*NO* Leisure Suit Larry 'EverEve'

[djpretzel]

Leisure Suit Larry 1: In the Land of the Lounge Lizards

by Chris Braymen

Remixed by chocobo_cid aka Benjamin Baxter

Desperate to do a remix not involving Square, Nintendo, or any other prolifically found here or anywhere else, I settled on the various remix-friendly yet virtually unknown as being remixed PC game arena.

This music is from the first Al Lowe "Larry" game. I included several additions including but not limited to a new instrumentation, immeasurably-better-than-what-they-were cuttoffs, and better (?) entrances. I submitted the final version to the WIP by accident at first, but now it is where it allegedly belongs. To keep the integrity of the original, I left it more alone than I would have liked. (See the seven month old WIP, Toccata and Fugue in A minor for what I mean.)

I admit to having stuck rather close to the original on this one; it is not nearly as much of a departure as my previous WIP. I hope you enjoy it more than I do.

I used the Jeux 1.4 Organ (not really bad brass; it's an electric organ) and Darkesword's Tenor Sax Soundfont, as well as the assorted midi sounds that I thought were passable. This is also my best effort on this piece, this piece being possibly my only "straight" arrangement for a while before I jump right back into the wierd stuff again.

Please comment and rate fairly for this infrequent visitor.

[Liontamer]

http://216.40.213.39/%7Eadmin216/digital/lsl1cd/LSL1Track17.ogg - "Eve (Closing Scenes)"

Ben PMed asking for feedback while this was in the submissions process. I'm surprised it even made it here, but here were my comments.

On the arrangement side, this needs to be more creative once you establish your groove. The stuff so far is ok, but then you just repeat the same measures over and over again. Switch it up and bring a few other ideas into the picture and then weave those into your structure. It's more creative to change things a bit and then refer back to the stuff you had before.

There's nothing inherently wrong with MIDIs but all of these sounds are really exposed, artificial and thin-souding, particularly your bass. For the first two minutes or so until the drums come in the fill up some of the space, everything sounds very empty. If you can't fill up the sound adequately with thicker/fuller sounds for your instruments, you could make your intro a lot shorter, intro the other elements (sax & percussion) quicker in order to reach your point at 2:23 a lot faster without such a sparse buildup.

The timing of everything seems to be off, and there's not much cohesiveness in the melody or the way the instruments work alongside each other. Things do pick up a lot more and flow together once your drums & cymbals came in at 2:23. I can essentially hear how you wanted this to work out, but you'll need more practice/experience in getting the instrument timing to match up when you don't have percussion to function as a beatkeeper, and you really need to consult the ReMixing forum to make the most out of your sounds. Dr. Fruitcake & Bladiator are mixers I feel are more capable at maxing out the potential of MIDI instruments.

Thicken the instruments up, and look into what you can do to make things sound more human/more natural. In particular, the saxophone notes didn't flow very well from note-to-note and sounded too fake, as well as the light organ in the beginning. Hopefully the ReMixing forum has information you can use to up your game.

Fairly poor sample usage, lack of articulation, dry presentation, some bad notes, and various timing issues sums it up quickly. Though I don't know the source material (though I guess I should, right?), the ideas didn't sound too bad in spirit, but the execution and know-how just aren't there yet. Keep at it.

Finally getting a hold of the source tune, the second half of the mix was decent in trying to do at least something with the source, but this was just a poorly done rip for most of it. Not trying to be mean, but to me you basically took the original MIDI, messed the timing up in the attempt to remix it and came out with an arguably worse product. No dice, bro.

NO

[Protricity]

The xylos (WHATEVER DAN, WHATEVER) are very well used, although they're used more like a piano than a xylowhatever.

This song is mellow, and the lead works well, but the accompany is very very bad. Use live instruments, quantization, or something to make it sound better. Really, I love the leads, but everything else is crappy sounding. The rhodewhatever background accompany should have a little more release. Just about every instrument could really be helped with some reverb.

Update samples, do a better mastering job. I really like this, but the sound quality is just bad.

NO

[GrayLightning]

Xylophone, though it sounds more like a vibraphone to me.

I found this really charming. The xylophone sequencing and execution - I found quite authentic, considering. Yeah there's plenty of flaws here to cite that other judges did, but the overall result came off for me as really appealing. The second half is really nice.

Unfortunately the big problem here is it's an imitation of the original with less than stellar sound quality. Where's the arrangement? Work on your arrangement next time as you have the skills. Pretty nice mock up, but definitely NO.

[Vig]

the first half of this mix is really scattered. it's dying for some brush drums. the sound quality hurts throughout, the sax is sequenced unrealistically, as is the vibrophone later into the mix.

i dont know what that instrument is supposed to be that plays the chords.. i like it's subtlety, and the chord voicings are good. but again the first half is just all over the place rhythmically. the tempo changes dont work well. might have been better with drums.

once the drums come in the mix is much better. the vibe solo is sweet, although it plays faster than any vibe player i've ever heard, in some riffs.

i think soundquality should be bumped up, and the first half of the remix should be more organized. give it drums or something.

NO