GrayLightning Posted July 6, 2005 Share Posted July 6, 2005 Brink-of-Time FallThrough about 5 and a half months ago i submitted a zelda 3 remix i did. i recieved the confirmation email from ocremix, however after watching the judge's board for 5 months, i never saw my song. nor did i recieve an instant reject email. so i would like to resubmit my song. Artist: Brink-of-Time Style: Trance Orig Artist: ? Game and song: Zelda 3 - Main theme Remix title: A World of Swords Website: http://brink-of-time.sectionz.com Now you may have to try downloading it a couple times, as sometimes the download link sends you to the members page. Thanks, Brink-of-Time Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sam Ascher-Weiss Posted July 6, 2005 Share Posted July 6, 2005 Some good ideas here. 1:21 the partial melody with the slow moving upward portamento sound in the background followed by the four kick drums is a perfect set up! What follows is a by the book rendition of the melody [with the chords Bb and F replaced by Bb- and F- somewhat inappropriately] played by a plain lead with a simple bass line and some slippery-dippery wet string type pads. The texture remains unchanged until 3:00. During the intermittent period there's a whole bunch of original material, first with another plain lead and then just the damp string stuff playing some boring chords accompanied by barely audible brass-ish instruments arpeggiating Bb minor triads. All this stuff is like dead air with only one mention of half of the source thus far. Everything is far too cloudy for the repitition to pass as adherence to a genre. I can't tell if 3:00 is supposed to be humorous. There are analog drums playing a cliché hip hop beat with the second half of the source melody in a harspichord.... SAY WHAT?? It sounds like a joke and if that's what you intended then bravo on your success. It does create a nice opening for the section from 1:21 to break in at 3:40 so I'll give you that! Now the original ensemble reunites to play their version of the part of the source you just hip-hop-ified. After that the drenched strings finish us off with a bunch of bland chords. HURRAY! This is way too long for what it is. The switch to the hip hop feel at 3:00 came late and it could have lasted longer before returning to the earlier feel. Your best bet for improving this song is to aim for more genre authentic stuff like at 1:21. Either that or go the opposite route and add more stuff like 3:00 all over the place to add some more flavor making the song into a quirkfest! N0 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
GrayLightning Posted July 6, 2005 Author Share Posted July 6, 2005 Generic Boom-Tiss is the word of the day here. Not a bad thing if that's what you want to do. I think there are a lot of neat ideas here in terms of composition. I actually liked the intro part, cliche as it is, it's a guilty pleasure. My main issue here is the execution. Synths sound limp and thin. Consider checking out the free SuperWaveP8 if you use VSTIs. I feel the texture here fits the intended genre, but I feel it's rather thin and lacking. I'd like to see more compositional elements here just to help beef things up. Also consider more fx processing, delays and chorus would help things here. Obviously you want your lead and bass here to stand out. I think some EQ work is in order here also. The whole mix comes off a little too cloudly and muddy imo. There's no sheen. I agree with shna that this mix might be suffering a bit from identity crisis and that there's a lot of fat in this mix that could be trimmed off. It's really long. Though Shna, I don't think that section was intended to be as a joke. Fun listen in some sections, and it's a great source material to mess with, but I think this needs more work and polish at this point. Keep at it. Hope to hear more from you soon. NO Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Liontamer Posted July 7, 2005 Share Posted July 7, 2005 http://www.snesmusic.org/spcsets/loz3.rsn - "Overworld" (loz3-04.spc) Mix opened up with some stock boom-tss, which actually wasn't bad. Pretty decent boom-tss, though the sounds and texture were incredibly generic and lacked fullness and power. The source melody finally came in at :55 with some trance adaptation. The melody was finally played around with a bit at 1:23, but those admirable arrangement ideas only lasted until 1:37, then it was back to the verbatim melody with the dance kick and claps. 2:04 featured some different arrangement, and the boom-tss grove was definitely dragiing out its welcome at this point. You really gotta switch up the beatwork earlier and often, as the foundations of your track were detrimentally repetitive, and indeed we finally got something new at 2:59. The tempo and general atmosphere changed up as compared to the first half, though the distortion at some points was a bit much. The faster tempo returned at 3:48 and the arrangement just retread itself from 3:55-4:34, which wasn't bueno. Not a bad, miminalist idea for the ending, BTW. The arrangement as a whole needs more creativity and overt interpretation of the Zelda source material. The arrangement needs to possess more melodic interpretation than what's present here. There were some merely average ideas on that level, and there was too much of the track just using the Overworld theme verbatim while placing the beatwork and other trance sounds underneath. I agreed fully with Gray there that the synth design and processing needs to be more creative, as most of the stuff sounded pretty defaulty, though the texture wasn't abominable. And indeed, trim the song down as Shna suggested, because right now it just drags along. Hang out in the ReMixing forum and learn a lot more, as you have a modicum of potential, and use the WIP forum for feedback before future submissions. NO Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Harmony Posted July 7, 2005 Share Posted July 7, 2005 Great clean intro with a smooth ride, a decently punchy kick-bass combo and creamy supporting synths that I really enjoy. Can’t say that I enjoyed the generic break to the delayed staccato melody at 0:52 though. It’s just so common compositional tool for this genre that it doesn’t have the impact that it might have had at one time. Once things get moving after 1:37 we’ve got a pretty standard but enjoyable vibe. The soundscape is pretty packed which isn’t a bad thing but in general nothing is very distinct. Consider that after the first 40 seconds or so the legato strings play almost non-stop without any processing variety which makes for a pretty plodding feel at times. Like Gray said, the texture lacks a certain amount of sparkle and EQ and possibly some variation/processing of the supporting synths could help give this mix a less mushy feel. Many of the drum fill transitions during the trance sections were pretty nice but what happened to that same attention when the ballad section comes in? The transitions into and out of it feel very forced and lend to the ‘identity crisis’ of this mix. Honestly I don’t think that the section was bad as a separate entity (harpsichord bias). The processing on the drums wasn’t too hot though as the distortion seemed to restrict rather than enhance their power. Also more generous reverb and a helping of EQ work would beef them up a little. The return to the same trance vibe after the ballad was disappointing since that would have been a good time to really cut loose with the lead or work in some interesting FX or something other than a repeat of the first section to a give-up ending. Not bad overall but plain in terms of sound and arrangement. You have the skills to make the foundations of a really cool dance track. Now just focus on composition and the smaller processing details that will make your mixes shine. NO Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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