djpretzel Posted July 11, 2005 Share Posted July 11, 2005 Interesting ending Rather decent. I have a cousin named Sam Draper, by sheer coincidence. - djp Cannon Fodder – Heroes Lost In Victory Contact Info: Remixer Name: Kohlstream Real Name: Sam Draper E-mail addy: sammylsd@hotmail.com Site: www.kohlstream.best.cd Remix Info: Name of Game: Cannon Fodder Name of song remixed: I’m not exactly sure but I think it's called ‘Heroes In Victory’ Additional Game Info: Music composed by Joseph Richard and was for the AMIGA (1993). Comments: I have always liked this track, and after hearing many great remixes of game music using orchestral voices I felt like trying my hand at it. Its structurally similar to the original but I have re-written most of what i had taken from the original from my own memory. I Also added many counter melodies and other decorations to give the track a lighter (and sadder) feel and style. When you hear the original song in the game, it was played as you saw the names of all your soldiers who survived and were decorated, or who died and buried. I wanted to make this song sound more tragic than it was originally intended to be. I don’t own a MIDI keyboard so I had to use a program called Sibelius, which allows you to score out music and hear it back. When I had finished writing the piece I exported as a MIDI file then imported it into Cubase SX 2. From there I could add the different voices that I wanted. It’s quite strange to work like this, as I technically didn’t play anything, I just wrote it. But in saying that it is an orchestral piece, and they are usually quite precise. Both the remix and the original track can be found at that address: http://savefile.com/filehost/projects.php?pid=656546 p.s. any keyboard donations would be grateful Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sam Ascher-Weiss Posted July 16, 2005 Share Posted July 16, 2005 Thanks a bunch for the source! That makes things MUCH easier. Funny Ending.... in a good way. Tremolo string whole notes and piano are cool for a while. Unforunately they form the core of the arrangement for the first 1:45. The melody is at first handled by an oboe or english horn doubled an octave below by something that I can't quite make out. Letting up on those tremolo strings would really help, but then things might feel too empty so you'd have to replace them with something. In the second half of the melody, things get a bit more dense but compositionally it's still the same basic elements.... the melody part [doubled or harmonized], the obligato-ish figure this time in the bells instead of the piano, and the backdrop which is still tremolo strings. There's some other stuff, like barely audible counter melodies on some brass instruments, but that stuff is too subtle to make a difference. What results is three minutes of liquid. This mix sounds like a single note being sustained for three minutes on a VERY COMPLEX instrument.... yet it is still the SAME instrument and the SAME note for three minutes. The source tune had drums and an active bass line to breath life into the somewhat boring harmonic/melodic concepts here. If you take out the rhythmic interest of the original, you MUST fill in the holes that you have created. n0 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Liontamer Posted July 30, 2005 Share Posted July 30, 2005 http://exotica.fix.no/tunes/archive/Authors/Game/Joseph_Richard/Cannon_Fodder.lha - rjp.JON (Bless you DeliPlayer) Hahaha! I checked out rjp.WARX4 in the source archive, and it's Amiga-style reggae and shit! Crazy as hell, it's so cheesy, someone's GOTTA remix that with new vocals inspired from that one. weed could do something good off that, I mean it. Aight, getting to the actual mix. Not a bad intro. Melody came in at :24, but VERY softly and somewhat obscured. Whatever woodwind was playing the lead was really flat/MIDI-grade and unrealistic, and the interpretation of the source material was minimal. Don't have the strings dominate over everything the way they do here. The atmosphere changed at 1:41 with a decent break in the source material before going back in at 2:02. The supporting patterns basically repeated ad nausuem and the compostion was extremely plodding. Having the melodic content play second fiddle doesn't work in most contexts. Not bad for a beginner, but this was poorly mixed, which ultimately made this a tiresome listen. Heh. Not a bad idea for the ending, I suppose. Didn't have to be so long, but at least it's different. Hang in the ReMixing forum, Sam, and learn how to create better sound balance (as well as scout out some better free soundfonts for the woodwinds and brass used here), and post stuff to the WIP forum to get some comments that would steer you away from the mixing/production decisions you made here. NO Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Harmony Posted August 2, 2005 Share Posted August 2, 2005 There are plenty of ReMixers who do wonders without a keyboard so no need to beg for donations Sam. Spend the time instead practicing with what you have. Practice adding more variety to the supporting instruments. The strings lack dynamic and harmonic complexity. They kind of just drone along, not changing in intensity (there was a bit of something nice at 1:46) and not contributing nearly as much as they could. The harp does a good job of playing off of the piano and the music box later in the mix although the repeating chromatic melodies get a little tiring past the 2 minute mark. Practice humanizing your instruments. The piano is very plunky and loses the delicate charm that this piece calls for. The consistently long attack on the horn at 0:24-1:42 gives the lead a sluggish feel that doesn’t help the dragging arrangement. You can certainly find better samples for many of the instruments you’ve chosen but it wouldn’t be a waste of time to learn to get more out of the samples that you have. Practice creatively reinterpreting the source material. If I take out the drums and bass from the original then I have something very similar to your mix in terms of composition and sound. Make the piece more engaging by rearranging the melodic sections, building and removing harmony, changing tempo, changing key—experiment. Gotta love the SFX ending. Stop by the ReMixing and WIP forums to get some help with your future submissions. Keep working at it. NO Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
GrayLightning Posted August 3, 2005 Share Posted August 3, 2005 String tremolos are awesome, BUT when you have it playing like this for so long, they just get so repetitive and bland. I think you should instead use a Violin I section that plays sustains, then Violin II can have these tremelo sections, and use expression controlls to make the tremelos come in and out, but the way this just goes on and on and on and on, it just gets tedious to listen to. For me the main issue of the mix is, the arrangement feels incomplete. The ending suddenly came and the orchestra faded abruptly into some wierd (I'm guessing in-game) sound effects. It just comes off kind of cheesy, abrupt and underdeveloped. Some nice orchestration ideas though, I'm a sucker for chromatic percussion and you use it really nicely here. Good use of stereo field space. One suggestion is to put a bit more reverb, the ending of the string tremelo and brass sustains could use a little more decay so they aren't as abrupt on the note to note movements. Nice ideas, but this needs a lot of conceptual polish. Keep at it, you show promise. NO though. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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