*NO* Chrono Trigger 'Timeless Suite'

[djpretzel]

Mixer: DJBren

Real name: Brendan Bennett

Remix Title: Timeless Suite

Game: Chrono Trigger

Original Material: Lucca's Theme, Sad Song (I dont know the title...played while Lucca repairs Robo), Frog's theme.

Comment: Yes, I do orchestral music as well. Classical is actually one of my favorite genres. This song represents Lucca's "Lucca the Amazing" side as well as her compassionate side. It also goes into Frog's theme where it explores his aspiring youth as Glenn and his chivalry as a hero.

[Sam Ascher-Weiss]

Substituting I for vi in Frog's theme was an admirable attempt at reharmonization since I'm guessing it's something you've not had that much experience with though it's hard to tell if this was intentional when for the most part during your version of Frog's theme there are nothing but instruments playing/doubling the melody and then the bass. So it's possible that rather than reharmonizing you just felt like putting a D in the bass instead of a B but I'll give you the benefit of the out. The orchestration was incredibly linear from start to finish rarely featuring more than two parts. By parts I don't mean instruments, but rather groups of instruments that are either all doubling eachother or playing 100% parellel harmonies. The orchestral samples are weak which means that leaving the strings exposed from 1:30 to 1:45 is unacceptable. You've gotta keep those bad boys covered up when they're moving around so quickly because you can hear the attack on each note while real strings would sort of glide. The best way to cover that is up to double the strings an octave above with a flute or something while having another string part play a harmony part in the same register that moves half as fast. Right now the orchestration is far to flimsy for me to pass this so that means

NO

[Israfel]

Fairly unconvincing orchestration, which is a bit of a killer for a piece that's attempting to capture an orchestral sound. Shnabubula is right in pointing out that big chunks of this are presented in simple two-part voicings; and in general, the possibilites inherent in orchestral writing are greatly unexplored.

This combined with a somewhat vanilla arrangement make for a hard piece to pass.

NO

[Liontamer]

http://www.snesmusic.org/spcsets/ct.rsn - "Fanfare 1" (ct-1-20.spc) & "Kaeru's Theme" (ct-1-19.spc)

Opened up with some very plain orchestration of "Fanfare 1" followed by a slight variation on it at :22, slowing things down a bit. No idea what source tune was involved from :44-1:22. Maybe that was the sad song Brendan was referring to, but I had no idea what source tune it was based on the info he gave, since those weren't album tracknames. Gotta come correct with the submission info, please.

The transition at 1:21 into the tamborines was a bit too sudden, though it's not a dealbreaker as it can work in many contexts. I respect the variation on Frog's theme brought in 1:29, though it sounded WAY too close to "Jib Jig" from DKC2. I dunno why it was written like that, either subliminally or overtly, but it just sounded too much like Blizihizake's "Set Sail".

I can understand Shna's concerns about the exposed strings from 1:30-1:45, but I don't think it was anything terrible. The orchestration doesn't sound very believable, but that's only for the very descriminating ear. Brendan can certainly use more time looking into fine tuning his sounds so that they roll more naturally, but this wasn't awful by any means, and I've heard people make total crap with these sounds, which this isn't.

I felt the arrangement with Frog's theme was the most promising stuff here, but the melody itself still could have been handled more creatively, and the Fanfare 1 stuff wasn't creative at all. Your ending also abruptly cut out at 3:25. The arrangement needs to be more interpretive and creative, and for this genre I don't believe the arrangement is where it needs to be. The orchestration was pretty vanilla and simplistic, I'll agree with Izz, but I think Bren at least some promise at improving there. Keep at it, sir.

NO

[zircon]

Most of my concerns have been covered by the other judges. This is not an inherently bad or problematic mix, but at the same time, it offers very little beyond a simple source -> orchestrated conversion, and the orchestration is somewhat shaky as mentioned above. Try to be a little more creative with the layering of the sounds and the chords - this is a tough thing to do, no question about that, but with more tweaking I think you could get across a lot of your melodic/harmonic ideas in a more interesting way. Structurally, this is a little weak too. There are small breaks, small rises and falls in the energy of the piece, but nothing really major, no building motif or theme, no show-stopping climax. In fact, the ending is pretty abrupt and disappointing. While I think you have some of the fundamentals of a good arrangement down, creating an interesting and engaging structure is something I suggest you work on.

In the technical sense, as I'm sure you know, your samples aren't great, but that shouldn't be a problem if you're using them well. In this case, I think you're not bringing them to their full potential. Seems like a lot of the instruments were pretty dry, and none of them had changing expression (which can be done by automating volume), and the solo/percussion passages had few if any changes in velocity to give a greater sense of realism. Plus, the whole thing is at 128kbps which makes it seem even more low quality. Please use VBR next time so that you can get close to the 6MB limit but preserve as much audio quality as possible.

Solid effort with some good areas, but more work needed overall.

NO