The Quiet Mountain [Gurgu Volcano, FF1]

[DragnBreth]

Source:

So, I've actually hit a bit of a roadblock as far as music is concerned. But I've been sitting on this mix for a while, and I figured its time I posted it.

I started working on this a while ago in an attempt to try a different style from my usual bombastic orchestral leanings. I think I succeeded half-decently. Not sure about the piano soundfont. It sounds okay to me, but like I've mentioned before, I'm not overly picky about such things.

Hope you likes... Enjoy!

[C7]

Its a very good start! Arrangement-wise it works decently so far, though I'm not familiar with the source. I'd say some of those lines aren't supremely pianistic (single line melodies are fine, but there's often more than just that--even octaves, but 6ths and stuff accompanying, etc).

Production-wise, the piano is functional and isn't really a bad soundfont, but you could do more to make it sound more real (proper stereo imaging, eq, whatever). I'm not the best at giving suggestions on how to do this, but there's room for improvement on something that's pretty good so far.

Keep it up!

[DragnBreth]

*Bump*

Not getting a lot of feedback on this (however, thanks are in order to C-7 for replying) so I'm bumping this up to 'mod-review' to see what they have to say about it. Maybe get some pointers on production and whatnot.

Thanks.

[No Escape]

Sorry you had to bump. I try to review anything new that comes in, but you slipped right by me. Okay, as I listen to the track, I will say that the piano patch definitely needs some work. It sounds pretty dry. I might recommend a nice verb setting be put on the whole thing. You may want more verb on the right hand track than the left hand to keep it from getting muddy (but make sure it's the same verb setting on both). Also stereo imaging is very important when your producing a piano only piece. Keys hit with the right hand should be position 10-20% to the right, and the opposite for the left. This gives the arrangement a broader soundscape and creates a reference point when we hear it. I don't compare source usage for tracks, so I can't help you there, but I will tell you that the production needs a boost before this track can be accepted here at OCR.

[Emunator]

Alright, here we go...

If you're going to go with sequenced piano (which is extremely hard to pull off well) you really need to make it sound like it's a live performance. There's very little humanization to your velocity and timing - fiddle around with individual notes to give it a less rigidly-quantized feel.

When a piano piece is performed live (at least, one in this style of arrangement) there's going to be a lot of emphasis on using the sustain pedal to create natural transitions between notes and generally helping the piece flow better. This sounds like it was performed on a piano with no sustain pedal and very little sustain on the notes themselves, so it comes across as very mechanical :\ I'm sorry if this is harsh, but I see promise in your arrangement but the humanization just isn't cutting it here. You need to take what you've got here and put some serious work into velocity, timing, and especially sustain lengths on your individual notes if you want this one to get to a point where it's passable by the OCR panel.

Past that, No Escape gave some very good advice on reverb and panning that would help augment the decent-but-unimpressive samples that you're working with that I'd highly suggest you take to heart You've got a decent arrangement here and if you're interested in working on it a lot, there's no reason you can't get this one to where it needs to be.

Best of luck if you choose to pursue this one further!