*NO* Final Fantasy 8 'I Am Ultimecia'

[djpretzel]

Remixer Name: Reu

Real Name: Reuben Kee

Email: Reuy@email.com

Website: www.reubenkee.com <http://www.reubenkee.com/>

Userid on forums: Can't find the number...

Name of game remix: Final Fantasy 8

Name of song: The Legendary Beast, Maybe I'm a Lion, The Extreme

Blurb:

I remember listening to the final boss battle themes nonstop for hours when I finally got my hands on the OST.

Here's a medley of my favourite parts of them. Orchestrated, with.... bwahaha lots of taikos.

[GrayLightning]

Well this is tricky. You decided to choose some Incredible and difficult source materials. The originals were amazing.

Starting off, I think there's way too much reverb here. Everything is swamped and so messy. Keep in mind, I am of the school of orchestral thinking of having the european mindset (dark, large halls). But here it just doesn't work.

The orchestration as a whole is quite very good. I like the use of all the percussion. The bartok/pizz phrase is pretty nice as well. I'm not sure what kind of seating positions you had in mind for the instruments, but these sound odd to me. Personal preference perhaps, but I thought the orchestral placement/panning here was unorthodox, and not really one that I like.

The taikos I felt also got a little tiring by the end. The low key percussions here added a nice change of pace.

Arrangement as a whole is good, but the challenge when mixing such good material is, I still feel this doesn't compare very well with the original. I suppose this too is personal preference.

Not my favorite of reu's at all, but the good here outweighs the bad. A lot of work has been put in here, and that's plain to hear. Nice work. YES

[Liontamer]

http://www.tzone.org/~llin/psf/packs2/FF8_minipsf.rar - 409 "The Extreme", 408 "Maybe I'm a Lion" & 407 "The Legendary Beast"

Heard this one back on VGF51. Borderline on this I'm afraid. I realize the mix has a lot of room to build, but the arrangement was already dragging out before 1:45, and felt as if it could have been a bit more creative for the first few minutes. I'm not looking for orchestral perfection, but felt that the strings from 2:23-2:56, especially when they made some very fast note movements, were lacking in realism. Nothing I haven't heard Gray try before in the context of a different mix though.

The use of the FLWV chant vox was a bit cheesy, but you get used to it. 4:14 onward had some percussion heavily panned left for some unknown reason. Still not looking for orchestral perfection, but felt that the brass (starting at 3:58) sounded a bit too artificially sequenced (and flat) as well.

Overall feel was very odd; sounded pretty distant and lacked a degree of clarity, so I agreed with Gray's call on the muddiness. I don't know the minutia of Gray's reference to the seating positions that the instruments had, but the panning and placement decisions here put me off a bit, so I can relate a bit to where he was coming from.

The arrangement felt infected by medleyitis to be sure. The strange production decisions didn't help, and while I liked how some of the sections were tied together, some of the arrangement was pretty conservative, like "The Legendary Beast" being used from 2:23-3:00. Also sounded like the thick percussion was slightly clipping at times - just too messy sounding. I don't think this would be a (huge) problem on the arrangement side.

In all honesty, this sounds like a great professional FF8 AST track aside from the production, but it would be the one I end up skipping most of the time, as the drawn-out orchestral battle theme typically ain't my thing. That doesn't affect my vote, that's just a personal preference thing. It's capable work that the unwashed masses would love and the extremely scrutanizing could pan. The original/rearranged sections are pretty interesting, but with fairly lacking production & some performance/sample issues to a much lesser extent, I've unfortunately gotta push to for a borderline NO. No qualms if it passes; it's really a good piece, and I would have went b-YES, but I feel I'd be doing a disservice to YES something with production this messy.

[Vig]

the low strings sound monsterous compared to the organ that comes in later...which ought to be a lot louder.

The interlude at 2:00 is similarly too quiet. i appreciate the dynamic contrast, but i think the contrast could have been achieved with a narrower gap. it seems like the volumes are unbalanced. i turned my speakers up loud enough to hear the vocal part and when the drums came back in they were way too loud. The winds are too quiet...in fact, everything but the drums and strings are too quiet. The mix is very low-end heavy

I like the arrangement, i want to hear this resubmitted with fixed volume levels.

NO

[Harmony]

I’m a fan of the source and I commend the effort here for sure.

Main problems here are the levels and the reverb. A lot of elements end up taking a back seat to the overpowering taiko. I strained to hear the string solo and 3:29 for instance. In terms of reverb, I really feel like I’m on the upper terrace of a huge empty symphony hall. A lot of the instrumentation is very nicely done but there are some sections where things bleed together unnecessarily and probably unintentionally as a result. The organ work at organ work at 1:40 is a good example as it tends to get lost amongst the low register, highly reverbed stuff going on there. Gotta admit that it’s really not that bad as the track progresses.

In terms of arrangement I’m not feeling much reinterpretation of “Maybe I’m a Lion” in the first 2 minutes. Sounds like a well done orchestral cover of much of the original, taikos and all. I do like how the taikos are pulled through to the other themes however. To keep them from feeling overused I would have preferred to have them left out of the slower section at 3:18. The arrangement really picks up towards the end with a pretty cool take on The Extreme. The transition could have been much smoother to avoid the medleyitis.

I’m not rock solid on this one, mainly because of the reverb issues but after listening numerous times, the levels work in some ways and the reverb, while apparently dense towards the beginning, works itself to a tolerable level by the end. Borderline YES.

[analoq]

what's so funny about taiko drumming?

i like the general way the source material is handled,

but this doesn't feel cohesive,

i think larry's right about the medleyitis.

i like the sections individually, but as a whole it's lacking.

if the levels/mixing oddities were subdued, i probably wouldn't mind passing this.

also, all the high brass annoys me.

no (borderline)

[The wingless]

I'm with longhair Vigi on this one. Good ideas. Wonky execution as far as levels are concerned.

Around the halfway mark, the Taiko drums become overpowering considering the new tone and arrangement. I believe the drums should take a much more supportave [sic] role, given the dynamism and effort lent to the main instruments. The taiko's are there for driving energy. I get that. But that can be expressed passively.

There are other things to fix, but the taiko drums are the most obvious. Fix the levels, resubbie quickly.

I AM RESUBMITIA

[Malcos]

Hmmm. I really like the way you've arranged this. Nice dynamics, particularly at the end.

However, I think that the taiko drums are really loud and overpower the mix. I also feel that the heavy low frequency presence coupled with the dense reverb means that the mix as a whole lacks clarity. The instrument levels need a bit of tweaking. I say resubmit, taking all points made into consideration. I feel that a bit more work will do the mix and yourself proper justice.

NO

(Please resub!)

[GrayLightning]

The vote is sealed with 5 NO then.