DragonAvenger Posted November 20, 2011 Share Posted November 20, 2011 It's been a while since I've done this, so I hope I get all of the info correct! ReMixer: Xenon Odyssey (http://ocremix.org/artist/5396/xenon-odyssey) Game: Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time Arrangement: Royal Treasure Individual Songs: Zelda's Lullaby/Zelda's Theme/whatever you want to call it Shoutouts: Title (LoZ), Minuet of Forest (OoT), Song of Storms (OoT) Let's see how concise I can keep this, since I can ramble for days as some people know... So back in June 2010, I was composing an original piece I ended up calling Essence, and about half way through it, I had a pretty cool chord part going on, and I was doodling around for a melody to take me into the next section. Lo and behold, I hit the magic combination of notes that equated to the famous melody known as Zelda's Lullaby in Ocarina of Time (I know that this theme was previously in A Link to the Past, but I'll get to why I'd like to classify it under Ocarina). This was about 2:56 into the piece, so at that point I thought it would be pretty lame to switch gears and turn it into an arrangement rather than an original, but I still really enjoyed the way the new chords meshed with the melody, so I made a note of it in a Sibelius file and left it to sit until I could give it the proper treatement. Fast forward a year later: I completed my bachelor's degree in music composition (and have a quality piece of toilet paper to prove it) and I have an awesome new rig courtesy of Brad Burr (aka prophetik). So armed with my dated samples from Komplete 5 and EastWest Gold, I began to carve away at creating what would become the mix you hear today. Originally, I was going to be super lame and go from 8-bit to SNES quality to a 'modern' take on the theme (I believe there's a PM I sent to halc looooooooooong ago with a horrible rendition I did in Reason for the 8-bit [he never responded so I took that as a sign to not continue with it ]), but I dropped that idea as I had a piece on my senior recital like that that featured NO TRANSITIONS at all and that clearly doesn't fly for OCR standards (plus can be pretty lame in and of itself, depending on context). The idea I had that sparked the whole remix can be heard at 4:15. Believe it or not, everything before that was written up to it, which unfortunately took me a pretty long time (4 months to be concise), which I think can be boiled down to me having no plan as to how I wanted to arrive to the idea. If I had sat down and created some sort of outline to the whole piece, I don't think the orchestration and whatnot would have taken me so long, but who doesn't love hindsight? More lessons for the future that we can conveinently forget about when we need them! Also, because my system is 64-bit, when I loaded my EastWest samples I got a bunch of pops and clicks that I ignored to the best of my ability while composing (my WiPs are plagued with them), and there have been known issues (at least with the 64-bit module of PLAY) with EastWest and FL Studio. However, after some recent searching (back in January there wasn't much in terms of solutions), I found a setting that needed to be turned off, and HOORAY the pops and clicks disappeared! So that could also be part of the reason this took so long, but it's here now! So now, we have the name: Royal Treasure. Now, what does this exactly refer to? According to the wiki page (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Legend_of_Zelda:_Ocarina_of_Time_%28original_soundtrack%29), there are two versions of the soundtrack, the Original Sound Track and the SoundTrack CD (the Japanese and American, respectively). I own the SoundTrack CD that I acquired through Nintendo Power back in the day, and on that version, track 14 is called 'Ocarina of Time,' which is the track that plays when you meet Zelda after sneaking through the courtyard. However, on the Original Sound Track version, this track is 26 and titled 'Zelda's Theme' (which corresponds with A Link to the Past), and they are exactly the same, save for the name. So why would they change the title if it was already set that this was Zelda's theme and motif throughout Ocarina of Time? Obviously the editing of Nintendo of America come into play, but they could have easily named it 'Zelda's Theme' and that would have been it. So that is the reasoning behind my title of 'Royal Treasure': is it referring the game's namesake, the ocarina, or is it referring to the Princess herself? Hey look! A wall of text! How predictable...anyway, here is my 154kbps mp3, since any higher bitrates send the mix over the eight megabyte threshold, and that's just no good. I can also talk more about the arrangement itself but unless it's requested, I'll shut my yap. I hope you enjoy listening to it as much as I enjoyed writing it! -Bobby ---------------- - lullaby - minuet - storms Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Emunator Posted November 20, 2011 Share Posted November 20, 2011 I've always been a huge fan of this arrangement, it's extremely expansive in the way it takes a fairly minimal and over-remixed theme and stretches it to the max. Right off the bat, the clever fusion of chiptunes and orchestral parts captures my attention, and by the end of the song I'm pretty much totally engrossed <3 Admittedly, this isn't the best produced/sequenced orchestral arrangement to hit OCR's inbox. Like Bobby said in the sub letter, his samples are definitely sounding a bit dated - the piano, strings, and flutes all have a bit of an unrealistic or un-expressive tone to them. That said, I think that the use of chiptunes alongside the orchestral instruments helped dissolve my expectations, so to speak. This mix definitely doesn't achieve a realistic orchestral sound out of these samples, but the creative liberties that Xenon took with the style/genre makes that shortcoming a lot easier to swallow. And besides, the amazing arrangement more than makes up for it, anyway YES Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DragonAvenger Posted November 24, 2011 Author Share Posted November 24, 2011 I think the arrangement you have going on here is pretty steller, but I can't say I'm as sold on the production side of things. It's not so much the sounds itself, but the balance and combination of 8-bit and orchestral. I can't say I'm as sold on how the two different sets of sounds are combined, with the 8 bit stuff being dry compared to the more reverbed orchestral sounds. It's a pretty close call for me overall, and while for now I'm going to say no, I'm very curious what the other judges have to say, and might be persuaded otherwise. NO (resubmit) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
OceansAndrew Posted November 28, 2011 Share Posted November 28, 2011 I think this sort of approach is a really good way to handle perceived weakness in samples. I do think more dynamics could be squeezed out of the orchestra, and I think the sections where the chiptunes were doing busy arpeggios worked best. I do think the arrangement went a little long, where things weren't exactly a copy/paste, but were similar enough that the additional main theme repetitions were superfluous. The sounds are good to me, but I feel it goes too long. I would recommend trimming it a bit and resubbing with a tighter arrangement. No, please resubmit Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
halc Posted January 6, 2012 Share Posted January 6, 2012 ah yes, I remember you sending me this one. pretty sure I probably told you to submit it. fantastic arrangement, not so bothered by the combination of sounds here as the NO's. I thought it had a nice cohesion, with the orchestra being the main event and the chiptunes more the twinkly icing on top. kickass job here, and props on a seriously killer arrangement. good luck with the rest of the vote. YES Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Fishy Posted January 31, 2012 Share Posted January 31, 2012 Hrmmmm... Really not sure on this one. There are some sections where everything is peachy and awesome (see 1:33 when the drums enter), and there are some (pretty much all the quieter bits) where it just doesn't get the theme across or you're trying to do something clever with the harmony and convoluting it. Combine that with the longer length and you have several phases of 'this is cool, not sure where this is going, this is cool, don't get this bit' etc. I think the main issue here for me is the way you've gone about the orchestration is making me expect something emotive, and then it just doesn't quite deliver. It could be the samples, it could be the sequencing/production, or it could be the chips just taking me out of the zone. I'm pretty sure it's all three. I feel bad rejecting this because you've clearly put a lot of work into this but I'm just not feeling it as a whole, despite the intermittent passages of niceness. I wouldn't be annoyed if this ends up passing but I need more of a reason then I can hear you've put a lot of work into it to get behind it. NO Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nutritious Posted January 31, 2012 Share Posted January 31, 2012 Beautiful arrangement here, Bobby. I can tell you've put a lot of thought and work into this. I don't think I've personally ever mixed an orchestral piece of this length. So yeah, samples aren't the strongest we've heard, but we've definitely passed weaker (my sm64 sub ages ago comes to mind). So, inherently, I don't see the samples as a great weakness here. That said, in general, the production was handled pretty nicely given what he's working with. There was a lot of dynamic contrast and he's effectivley intermingled various parts to make them work together effectively (eample :33 - 1:14 adds elements gradually to compliment each other). One main crit on the production side is there is an abudance of mids/high mids in a lot of the orchestra parts. Some eq work to bring them under control to keep them from resonating so loudly would be helpful. For my part, the chip/orchestra combination didn't bother me at all. It's true, you're mixing wet orchestra with the more dry sounding chip elements, but the chip parts didn't stick out over everything else, which would be the main danger here. The mixing between the two elements was pretty effective IMO. I agree that the arrangement goes on pretty long in general. However, listening through, each section brought something new and unique to the table and I never felt like I was getting the copy paste treatment. I don't see anything inherently wrong with a drawn out orchestral arrangement as long as it meets the above criteria. YES Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Liontamer Posted February 1, 2012 Share Posted February 1, 2012 Wow. This is a pretty damn good arrangement. The weak tone and exposed fakeness of the piano sample at 5:50 was unfortunate, but not a big deal given all the strengths here. That said, I'm scratching my head at these NOs. Y'all are all making the perfect the enemy of the good. On the seesaw that is "good enough" vs. "needs a resub," this sounded absolutely fine, and I'm just surprised this is splitting the panel, when the sample articulations and overall production are more than capable, the balance is reasonable though not perfect, and the arrangement is absolutely strong. The arrangement can seem too long, but I didn't think it truly meandered, and the "Zelda's Theme" treatment had nothing but subtle yet constant variations. Bobby nailed it here, this is generally top notch and completely what we're looking for. We need to not miss the big picture on this. Solidly above the bar, and great work from Bobby. YES EDIT (11/7): Yeaaaah... I copy DarkeSword re: Fishy's NO. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Palpable Posted February 3, 2012 Share Posted February 3, 2012 If you had asked me before hearing this if a chip/orchestra combination could work in a song, I'd be skeptical. This goes way beyond making it work - this is revelatory, this is phenomenal. You make the combination sound like it was made to go together. I truly don't understand the comments about this part working, this part not working - to me, it all sang. One of the best arrangements I've heard in the past year of judging. Sure, a few slightly weak samples and the mixing sounded too focused on the highs, but that's not even close to stopping this. YES Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Fishy Posted February 3, 2012 Share Posted February 3, 2012 Well I don't think you have to understand our votes. It just doesn't work as a whole to me. Neither does anything Schoenberg ever wrote. I feel like both are trying to be a bit complex for the sake of it and end up just not being that enjoyable, but the people who will dig it will dig it strongly. There are cases where we let production gripes go because of a cool arrangement and that's fine. In this case however I feel like the production was not executed well enough to actually make the ambitious arrangement work in the first place. That's my take on it anyway. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DarkeSword Posted February 19, 2012 Share Posted February 19, 2012 Fishy you are British and therefore foolish. Xenophobia aside, I think this is a fantastic bit of work. I absolutely adore the symphonic combined with the electronic in this piece; it reminds me a lot of what Square Enix did with the Final Fantasy: 4 Heroes of Light soundtrack (which you really ought to take a look at if you're thinking about doing more pieces in this style). The arrangement is very moving and emotive. I love it. Really just fantastic. I think this will be a fan favorite. YES Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts