a weak spot in that regard, very unrealistic envelopes. Please stick with this one, Michael, I think you have a winner if you can make the production happen. NO (resubmit) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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