djpretzel Posted June 27, 2005 Share Posted June 27, 2005 If I am submitting my songs too fast, I apologize. I'm hoping it will take a little while before you guys get to this one. Anyway... Contact Info: Damon Campbell (Blue Magic) E-mail: Randy550@msn.com ID: OCR01325 ? ReMix Info: Chrono Cross "Dragon God," "Dragon's Prayer," "Seized by Life," "Orphanage of Flame" I can't make a direct link to the song, so you will have to visit my page to get it. Comments: Well, this is my first attempt at creating a orchestral mix and I'm sorta skeptical about it. People either like it or hate it, so I spent a lot of time just trying to decide if I wanted to submit it or not. In this song, I attempted to combine African an Orchestral percussion, which turned out pretty good in my opinion, and used creative ways of linking all four of the source tunes together to create a haunting, yet very moving, remix. Like I said before, this is my first attempt at a ochestral mix, so when I comes to the seating arrangements of the instruments and all that technica stuff, its not very accurate. If you guys decide to reject this, I would appreaciate it if you could give me a few pointers so that I can one day resubmit it. Thanks and enjoy Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Vig Posted June 30, 2005 Share Posted June 30, 2005 the first minute or so is strong but quite repetitive and dynamically flat. The second minute has the same problems. it's repetitive. and what do you know, the same problems exist in the third minute. there just isnt much going on here dynamically. I think a good start would be not relying on that african drum loop so much. You want your song to have lots of different colors. as it is, the whole track is pretty uniform. start with the drumloop. NO Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Liontamer Posted July 8, 2005 Share Posted July 8, 2005 http://www.tzone.org/~llin/psf/packs2/Chrono_Cross_psf.rar - 311 "Dragon God", 308 "Dragon's Prayer", 216 "People Seized With Life" & 305 "Orphan of Flame" Pimped this one in late May for VGF: Liontamer]Blue Magic - Chrono Cross "A Warrior's Path" [VGMix2 #4067]Technically not a very unique name for a remix, but well-done nonetheless. The strings were a bit plain and inhuman sounding, but the atmosphere was pretty good. Damon's come a long way since his earlier days in the community. Noting the revisions he's done to his mixes between posting them to VGMix and subbing them to OCR, I'm confident that this one has what it takes to be Blue Magic's third mix. Needs a bit of refinement, but certainly worth checking out in its current form. Oh, homey, you didn't hit me with the revisions & refinement. :'-( It's what allowed your Dark Cloud mix, that otherwise would have been rejected in its VGMix form, to pass the panel fairly easily. First things first: if you mix more than 2 source tunes, it REALLY helps me and others better evaluate the level of arrangement if you give us a time breakdown of when & how you used the various themes. Especially for someone who's never played Chrono Cross or been a big fan of its music, I have no damn clue what you did here, and what relates to what. Not to shit on you here, but offhand this doesn't even sound much like any of these source tunes, and I'm not exactly inclined to figure it out on my own. Sorry, bro. Help a brother OUT. In any case, Vigilane the rock ninja was spot on with some of the problems here in this mix. Everything sounded the same dynamically and therefore created the impression that there was no real development. There were some changeup in the patterns, but most of the instrumentation combinations all sounded the same the whole time, so the feel of the track never changed. The African drumloop and sustained strings were particular culprits at sounding repetitive. A lot of your instruments mushed together during the busier sections (e.g. 1:27-1:49), so you need to adjust the balance amongst them and position only a few elements prominently. The use of your string samples was particularly bad. In something like "Moon Dust" where you barely used them, their obvious syntheticness and the disparity in their quality compared to your other sounds didn't hurt that mix much. But here, they definitely killed it. You sometimes had these really unrealistic and drawn out sustained notes (e.g. 1:17-1:26 & 1:38-1:49) where there was seemingly no bow movement. And the jerky note-to-note movements with the strings from 2:32-2:58 really hurt the last section and exposed your samples. In general, you need a lot of work in terms of synth orchestration and making things sound realistic on that level. The woodwinds sounded serviceable, but the strings and brass didn't have believable performance dynamics. Definitely scope out the ReMixing forum, because these sample aren't being used at their best as all. This was definitely a step back in quality from your two posted mixes, Damon, but I wouldn't be discouraged, because like you said this was new ground for you and you're trying something different. Certainly ain't nothing wrong with that as long as you're dedicated to learning more and improving. I'm interested in particular at what Gray would have to say on this one. NO Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sam Ascher-Weiss Posted July 11, 2005 Share Posted July 11, 2005 I would not call this an orchestral mix. It is a mix that features orchestral instruments which is a comepletely different breed. This song goes nowhere from start to finish but there's enough variation for me to feel like it was aiming for some sort of developement. What causes this variation to fall short of actual developement is as Vig said "uniformity". The soundscape is the same throughout, instrumentally, harmonically, dynamically, rhythmically... however you want to look at it. Strings are beautifull but they can easily go stale by hanging around too long in the same whole note role all song. Occasionally replacing the strings with some sort of ambient arpegiations and minimalizing your use of the "african drum loop" would set this song well on it's way to being more colorful as Vig suggested it should be. Finally, something that bothers me that I don't know if anyone else has a problem with. The D in the melody over the Db in the bass sounds terrible. First occurrence of this is at 0:25. Please people, let me know I'm not all alone in my feelings here. It happens several times during the song and does not sound intentional. NO Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
zykO Posted July 15, 2005 Share Posted July 15, 2005 this definetly isn't an orchestral mix - strings and brass an orchestral piece does not make. nothing here changes. the track is precisely as it was in the end as it was in the beginning with all those hits and the total lack of dynamic take vig's advice and get rid of that african drumloop... NO Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts