*NO* Final Fantasy 7 'Solid Gold'

[djpretzel]

Hi, ive got another submissal for you all.

Dont know if you guys will post it because its heavily remixed and you guys prefer a lot of the original material, but anyway.

Original: Final Fantasy 7: Golden Saucer Theme

This is a breaky D&B mix of this bouncy tune, very heavy synths and beatwork. as i said a lot has been done to the tune but i think overall the track holds to the original quite well. Its quite a frenzied tune too, alot of swicthes in there for fun

Hope you like it even if you dont post it.

[Liontamer]

http://www.tzone.org/~llin/psf/packs2/FF7_psf.rar - 219 "Gold Saucer"

When those chimpmunk-esque samples came in, I literally said to myself, please don't be Liquid Neon.

The sounds were generic trance synths, the track was sounded like it was clipping constantly. Hated the voiceclips used throughout here, including some chimpmunked-reggae clips. That didn't seal my vote, cuz I feel unorthodox ideas shouldn't be disqualified, but I'll admit I don't envision the day when we pass a mix with the chimpmunk effect.

The overall texture was thin despite the number of elements in play. None of the sounds used had any power behind them except the drumloops you threw in. Some people may diss the arrangement here or say the track was too crazy, but I felt the DnB genre work was decent and the arrangement was fine.

On the arrangement front, I definitely heard the connection throughout most of the track, so that wasn't a problem for me, but I'm not feeling the generic trance synths thrown in here. Every mix you make with those sounds will ultimately sound generic, so you need to work on synth design to take your work to the next level.

NO

[GrayLightning]

If there's anything LiquidNeon has it's his trademark chipmunk-esque voices. They're a bit silly, but I guess at least you have a noteable characteristic. Your goal was accomplished, you were indeed able to create a frenzied mix, but really I'm not sure how accessible this is. I feel the arrangement is pretty basic. There's sped up sections with very little expansion in the conceptual ideas of either the structure or the melodic or harmonic content of the source material.

Larry hit the nail on the head, this mix lacks power. This mix has no balls. There's no bottom end. The whole mix sounds very very thin and sparse. Leads are tinny and and the beats lack any phatness. This needs more eq work, additions to pump things up and some more compression.

Keep at it Liquid, you have some neat ideas, but the execution and presentation need more polish. NO

[Harmony]

The intro lead synths are as generic as they come and there are a bunch of stock crash cymbal transitions but beyond that, the execution shows a good amount of creative original work and attention to detail, especially in the drum track. The “frenzy” is driven by intricate percussion and very cool use of sampled beats and FX early in the track (0:11-0:23, 0:36-0:59, …). I’ll also be the odd man out and say that I enjoyed the pitched-up samples. Although they contributed little to the actual arrangement I feel that the energy that they bring to the outro is great.

I can’t say that I felt that the mix was thin. The bass layered with the lead synth in concert with the main bass synth made sure that a good level of phatness was maintained through much of the mix. The bass/lead combo was especially effective in sections where only a few elements were present (1:00-1:09). And then of course there is 1:48 where that monster bass/kick is dropped. It’s almost got too much punch though as I think it drowns out the other elements more than I would like.

I’ve got some issues with the arrangement but I feel it’s passable. I agree with Gray that there is little melodic or harmonic reinterpretation of the source and this is certainly a point of concern. The melodic structure is changed enough for me though. The remixing of the source melody from 0:23-2:11 is interesting in that at times the theme is used as a supporting element in this beat-driven track while at other times the theme rises as the lead. It’s somewhat repetitive but not as much as the source and with only 2 mins of theme, the repetition isn’t overbearing. The theme is completely left-out from 2:12-end which is not a good thing but again, I like what was done with the potentially wasted time.

A few problems here and there but nothing too serious.

YES

[Israfel]

Well here's a theme I'm rather familiar with, having toyed with it quite a bit myself.

The arrangement is much more conservative than the weird effects and chipmunk voices might make you think; that is, there are next to no changes to the theme aside from instrumentation. If it wasn't for the percussive additions, this would be only a small step up from a cover.

Seems a tad gimmicky and there's not enough actual arrangement of the theme to warrant a pass, in my opinion.

NO

[Sam Ascher-Weiss]

Oh man this is painfull for me to do! I really loved the sound of this, the percussion is tight, everything flows perfectly.

SO WHAT'S THE PROBLEM SAM?? I'LL TELL YOU! The source material seems arbitrary in this piece. Part of the purpose of OCR is to honor game music and you have basically just taken one motif from the song and used it to hold everything else together.

This mix would sound just as good with pretty much any simple melodic figure playing throughout!

There's a reasonable amount of variation on this ONE part of the theme. You'll notice that the original gives you alot more to work with. All this needs to pass in my book is more use of the source material.

Let me hear some of that bridge. Convince me that you have some respect for Uematsu and you're not just using him as a platform to show off your skillz.

so I guess that's a NO

Also WTF is with the Buju Banton? <- Aka Chipmunk Reggae