Donkey Kong Country - Depths of the Sea (Aquatic Ambience Remix)

[Pumpkin King]

I've already done a piano cover for this a few months ago, and thought I should do an orchestral version, while keeping the atmosphere from the original song. I used Garageband for all of the sounds, except for the underwater rumbling you hear, which comes from Soundminer.

Link -

Source -

[Monobrow]

Nice, an interesting approach to a very popular theme.

[Pumpkin King]

Thanks, I appreciate it.

[Swifthom]

I quite enjoyed this, and the bells instantly seperate it from the source track. I like the way it builds slowly, and the drums, though generic, give it a really nice pace despite the slow main melody.

[CJthemusicdude]

Gotta love this classic source, your remix syncs up very well with the style of the original, that sort of calm, underwater feel.

My take on the remix: Production wise I think this is really spot on, there's nothing bad that really pops out and everything blends together nicely. The tonality and sense is very good.

The only small gripe I have is with the arrangement. The first 2 minutes of the remix are nice and original while being thinly tied to the source but from 2:00 on it sounds more like it's a cover than a remix. There's very little variation on the main melody or themes at this point. Maybe down the road you could spruce up some of the melodies or put your own spin on some of the chords.

[Pumpkin King]

I quite enjoyed this, and the bells instantly seperate it from the source track. I like the way it builds slowly, and the drums, though generic, give it a really nice pace despite the slow main melody.

Thanks. Yeah, though kinda generic, the drums I was happy with. Normally I'm not to good with implementing drums into my songs, especially with Garageband. But this one seemed to work I thought.

Gotta love this classic source, your remix syncs up very well with the style of the original, that sort of calm, underwater feel.

My take on the remix: Production wise I think this is really spot on, there's nothing bad that really pops out and everything blends together nicely. The tonality and sense is very good.

The only small gripe I have is with the arrangement. The first 2 minutes of the remix are nice and original while being thinly tied to the source but from 2:00 on it sounds more like it's a cover than a remix. There's very little variation on the main melody or themes at this point. Maybe down the road you could spruce up some of the melodies or put your own spin on some of the chords.

Thanks for the feedback.

Yeah I remember starting this song back a few months ago. My original intention was to simply orchestrate the original piece, not necessarily remix it. I wound up making the first part twice as slow, and was planning on that for the entire song. But within the past few days, I got back to it and decided to add the second part, and thought I should speed it up by implementing the drums and making the song twice as fast, similar in pace with the original.

I did want to alter some things around. Though what I had in mind was tough to implement due to the limitations in Garageband (damn it!). I mean, I've gotten quite good with getting past things with Garageband, but sometimes things just don't work the way you want. This mainly had to do with the clarinet sound I was using. So I kept mostly true to the original on the 2nd part, and thought it worked well.

[Pumpkin King]

Ok. Just want to know what anyone else thinks. Should I work a bit more on the arrangement or leave it as is? Honestly I'm pretty happy with it. I'm just unsure if the 2nd half of the song should be a little different with the arrangement. I mean, I have ideas...it's just tough to implement with Garageband.

[Pumpkin King]

K, just left it as is. Changed it to Mod Review.

[Gario]

Alright, very nice approach with the intro - I liked the hints of the theme that are there. The atmosphere works well as an intro, but won't hold up over five minutes (this isn't a complaint, as you change it up later).

I don't know how variable the attack is on your samples, but if you could adjust the attack setting on your samples so there is no fade in for each strike it will help make them sound more human (Not the strings so much, but the woodwinds and such). I don't know if it's possible in Garageband, though.

Once problem that permeates the mix is the lack of bass throughout. I hear virtually no bass, outside of the piano strike and a quiet marimba. Some deep strings would really help in this regard, or even bringing those marimbas out better would help. Right now there's no bottom, though, which makes it feel lacking.

Arrangement-wise, it's not going to work for OCR. The intro is great, but otherwise it's a note-for-note arrangement of the original. A really pretty note-for-note arrangement, but still far too conservative for OCR. Even still, it's a very nice remix - for what it is I still enjoyed it.

For the sake of practice you can spend some time humanizing the woodwinds and adding bass to the mix, but it won't pass the panel with as conservative an arrangement as it is. Love your style, though, and hope to hear more from ya in the future.

[Pumpkin King]

Thanks for the review, man.

As far as "humanizing" the woodwinds and strings, again, it's tough in Garageband to make it really work. So the method I used for this was using tons of automation rather than strictly editing the attack. That would result in duplicating a lot of the tracks, and fading in one track while fading out the other, just for a proper and smooth transition.

And haha, I'm happy with the fact that the bass is too quiet in this. If I ever had a problem with bass when composing songs, it was that it was too loud. Too much rumbling sometimes. I toned it down here, and tried to make sure that the rumbling with the underwater ambience didn't ruin the mix.

The arrangement...yeah, it is note for note in the second half. I know I could be creative and change things around, for the sake of a proper remix. But oh well, I like the idea of simply orchestrating this song. It's probably my favorite song from one of my favorite composers, and I just wanted to pay tribute to it. And try to make the song sound a little better (well, at least try).

Thanks, and I don't really care if it wouldn't pass the panel here. I'm happy with it. I could do an experiment and slow down the entire piece, like in the first half. But meh...that's too much work, haha. I liked how it turned out and just wanted people to hear it.