OceansAndrew Posted March 6, 2011 Share Posted March 6, 2011 Remix: For Great Justice Your ReMixer name: Brandon Strader Your real name: Brandon E. Strader Your email address: oinkness@gmail.com Your website: http://www.bstrader.net/ Your userid: 3123 Name of game(s) arranged: Zero Wing Name of individual song(s) arranged: Introduction (Part 1), Introduction (Part 2), Open Your Eyes (Stage 1) Tatsuya Uemura, Sega Genesis http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hzqyOYTr5EA&feature=BF&list=PLC3DF3884CF593C88&index=1 <-- this is my playlist. It's the first 3 songs. breakdown: There's 2 parts to the song.. The first half is Introduction part 1 and 2. After the explosion, and ship "woosh" noise, it becomes Open Your Eyes aka Natols, Stage 1 theme. I am submitting this to MAGfest 9 DoD and OC ReMix simultaneously. I hope it does well in the contest. The idea for this mix started pretty huge, as it was originally going to be a medley of all of the songs. Right now it's only 3 songs (2 if you count the intro as 1 song) and is clocking in at almost 5 minutes, so a full medley probably wouldn't fit on an OCR post. I knew that I wanted to write the non-Engrish version of the introductory dialogue, so I wrote out a little script and asked Brushfire and Level 99 if they would be up for doing the voice acting. They did it, and I'm very thankful for that. They made about a 9 minute recording that was pretty much a mini-episode of OCAD and I chopped about 30 seconds of dialogue for the song from that. They did a few variations of each part. You can hear the opening voice almost goes into a laugh at the end, because Level 99 found that performance to be "over the top". Brushfire commented that is sounded like Snake. Naturally, I slapped a cloner on there and pitch shifted it down a bit to maximize on that. There's a lot of instances where I chose the performance that they probably would have considered too silly, but it came out very well and I threw a couple jokes in there as well. There was a ridiculous amount of sound effects and dialogue in there. Here's a few fun facts: - The wilhelm scream appears twice, signifying the death of Level 99 and then Brushfire - The second explosion is combined with a jaguar growl, a tribute to the movie MacGruber where I had heard that - There's a ton of sound effects from Star Trek throughout the opening. - During the second source, there's a truck backing up sound, a conveyor belt, and an electric garage door engine. This is supposed to recreate the "move zig" portion of the original game intro. - The 8-bit sounding explosions at the beginning were recorded by me personally from Zero Wing's sound test. I don't usually do large write-ups or write-ups in general because if the song gets NO'd, you look like even more of a pompous ass than if your mix had passed. I feel really good about this mix, however, as it has a heaviness and a clarity that I haven't been able to achieve with previous remixes. Every element of the song is clearly audible, there's nothing hidden -- the distorted organ is a bit low, but that is intentional. Anyway, a special thanks to Level 99 and Brushfire for doing the dialogue, and I hope you enjoy the song. I hope they enjoyed it at MAGfest 9. Hah! I'm writing that as if I am in the future, when they have not heard it yet. *shrug* Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
OceansAndrew Posted April 5, 2011 Author Share Posted April 5, 2011 The intro was pretty great, nice performances everyone. Production is a little heavy handed, with noticeable pumping from the compressor, and some mixing issues, like the keyboards on the left side halfway through being buried. The guitar performance ranges from being dead on, to pretty loose. You seem to have issues lining up the more syncopated stuff, and I know it's been a consistent issue for you. I know we discussed your guitar latency recently, which might help things out. I hope it does, because when you have these super-precise drums, and guitars that aren't on the beat, it doesn't sound that great. Overall bring down the compression and adjust the performances in some spots so it's tighter, mainly the section with a lot of upbeats. Not a ton of work and this one is passable, IMO. No, please resubmit Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DragonAvenger Posted April 6, 2011 Share Posted April 6, 2011 Andrew's got this pretty solid. The arrangement is pretty good, and the opening is very amusing to listen to, but the production is holding this back. Compression needs to come down a bit, but mostly the balance is good, just needs some tweaks. The sloppier playing needs to be cleaned up, which Andrew also brought up, but overall it's cleaner than some other stuff I've heard from you. Fix it up, send it back in, NO (resubmit) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
halc Posted April 22, 2011 Share Posted April 22, 2011 it's definitely overcompressed, even some of the opening vocal lines were harsh on the ears. as OA said it's causing some pumping in the mix too, esp. during the busier rhythm guitar sections, such as 1:37. will echo the sentiments on sloppy timing as well. definitely a fan of this source, and the arrangement is tight, the production just needs some work. NO (all your resub are belong to us) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts