DragonAvenger Posted December 4, 2011 Share Posted December 4, 2011 Good day! Here is a metal medley i made with songs from Donkey Kong 64. A great game to say the least. In the same league as Banjo Kazooie! I tried to make the songs feel pretty metal, focusing alot on heavy riffing (chuggy riffs aswell as tremolo picking riffs a la Amon Amarth) along with double bass.(and even some blast beats at the end) The guitar is a seven string Ibanez tuned to drop G#. I picked darker themes which i thought fit in to the whole metal thing. The themes covered are, in order of appearance; Gloomy Galleon, DK Isle, Boss Introduction, Frantic Factory and Angry Aztec. The very last little melody at the very end is actually a snippet of melody from Banjo Kazooie, Grunty's Lair. I thought it'd be fun to throw it in there. all tied toghether with a few original riffs. Original music is by Grant Kirkhope. Here are some youtube links to the original songs: Gloomy Galleon http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l-xDYkwxIS8 DK Isle Boss Introduction http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YF0EFMsKPtY Frantic Factory Angry Aztec So yeah. Phew, at 192 kbit/s its at 7,98 mb in size so thats a close call! I call it "Diddy Kong's Metal Jam" since Diddy Kong's instrument in the game is an electric guitar. (which he totally rocks out!) I go under the name myrtorp my real name is Markus my email adress is: I post my music at http://www.youtube.com/user/myrtorp userid; 29450 have a good day and I hope you enjoy the music Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Emunator Posted December 6, 2011 Share Posted December 6, 2011 Nice! DK64's got a great soundtrack that deserves a lot more love than it's gotten on OCR so far I'm having a bit of a tough time evaluating this arrangement, because you do go a lot further than most people who submit straight medleys in terms of adding your own personal touches to the track. That extra attention to personalizing the arrangement definitely did not go unnoticed. However, this still falls into some of the same pitfalls that we tend to reject medley arrangements for. While you do have a lot of unique material going on with your rhythm guitar writing, the melodies of the actual themes are largely untouched, save for a few moments in the DK Isle section where you actually do your own thing with the melody quite a bit. If you had applied that same level of interpretation to the rest of the themes, this would have been a lot closer to passing. However, that's unfortunately not the case, and although your backing track is pretty innovative and creative, the bulk of the remix is pretty conservative. The arrangement itself also presents a few problems. As a listener, there's nothing wrong with how you've strung these two themes together, but what OCR is looking for is a cohesive arrangement that evolves and develops. Your remix does have some sense of that, but the evolution mostly occurs within each individual section and then resets as soon as you transition to a new theme, so the end result feels more like a series of sketches linked together with pretty solid transitions, but not very much direction overall. I feel like having some sort of reprise that you go back to multiple times in the song would really tie this together a lot more cohesively, so that you don't just play a theme and then forget about it for the rest of the song. OCRemix is definitely not opposed to remixes that utilize a lot of sources, but if they do, they need to be tied together more tightly with a more directed structure. Nitpick: The transition between Frantic Factory and Angry Aztec stands out as one of the weaker ones, personally, I think you could lose the few bars of solo drums and things would flow a lot more smoothly. The Banjo-Kazooie reference was smooth, I liked how that fit in there and really tied the song together even though it wasn't linked to DK64 at all. Aside from that, there's a lot of elements on the production side of things that could be tuned up. Right off the bat, your guitar tone is sufficiently brutal but the overall master is not making good use of the headroom you've got left, even with your rhythm guitars being mixed as high as they are. Your orchestral elements too are pretty weak samples, but they'd probably work just fine with the style if they were more audible. The same issue is present with your lead guitar a lot of the time, especially during the machine-gun drumming sections where they're most noticeably drowned out. Basically, this needs a re-balancing job so that pretty much everything aside from the rhythm guitars and drums are more clear, and the overall master is bumped up louder so you don't have so much unutilized headroom. I kind of wrote an essay for this submission but only because I like it and I like your style I'd love to see something like this on the site but there's several things that you need to overcome before that can happen. I do hope you continue submitting, whether it's a redone version of this song or something new, but you've got great source material and some really great performance skills on the guitar. Good luck whatever you end up doing dude! NO Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DragonAvenger Posted December 18, 2011 Author Share Posted December 18, 2011 There's not really much to add to Emu's essay of super description. I felt that the production for the most part is pretty solid, and I would have been OK with passing it production-wise as is. I will agree with him that if you fill up the rest of the headroom and fix up the balance you will only be doing the track a favor. The arrangement as has been said is a medley, and unfortunately again as Emu mentioned, the different sections are a sort of 'reset' of the arrangement and energy level. There's definitely the potential for more development as a whole, and hearing what you have done to the DK Isle section I know you can definitely do so. Lastly, I will second that there is a ton of potential here, and whether you go back to this one or send something else in I will be looking forward to it. NO (resubmit) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
halc Posted December 19, 2011 Share Posted December 19, 2011 hrm, a little torn. have to agree that as far as production is concerned, I'd pass this. I can't really expand on the arrangement any more than Emu already has.. the arrangement of the individual sources was handled conservatively, but were nicely personalized. the medley-itis doesn't really bother me as much on a personal level, but I agree with most of his critiques, and as such I feel like I should side with the NO's here, as much as I want to pass it. anyway, a very impressive first offering here, to be sure. a resub that expands on the arrangement of the themes or tightens up some of the more abrupt transitions would probably flip my vote. can't wait to hear your next submission. NO(resub) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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