Ultimecia's Castle - Final Fantasy VIII

[Rhiannon Myfanwy]

Hello all! This is a metal cover of "The Castle" from FFVIII that I created a while ago. http://youtu.be/tX7VihSlewI

Source: http://youtu.be/CqtGBR80NWw

I'm pretty pleased with the arrangement, but I recognise now that the production is pretty poor. However, I'm not exactly sure where to start, so any advice/criticism would be greatly appreciated, so I can figure out what the most glaring issues are.

Anyway, hope you enjoy!

[Magellanic]

First off, I did enjoy it. FFVIII has a beautiful track. Despite its oddities the source is great, though I wouldn't have envisioned it as metal

I won't go into great details with things but what I will say is everything sounds a bit muffled. EQ is the biggest thing I think that could be done to get the production values up a bit. The panning seems rather narrow, it feels like there needs to be more space. Some more reverb, or a different type of reverb should liven things up a bit.

Some of the samples could do with an upgrade aswell, like the opening. Having said that, you could give it a bit more vibrancy to existing instruments with some effects and EQ.

The rhythm guitars especially could do with some attention. Perhaps re-record them just to get a bit of a clearer/sharper tone or ease off on the filtering. It seems as though they're causing the track to sound muffled.

If you're up to it, that opening scale/motif would sound fantastic on guitar, but an equally awesome synth would make that part jump out and grab more attention. In regards to the drums, they seem great, but need more presence in the mix. They could do with being brought out a bit more. I don't think its so much volume that needs to applied, more refinement with some compression, EQ and slightly wider panning on the cymbals.

With regard to the arrangement, I think you could do a little more with it in terms of instrumentation to fill out the space.

I hope that the feedback is of help and look forward to seeing what you do with the track.

disclaimer: Feel free to ignore me. All feedback is given with the best of intentions to try and help.

[Rhiannon Myfanwy]

Thanks! Muffled sounding guitars are something I've always struggled with, no matter what pedal I've used. Maybe a new soundcard would help?

I actually originally planned to do the intro on guitar - I decided to do it with synth so the guitars would kick in with the drums, but I might give it a try to see how it sounds.

I'll try and fiddle with the EQ and add some reverb - I tried using some mastering software for the first time, which instantly made it sound better.

Thank you very much for the pointers! Hopefully I'll be back with something sounding much better.

[Darangen]

Muffled sounding guitars aren't really something that a soundcard can be blamed for. It's usually from too much mid's and not enough high's for clarity, possibly too much bass as well. The main thing to understand is that the counter part of a muffled sound is a clear sound. So you want something that'll give you clarity.

It could also be your amp settings. Presence usually provides clarity but can make your tone sound too thin if you overdo it. Make sure your tone knobs on the guitar are also at a good position, those can kill clarity just as much as anything.

EQ is your best bet, as Magellanic mentioned. It's easy to look at a guitar and see it's meat is in the 100-800hz range and be tempted to boost them up if they're being overpowered by other tracks, but that's not the way to go, you'll just get muddier guitar sounds. The high frequencies are where the clarity is, so you could try boosting the highs around 3-4khz at a small level, maybe 3db.

Most importantly, don't solo the guitar tracks when you're eq'ing them. It's way too easy to fall into the trap of getting a killer guitar tone on a solo'd track only to have it get buried in the mix or sound like garbage while it's losing the fight for certain frequencies when you un-solo them. You have to remember that they belong in a mix, not on their own, so whether they sound amazing on their own or not doesn't matter.