*GET DANGEROUS* Darkwing Duck 'Fly Me to the Bridge'

[djpretzel]

pretty cool arrangement. - djp

ReMixer Name: Jean Of mArc

Real Name: Jean-Marc Giffin

E-Mail Address: jeanofmarc@hotmail.com

Userid: 9776

Name of ReMix: Fly Me To The Bridge

Name of Game: Darkwing Duck

Name of Songs ReMixed: The Menu Screen / The Bridge Level

Year of Release: 1992.

I am unable to upload a new version with the tags required, so please retag the IDs according to your system.

I suppose the main reason I chose this song to remix is because I was simply upset that no one else had done it yet. This game had some seriously fun, jazzy spy-like music, and I really wished I could hear an arrangement of it.

So I took the liberty of doing it myself! The song that always stuck out at me as a kid was the Bridge song, and so that is the one I took to remix.

This remix takes the menu song as well, as a medley, and a few original sections that I feel fit the piece. Hopefully this song will do it enough justice so that others out there who've always wanted a Darkwing Duck arrangement will be satisfied.

Thanks!

Jean Of mArc

[Liontamer]

http://www.zophar.net/nsf/darkwi~1.zip - Tracks 2 & 5

Yeah, I remember this one. Played it on VGF #37. Quirky fun. The volumes could have stood to be a bit louder. This retained most of the feel of the source tune, but the arrangement is hot. Some of the samples could have sounded more realistic, like the woodwinds.

Nevertheless, good stuff that expanded on the original well in both the straightforward coverage and the new material (e.g. 2:11-3:07), though the wind sample sounds terrible (same velocity nearly every note) and unrealistic. Loved the various usage of bells. The production is weak though, as the instruments lack proper separation most of the time. That's certainly something you'll take a hit for.

Interesting idea to change the key at 3:53, but as long as this would have had some other strong resolution, this really didn't need it, and I felt the ending was a weak point. "Fowl Jive" is a fucking hard act to follow, Jean-Marc, so nice work. I'm interested in seeing how much Binnie likes this one.

Everything's a hell of a lot of fun here, and some people are gonna be sorry they didn't download it sooner simply because it wasn't from a game they knew. Don't be one of those chumps. Get it from VGMix if it doesn't pass.

YES

[DarkeSword]

This is not bad at all. However, my vote is NO. Here's why:

-that tempo change in the intro is awkward as hell; the whole song trips over itself for a few seconds before locking back in

-some of the articulation and accenting just doesn't sound right from a swing standpoint; stuff like legato quarter notes and accented downbeats in running eighth-notes

-weird key change to a section that has nothing to do with any source material; both songs are minor key, yet we get a major key solo section with no real connection to the original chords

-dry sound with some balance issues; percussion feels a bit too loud over the rest of the song

The arrangement of the source is not bad, but I feel that the execution leaves something to be desired. Not a lost cause by any means; I recommend a resubmit.

[Vig]

the arrangement IS pretty damn good..the execution is a bit off..

The most obvious problem is the samples, which are ungood. We dont demand gigasamples, but we need a bit better than this. the instruments sound lifeless.

contributing to the above problem is that i think the tempo of the song is a bit too high...either that or the instruments are just sequenced too frantically. a real piano can only play the same note in succession so quickly...lots of instruments, the piano, drums, mallets, play very fast parts that sound quite robotic. i'd be interested to hear how accurately those parts were sequenced pre-quantization.

i'd like to hear a resubmit, but for now my advise is slow it down, get some better samples, and work on making your sequencing sound more natural and human.

NO

[zircon]

Yeah, this is unnecessarily quiet. I'll agree with Vig that the tempo sync at the beginning of the song is sloppy, but it doesn't throw off the whole song. What I do think hurts right from the beginning is the mechanical piano sequencing. The sample itself doesn't sound too bad, but the way it is sequenced makes it sound obviously fake. The same goes for some of the other instruments (such as the flute), but the bells, vibes, and sax sound good. Try messing with velocities more, sample layering, and reverb/delay to make the instruments more realistic. I think volume levels could be tweaked too - often times, the melody is the same volume as everything else, when it should be taking the front stage. Finally, the drums could be better too - the patterns are generally good, but the drums themselves sound pretty GM-ish, though that might be because of the lack of humanization/processing.

Arrangement is great, no question about that, but more work on the production and execution is needed.

NO

[Israfel]

Provided the production doesn't just kill a piece by itself, my judgements tend to be weighted heavily towards arrangement quality. And here, while the production does have some problems (mainly that there are some minor balance and separation issues) the arrangement puts this one over the top for me. And I honestly have no problem with the samples; this is about as good as you're going to get for free, and I'd rather have music like this than have everyone start pirating pro samples. So, good stuff.

YES

[danny B]

There are two kinds of bad sample qualities - ones that negatively affect the mix and ones that don't. One example fresh in my mind is Shnabubula. He almost makes low-fidelity samples his hallmark. And I greatly respect his work for it. The reason I mention this is because this mix is a similar situation. Although the sample quality isn't very good, it honestly doesn't detract very much.

I actually like the beginning piano thing. Sounds like a synthetic player piano. The tempo change is totally fine by me. There's nothing illegitimate about abrupt tempo changes, especially if they're handled like this - effectively. I'd agree that the velocity switches aren't very effective, but it's not like the whole mix is a static, boring affair, either. The worst offender in the SQ department are the drums, but none of the samples really stick out as being downright terrible.

Overall, there are some considerable sound quality blemishes, but this is certainly a case in which great arrangement can transcend such issues that are minor in comparison.

This is barely, just barely a

YES

-D

[Malcos]

This is some good arrangement, there is a lot in here to listen to. The tempo change in the intro didn't bother me at all, if it was anywhere else in the song it may have done.

The sample quality is not of the highest degree, but this mix is not relying on the sounds. When it comes to sound quality vs arrangement, more often that not, arrangement wins with me. I think that with this level of arrangement I will say

YES

[GrayLightning]

This is tricky. The production in general, not just samples is definitely below average. I think some in the panel sometimes forget production is not equal to samples. There's a cadre of things that goes into production outside samples alone. Now in this case I have to side with the yes votes, for the very reason cited already. While the sample and production is low, it's passable due to both good arrangement and it doesn't detract this mix into something majorly negative.

Very neat arrangement. Fun. Yes.

Someone contact the mixer, this is above 6 MB. We need a lower encoding. 128kbps will do.

[Digital Coma]

Let's get dangerous.

The source material for this mix, Quackerjack's stage, is one of the best from the game. Melody with a punch, swing with pizzaz. Of course, Bushroot's stage is the best, but we all know about that. This mix is full of ideas; clearly Jean de Marc was having fun brainstorming how to develop this piece. As a draft or storyboard for a song, it works nicely. Unfortunately, it lacks greatly in believability of sequencing and quality of mixing, which detract from the potential blast and instead consistently push this sound that's no better than GMIDI. Forget gigasamples; free soundfonts can easily trump this up. Hell, even the samples used here could have been much more believable had any iota of processing and humanizing been involved. This very mechanical sound and sequencing meshes badly with the arranged instruments such as the bare drumlines, starched sax, dry bells, etc.

Definitely a good start, but if you want to get dangerous, this needs to be much more believeable.

NO

And yeah, this is over 6mb. This had no benefit from being encoded at 192kbit.

[Liontamer]

Been contacting Jean re: the submission. Anyone have a recommendation as to where we could/should go from here? Perhaps someone would want to touch it up via a collab if Dave & us absolutely won't take it in this form. Also need more votes.

Hey Liontamer,

I'm curious... I've noticed that the Darkwing Duck mix has been on the "Judging Process" forum for quite some time... but whenever there is an update to that forum, that song gets pushed down the list...

I was just wondering if that meant that it was falling in order, if if the list has anything to do with order.

Just wanting to know!

Thanks!

Jean Of mArc

Immediately whenever a new batch of stuff comes in, I just place those tracks on top of the old batch in the list. So the order that the tracks are being voted on technically isn't in any specific order.

Your mix is actually over our size limit, which is 6MB. Info is here about 2/3rds of the way down. You can reencode in VBR or a constant bitrate and temporarily host the mix at VGMix as a WIP until we're done judging it.

You also want to take the chance to improve/tweak the piece a little bit to address some of the NO votes, I can tell you that for a fact. The mix's passage will very likely get VETOed for being MIDI-grade, so anything you can do to enhance the sound quality and make it sound more realistic will help you out. Check your Hotmail box for an HTML attachment featuring the votes so far, but again, if it doesn't sound better than MIDI-grade, our votes won't help.

If you listen to Dr. Fruitcake's second OC ReMix, you'll notice that it uses soundfonts to maximize the effectiveness of the MIDI originally used. You may want to PM DarkeSword for help on that and/or venture into the ReMixing forum.

Hey Liontamer,

Sorry, this got lost in my junk e-mail, but I found it and checked it out.

Thanks a lot for taking the time to do that. I feel that all the negative and positive comments were fair, and I even thought some of them myself, but without a thought as to how to fix them.

I have to admit that I have little experience with samples and synthetic jazz band coding... in other words, this was my first attempt ever. The only thing I have training in is composing, theory, arranging and performance (but not all the instruments I need for this mix).

Even if this song does pass, I would still like to fix up a few things, such as the samples, if someone would be willing to tutorial me a little on the subject...

If possible, could you pass this on to the others in the judge panel?

Perhaps pass it as a post in the judging (unless that's not allowed).

I'd be very grateful.

Thanks a lot!

Jean Of mArc

[DarkeSword]

Sounds to me like we can freeze this decision until he gets us a better version; he said himself that he would like to fix some things. If that's the case, then we shouldn't pass or reject anything unless we get his new version.

[Liontamer]

Sounds to me like we can freeze this decision until he gets us a better version; he said himself that he would like to fix some things. If that's the case, then we shouldn't pass or reject anything unless we get his new version.

True he'd like to fix things, but he also needs help on doing it. Not that we're a referral service, so I don't mean we have to direct what he does next, but what's to be done with the mix in the meantime? I suppose we could withdraw it if Jean wanted to, just post the votes that were there, and wait for a resub. Stuff's been withdrawn from consideration before.

[GrayLightning]

Well considering some of the general reservations discussed with some of the issues here, it's moot to continue the vote. I think the vote should be closed so as to give Jean a chance to resubmit. Unless he can produce a version of this within a few days, then it should be moved and he can pm one of us judges with fast-track status resub.

[zykO]

i agree with graylightning for what its worth.

this is a fabulous arrangement and a total quackjob (lol) in instrument realism.

lets freeze this puppy