Man With The Sword (FF8 Man With The Machine Gun + CT Battle Theme)

[Ivan Hakštok]

Tindeck link: http://tindeck.com/listen/ooyq

Idea of combining these 2 songs came to me one day, they were in the same key and always stuck together in my head. Some parts from Man With The Machine Gun are completely removed, and I think I made pretty good work out of the rest. The drum loop kinda seems dull, but I tried giving it variety and it differed too much from my original idea.

Hope you enjoy it

[The Vagrance]

Not a bad idea, I had no clue they were in the same key. That said, the mix isn't quite there yet. Here are a few things I noticed:

1. The whole mix is way too steady, and what I mean by that is the large majority is a typical dance beat (thump-snare-thump-snare) with that little arp-ish synth, and it gets really tiring. Even though this track is under 3 minutes it feels like 5, there's no real sense of structure. Try turning the entire Chrono Trigger section into a breakdown which swirls around for a while, you had the beat drop out for 4 bars but that's not enough. There needs to be more drama to the arrangement.

2. Well, really just fix 1 before getting to anything else.

I love MWaMG and with there were more remixes of it but this needs some work.

P.S. - Oh yeah, WHERE ARE THE HANDCLAPS?!?! That's like, the best part of MWaMG.

[Gario]

I didn't think I'd be able to use this again, but after seeing a new remix of Laguna on NG and another one popping up here, I think it's warranted.

(C'mon Vagrance, I could show you at least 9 remixes of that source on OCR... let alone on the rest of the internet )

What can I say, though, it's an awesome source that just warrants that sort of attention. Let's see what you brought to the mix, here.

The mix of Chrono Trigger and Laguna is great. Definitely not the first thing I think to combine, but it's because it's unexpected that I like it.

The instruments are a bit plain, here. I'm not feeling the synths, in this track. It might be because most of them tend to do the same thing throughout the track (like that texture that plays the Laguna rip, the square that plays the Chrono Trigger bass, etc.). In music variety is the spice of life - don't be afraid to change the function of the instruments around from time to time.

The bass is sidechained, which is good. I think the sidechaining could be cleaner, though, by giving the bass drum more room when it hits. Maybe you could make the cutout on the compressor a higher ratio (1:inf wouldn't be a bad idea, even).

Moar clap.

The bells you use are really neat. The way they break up the rest of the track is excellent - we need at least a moment or two more that are like that in this track.

The production sounds crowded in the mid area. Clean up the mids on some of the instruments - there's not enough room in the soundscape for that much mid.

I like what you've got going here. I believe you could expand your arrangement and ideas further, though, and increase the production value quite a bit. It's alright, but I can see it becoming something better.

Alright, all hail Laguna month!

[The Vagrance]

(C'mon Vagrance, I could show you at least 9 remixes of that source on OCR... let alone on the rest of the internet )

My bad, POSTED Remixes (with an emphasis on hand claps!!!)

[Ivan Hakštok]

Hah, if I knew the handclaps were so important I would've used them, but I guess I totally forgot about them.

About the breakdowns, I'm afraid I don't have any ideas what to do about it, maybe you could point me to some remixes here that had them made properly.

But considering this is my 2nd techno remix ever, I'll take these comments as compliments, as I was worried that these themes were already combined, and even better, in some other remix xD

[Gario]

(with an emphasis on hand claps!!!)

This can't be emphasized enough - my personal remix of this song didn't have the claps at first. It didn't sound right. I added the claps. It sound epic. Must have moar clapage.