djpretzel Posted June 5, 2005 Share Posted June 5, 2005 Contact Info Your ReMixer name : Nixdorux Your real name : Nicolas Ferranti Your email address : ferranti@urbanet.ch Your website : http://www.ferranti.ch ReMix Info Name of game(s) ReMixed : Super Castelvania IV Name of individual song(s) : Lord Dracula Meilleures salutations ! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Liontamer Posted June 15, 2005 Share Posted June 15, 2005 http://www.snesmusic.org/spcsets/scv4.rsn - "Dracula's Theme" (scv4-02.spc) I checked this one out in late May for VGF, so I check back on what I had to say. Liontamer]Nixdorux - Super CastleVania 4 "Lord Dracula" [VGMix2 #4176]Nicolas goes for an ambient orchestral first half in this moody CV4 mix, before switching gears to strings and an organ on cameo in this track representing the entrance of the ambiguous & complex Lord Dracula. Quite the interesting representation of Dracula, as it doesn't go for a cliche attempt at sounding sinister and evil, rather Nix takes a more refined stab at the source material. Solid work per the usual from Nicolas, who shows a good deal of range within the orchestral genre for those of you familiar with his body of work. I thought the arrangement of the source material was pretty good which is why I genuinely felt the job done here was solid, although being perfectly honest I didn't find the track too engaging myself. I felt the lead strings in the first third of Nix's mix up until 1:12 were smartly arranged from the strings appearing from :58-onward of the source tune. Still, the first half of the track until 1:46 dragged after a while. The familiar melody was used with some more active work from 1:47-2:10. Pretty brief, all things considered. The strings and brass at 2:10 were at a pretty low volume and sounded incredibly muddy, and there was an annoying low droning sound that ended up cluttering the low-end. I may take a hit for my other issue being a personal preference thing, but I'm not a fan of overly muddy or washed-out sounding pieces and I felt this wasn't an exception. Pretty much the whole time, the soundscape was very muffly and the track lacked a great degree of clarity due to a lack of higher frequencies. Especially encoded at 160kbps, to me this just came across as sounding dull, hastily-made, and lossy. I'm really lukewarm on the piece as a personal perference (outside of my vote), and I think a lot of people would actually end up disliking this, despite me liking the rather unorthodox compositional approach. In any case, I felt the arrangement was there in spades. However, the production choices were a huge negative to me. And I apologize for not being able to articulate it better, but I also felt that the performance aspects of this synth orchestration were lacking on some level. Gray or Dan may completely disagree; frankly I don't know if they would, but I felt some of the note-to-note movements with the strings and vox were just nagging at me by not sounding as believeable and human as they should have. Damn, I said pretty recently that I don't feel I'd have to suggest to Nicolas anything on how to make his mixes work, but I gotta say I was really underwhelmed here. I really think this could be re-EQed to provide more clarity and not subsequently undermine the texture of the piece, which is the only major thing I'd say really needed adjusting in order to get a pass from me. NO (resubmit) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Israfel Posted June 18, 2005 Share Posted June 18, 2005 This *really* needs to be longer. The short length combined with the sudden texture contrasts creates a schizophrenic, unsatisfying arrangement. You never give any particular idea enough time to truly develop, and you either need to get rid of the section at 1:46, or figure out a way to better incorporate it into the piece. The arrangement feels incomplete at this point, and the other elements aren't strong enough to make up for it. NO Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
The wingless Posted June 18, 2005 Share Posted June 18, 2005 I like the buildup and the textures created, but that jump Israfel pointed out is so unsatisfying. Unsatisfying in the sense that it has the potential to be so very cool, but is only allowed a nanosecond of breadth. It really inspires a look of WTF, though the moment is so short lived, I'm sure the audience will wonder if it was the song, or part of their own errant imagination. NO -longer -that *Random* section either needs to be -deleted -integrated FULLY into the piece (such that if you removed it, the song would be destroyed like a house of cards) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
GrayLightning Posted June 19, 2005 Share Posted June 19, 2005 This is a big drop off compared to what we are used to you. It almost sounds like you were fiddling on a mix just to mess around one afternoon. I agree that the orchestration and composition here is really simplistic and underdeveloped. I think this is what liontamer points out at the 2:10 section. But it's not really muddy, that's how low strings and brass sound like texturally together. It's not like there's a lot of reverb here either. If one wants to hear really dark-textured orchestra one should listen to the LotR soundtrack for a guide. As with wingless and Israfel my biggest gripes here are how everything is rushed through different sections, not necessarily a bad thing, but in this case it just sounds underdeveloped and hastily put together. The faster section isn't as well thought out as the slower passages. The up and down bows sound a bit messy for me. Also you don't use any low register up and down bows/pizz to contrast the high register ones. I think this needs more balance in this respect. Finally the transitions between the different sections of the mix aren't that good in my view. Your usage of the samples though is nicely done, and there are bright spots in the arrangement. But there's not much here that stands out from basic in the orchestration, composition, arrangement or production to overcome the problems here. We're used to higher quality craftsmanship from you. NO Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts