DragonAvenger Posted December 20, 2011 Share Posted December 20, 2011 ReMixer name - Tomaaato Name - Marcello Ciciriello Email - Website - http://twitter.com/#!/hi_tomaaato Userid - 46390 Game - Final Fantasy VI Name of arrangement - Mr. Thou Name of individual song(s) arranged - Cayenne The track I have chosen to remix is Cayenne from the Final Fantasy VI soundtrack: http://ocremix.org/game/6/final-fantasy-vi-snes Hi, I'm Marcello, a 21 year old keyboard player and bassist from Bedford, England. This is my first serious attempt at remixing/creating my own interpretation of a piece of music from a video game. All of the parts you hear in my remix are played in on a Roland Cakewalk A-800 Pro keyboard, being fed straight into Reason, which is the core piece of software I use both in the studio, and live on stage. The track was mastered in Logic Pro 9, and I have gone through many iterations of the mix, asking my friends all sorts of questions to try and get pointers for a better mix such as "Is it too bassey? Is it too trebley? Is it too loud or too quiet, either individual instruments or the track as a whole?" etc. I am a big fan of both progressive rock, and electronic music, and the inspiration behind this arrangement comes from both of these genres. To sum things up, I really just played what I felt like playing, and this is the finished product, and hey, if anyone likes it, that's a massive bonus to me! I am by no means a professional musician, and I am still learning every day new techniques in both keyboard playing, and music production. If this track is not accepted, please give me any relevant criticism so that I know where I can improve with any future submissions. Thank you for your time ----------- Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DragonAvenger Posted February 28, 2012 Author Share Posted February 28, 2012 I really like how you changed the chord structure of the melody around, it gives it a completely different feel, and it's a pretty refreshing take on the source. That being said, the arrangement kinda...fizzles out...but keeps on going for what feels like way past it's welcome. I'd love for you to cut this down and really try to get a more focused arrangement. Taking the stronger ideas and cutting out some of the original material will really help with this. Production is a bit of a mixed bag. The soundscape itself is pretty cool, I love the instrument choices you have. Everything sounds pretty muffled throughout the song, though, so I'd suggest working with your levels to clean things up and tone down the reverb and compression. The balance could use some readjustment as well, to make the melody lines cleaner and put the supporting parts in their place. Pretty cool concept, but it needs a good deal of revamp to focus and clean up the arrangement. Hope you continue to work on this one! NO (resubmit) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
OceansAndrew Posted March 10, 2012 Share Posted March 10, 2012 The individual master blaance sounds ok, but it's individual instruments that have issues, specifically the drums seem to have all the high frequencies filtered out, making them lose a lot of power. The snare should have a brutal crack to it when the song is going full-on, and it just doesn't. It sounds a lot better 3/5 through the way though, but then the kick needs some more beater as well. The arrangement contains a lot of cool ideas, but some parts are a little hard to recognize, and they go on for extended periods of time, which makes it harder to latch onto the source. The sounds overall are pretty good, and you definitely have promise, but you'll need a little more polish on this. Tighten the arrangement, selecting the best parts, trying to keep source dominant, keep working on balancing the individual parts, and maybe tone the reverb done a bit. This is a good candidate for a resubmission. No, please resubmit Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Emunator Posted March 15, 2012 Share Posted March 15, 2012 I agree that the mixing issues are causing some ambiguity over what you're really trying to do with the arrangement. Because everything is so subdued with heavy reverb, I can never really tell if the song is supposed to be in buildup mode or if it's in full-swing. The mixing and overall balance should reflect where you're at in the progression of the song, and I'm not feeling that. On top of that, there's a few jumps in the arrangement that I wasn't prepared for - the dubstep part in the middle just sort of dropped in there and I did a double-take and had to check if I was still listening to the same song. Ultimately, because of the lack of solid transitions or buildups, I feel like I'm listening to a set of really cool sketches that are strung together without much connection/flow. I think if you either take a few of these ideas and run with them... the chillout dub feel you've got in the first half, the more energetic dubstep half with the aggressive drums and crazy synth soloing that appears later, each one is a solid concept on its own but as a whole arrangement, it just feels jumbled. You've got a lot of promise here and I actually really enjoyed listening to a lot of this. You're obviously a pretty talented musician with some great creative ideas, but it would take some significant work to bring this remix to a point where it would pass the bar, IMO. I'm interested to hear if you're willing to take a second pass at refining what you've got here. NO (resub) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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