DragonAvenger Posted January 16, 2012 Share Posted January 16, 2012 Here's a submission for you peoples! Remixer name: some1namedjeff Real name: Jeff Ball Website: http://www.jeffedwardball.com UserID: 8601 Name of Game: Cardinal Quest Name of Arrangement: The World After Asterion Name of Individual Song Arranged: The End of Asterion Additional Info: The original Cardinal Quest soundtrack was composed by Whitaker Trebella, who released the soundtrack under his former name of Whitaker Blackall, which was changed when he got married. It's a newer game and is currently out on PC and Xbox 360. Link to Original Soundtrack: http://wblackall.bandcamp.com/album/cardinal-quest-original-soundtrack Artist Comments: The original composer of the soundtrack, Whitaker Trebella, approached me to do a remix for the soundtrack album. After listening to all the tracks, I ended up picking the fanfare theme, which is also one of the shortest tracks on the album. Even though it was short, the melody was very powerful, and I knew I could do something orchestral with it. When I was working on the track, the notes just kept coming out until I had a nearly 6 minute track based off of an original that is only 13 seconds long. It was a lot of fun to work on, and gave me a great opportunity to flex my orchestration muscles. Thanks, and let me know if you need more info, -Jeff Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Fishy Posted April 3, 2012 Share Posted April 3, 2012 Brave. This is just cruel. I have no idea what to do with this. The arrangement and orchestration are very impressive but you're clutching at straws quite a lot to pad this out. I'm pretty sure I hear the theme in major, minor, lydian, phrygian and god knows what else in there. It's totally unnecessarily long for a 13 second source, and could have easily been condensed to the most recognizable sections. What it boils down to: is the source dominant and recognizable as per the standards? In my opinion I don't think it is. If someone wants to do a mega breakdown and prove me wrong then go for it. I want someone to disagree with me. It really pains me to do this but NO. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DragonAvenger Posted April 11, 2012 Author Share Posted April 11, 2012 Oy, this is a tough one. I'm with Fishy that the issue is entirely based on the arrangement and how dominant it is VS. how much you can pull from a 13 second source and still be viable as an arrangement. I disagree with him in that I think the source usage is indeed there, and used in a lot of clever ways. I also will say that this will be one of those tracks that people will say they don't hear the source at all, because of how masked things are at times. I'm on the fence with this, but I do think it gets the job done in the end, but I won't be surprised if this does or doesn't make it in the end. Good luck! YES (borderline) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
OceansAndrew Posted April 17, 2012 Share Posted April 17, 2012 whew, not making this easy on me. :/ The song itself is beautiful and sounds excellent; I am just having a difficult time hearing the theme as dominant for enough of the track. Cain summed it up well, you've done pretty much everything that is possible to the theme to increase the length almost thirtyfold, but it's just not recognizable enough for me most of the time. ;_; No Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Liontamer Posted April 28, 2012 Share Posted April 28, 2012 It's a difficult theme to initially wrap one's head around, but it's brief, so that helped. Honestly though, variations of the themes are used in massive chunks of the arrangement as the leads, so I'm not sure how "not enough source usage" is coming up. It shouldn't be. The arrangement was 5:48-long, so it needed at least 174 seconds of overt source usage for me to pass it on that level: :33.75-1:06, 1:17.5-1:40, 1:52.75-2:50, 2:52-3:04, 3:36.5-4:07, 4:31.5-5:05.5, 5:10-5:17 - 195.5 seconds or 56.18% My timestamping was actually conservative, I just picked out the most recognizable parts of the theme, but I'm pretty sure I wasn't giving some of the usage the proper credit, even if it was just for brief times. Don't really care too much once it's clearly over the line for dominant usage. Jeff could give a more thorough breakdown if we had to ask, but I don't think it's even necessary as far as being able to tell that the source tune is frequently in play. Definitely ask for it if you need it though, I've been there. The higher strings noticeably strained for realism, so that's always going to stick out, but they were used well enough overall. Loved the woodwind lead at 1:17. The variations here were pretty impressive, arrangement-wise. You got a ton of mileage out of it, but the instrumental and dynamic variations kept the arrangement substantive the whole way through. For me, this was a pretty comfortable call on all levels. Loving the cinematic approach. Definitely would love to hear something like this performed live, as this would fit right in with a classical music repertoire. YES Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
halc Posted May 7, 2012 Share Posted May 7, 2012 alrighty, can't say I've completely examined this arrangement, but I did go into it after listening to the source about 10 times in a row. any arrangement of this nature (short source into a decently long mix) is gonna break into some pretty liberal territory, but I could definitely pick out the source melody at times throughout the mix, and having read Larry's breakdown, I feel okay about passing this one. no qualms with the instrumentation/mixing, which sounds excellent. the overall composition and timbre of the piece has me reminiscing of the orchestral versions of 'Simple and Clean' and from the Kingdom Hearts games. nice job. YES Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Palpable Posted May 19, 2012 Share Posted May 19, 2012 Big ups to Larry for the breakdown because I would have definitely needed to clock it myself. I could hear the arrangement in all the places he mentioned, and possibly a little more at the end. This is a pretty drastic rearrangement and a little bit cerebral in how the melody is used, but it nevertheless checks out. Great control of the orchestra from Jeff - very restrained while still expressive. YES Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nutritious Posted July 24, 2012 Share Posted July 24, 2012 Wow, beautiful orchestration here. Jeff's attention to detail here is excellent. Very good use of dynamics from the strong sections to the very delicate ones. Some parts get a bit shril in the mid/high registers Loved the effect of the backing percussion parts at 3:51. This whole section is gorgeous. The source usage is very expansive due to the short source. Big thanks to Larry for the breakdown, which helped immensely in judging the arrangement here. Yes Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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