OceansAndrew Posted August 21, 2011 Share Posted August 21, 2011 Your ReMixer name: BONKERS Your real name: Nicholas Steven Perry Your website:http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1310105117 Your userid:31818 Submission Information Name of game(s) arranged: Final Fantasy I (Final Fantasy Project:Random encounter) Name of arrangement: The First Story Name of individual song(s) arranged: Prelude Additional information about game including composer, system, etc: N/A Link to the original soundtrack: Your own comments about the mix, for example the inspiration behind it, how it was made, etc: Oh, lord. I could talk about this song for hours.(not that'd i'd want to) There is so much that went in to making this song;First the inspiration given to me by my ever gracious and incredibly patient director, Mr.Brandon Strader. His exact words were: "I was just thinking about the Prelude.. that old Prelude.. it's been done so many ways by so many people. I think the next logical step is to do the Prelude in the style of End of Heartache by Killswitch Engage, minus vocals. Tell me that wouldn't be simply awesome. If anyone thinks they can do this, let me know. " And that sparked immediate inspiration. Of course I had no idea how long the road would be developing the song even when it ended up nothing like "End of Heartache" at all! The day to day discussions on the shizz sparked new ideas and new things added into the song at somewhat random intervals. Quality of the track was so suspect the song was completely re-recorded about 4 times and completely done again from scratch 3 times over the course of the last year. (The current version , the one you are hearing was completely remade from scratch over the course of a few weeks due to my last project file being , unsalvageable) Initially , song structure was a no brainer to figure out. It was fairly straightforward(which in my book is the farthest thing from an issue. A lot of game music itself is just a few sections looped with varirations and breaks here and there anyway) and it stayed that way until this past month. I will admit I was not happy with the fact that the music was repetitive was a huge issue for submission, but I overcame that and the 2 new sections of music(both of which were inspired by various offical Preludes , The Final Fantasy XIV prelude in particular as well as well as making varitions based on physical limitation to certain instruments and for breaks from the standard pattern as well) added to the song(making the total length 6:20 , YUCK) ended up being GORGEOUS and I love them and I hope the average listener does as well. Techinically speaking, this song has been a nightmare as I previously indicate. I concede that I think my ONE single piece of audio equipment ( A Line 6 Guitarport) is partly to blame. The thing has issues out the wazoo, from randomly crashing ASIO drivers(during long work sessions on the song, making me lose sometimes 6+ hours of work) that require restarts to RANDOM HEAVILY DISTORTED AUDIO (Insert FFFFFFFFFUuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu here) And this was an issue from the PC I initially started working on the song with a; LGA775 Pentium 4 Single-core CPU@3.2Ghz with HT,2.7GB of DDR1 RAM(all sticks but 2 were different speeds YAY),EVGA 8600GT bottlenecked by some cheap PSU Gateway put in the PC when It was bought in 2004 and a monitor using 1152X864 as a display resolution. To the PC I built this past January that I finished the song with; LGA1366 Core i7 950 Quad-Core CPU@4.2Ghz,6GB DDR3 RAM running at 1600Mhz,EVGA GTX 460 and running a nice new monitor with a resolution of 1600x900. (Some will say this is a low resolution, but It is perfect for me. 16:9 aspect also allowed me to be able to see more tracks horizonitally). Then there is REAPER, a dandy little DAW i've been running the Evaluation version of for 4 years.Much of my agony ,despair and joy on this song has come from this little piece of software.Why even just 4 or 5 days ago I had worked for 3 hours making changes to the song when around 6 am in the morning I decide "HM, I DUN LIEK DIS TAKE" like normal, so I hit CRTL+Z to undo it and then I get a prompt from another VSTi sayin "LOL PHYSICAL MEMORY IS LOW , EVEN DO IT AINT, HIT TO CONTINUE LOADIN'" I didn't think much of it so I hit yes and it undoes...EVERYTHING from the past 3 hours. I PANIC for whatever reason and hit the SAVE BUTTON......... Do you see what I did wrong? I was quite very depressed about the matter, almost at the point of giving up and not finishing the song. I spent the next day self loathing of course until I decided "you know what , i'm tired of working on this! I want it to be done. SO IMMA GO AYA STYLE(Aya Hirano, the meaning being doing/putting something/on backwards, since I do all my work during the night instead of the day ) ON THIS HOE" The Rest is history at this point. I'm very , very pleased with how it has turned out. Things have changed a LOT since the first version of the song finished about a year ago. But in the end it was for the better and I've forced myself to learn and think of new ways of doing things because of people's criticisms (doesn't mean I liked having to do dem changes!). And for that I am ultimately , equally both grateful and jaded lol. Also for anyone who might curious here is the list of the VST software(one keyboard, Bass and Electric Guitar) I used in making the final version of the song. (it also ended up being 36 tracks, some are muted and unused so the actual number is just slightly less) Poulin HyBrit Full Stack Lepou legion(from same maker as above) KeFir ReaComp ReaEQ ReaGate Voxengo SPAN Voxengo Analogflux Tapebus Voxengo Analogflux Chrous Voxengo Analogflux TapeDelay ReCabinet 1/2 Free Impulses from:http://www.guitarampmodeling.com/index.php?sid=c7a2301631a39d66840bf9407250bb4a AmpliTube Metal Cockos Reaper Panipulator AmpegSVX PSG(g200kg) Pro-53 Kontakt 3 Miroslav Philharmonik Minimoog V EZD Drummer w/DFH Expansion EWQLSO:Gold Sampletank 2 Synthfont T-Racks EQ 1.x T-Racks 3 ST2008 Wavestation Legacycell Arp2006 V2 Vintage Warmer Suzuki SP-37 Gibson Les Paul Studio Smartwood Series 2001 Ibanez Soundgear GSR-200 I hope you all enjoy the song, it was a real special experience working on this song for me. Cheers. Signed, BONKERS Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
OceansAndrew Posted September 12, 2011 Author Share Posted September 12, 2011 That is a million things you used to work on this. This song is also a million minutes long! It has a ton of really cool ideas, and though I do think the first half gets a little repetitious, the second half is pretty much pure badassery. Solid guitar playing, good soundscape, creative rhythms. A little too long, but the stregnths power down the weaknesses. Yes Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DragonAvenger Posted October 5, 2011 Share Posted October 5, 2011 Not much to say here (you said EVERYTHING! ), the track is pretty sweet once it get's going. The first half is a little meh, gotta admit, but the second half does make up for it. Some of the other judges might want this trimmed down a bit, and I wouldn't mind that myself, but I'm ok with giving this a YES Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Emunator Posted November 27, 2011 Share Posted November 27, 2011 Wow, this has changed up a lot since the first album version. I do kind of miss the chiptune intro you used to have, but this new one works too. I'm pretty much with Deia, this is definitely good enough to pass as-is, though I'm finding the beginning of the mix underwhelming in terms of interpretation and instrumentation, but it definitely works its way up there and by the time the track was done, I was really feeling it I'd like to hear this trimmed down on the first half to cut out some of the more filler-ish material so that the second half could come in sooner, but it's not a conditional vote by any means. What you've got here is good stuff. YES Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Palpable Posted December 8, 2011 Share Posted December 8, 2011 Wow, you think you've heard all people can do with Prelude and then this comes along. This is fucking fantastic, definitely the best Prelude arrangement I've ever heard. I even thought the first half was pretty good, but like everyone else said, the second half just blows it away. How you kept this going for 6:20 with a steady direction, a boatload of variations, and absolutely no loss of interest from me is highly commendable. I salute you. YES! Might suggest increasing the track loudness a little though. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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