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My Hometown on Algol II (Phantasy Star IV - Motavian Town) [trance or 80s/90s synth pop]


Yami
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No, not a WIP by this guy again

Well, yes that's true, but somehow this mix had a mind of its own. Why? Because I didn't intend to do a remix of this piece, at least not this way, it was planned to be a dubstep experiment. When I listened to A.COE's 'Quicksander', my brain had this line of thought:

Sonic -> Genesis -> PSG \

PSG Wobble Bass

Dubstep -> Wobble /

Even if I don't really like dubstep that much, I wanted to try it out. But this didn't work as planned, I can't seem to get a nice irregular wobble.

Anyways, I changed the octaves and some other things of one ProtoPSG preset and suddenly I had a wonderful pad sound, and suddenly I had a trance mix on my hands...

Personally I like this one best of everything I have done until now.

tl;dr

Original: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cU92aql5mD8

My (finished) try: http://soundcloud.com/yaminokeshin/my-hometown-on-algol-ii-v9

Feedback always appreciated

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Well, first off, what were you doing to get your wobble?

Anyhoo, the track itself, doesn't really stand out for me...but then again, neither does the original. That's just my own personal bias, since I'm not really a big fan of overly cheery themes, anyway.

Also, you could always just refix it as Drum n' Bass, if you cannot manage Dubstep.

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Well, I did the old "change the cutoff LFO frequency" trick. But I know less about D'n'B than about dubstep, so this would be more difficult.

Concerning standing out, it is the direct opposite for me. This song is the only one from the PSIV soundtrack that stuck out for me and it is one of my favorite VGM tunes ever. But everyone has a different taste ;-)

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Mmkay, well about the only other thing I'd recommend is using an LFO Filter vst, if you feel the need to. I actually used one in one of my tracks, if you'd like an example.

Well, that's kinda just it, I've always been more the kind of guy that is intrigued by depressing and/or tense tracks. Although, I can enjoy happier stuff, just not as much.

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Finally someone with feedback, yay!

"Go West"? I had to listen to it first, but now that you mention it, there's a similarity, but this part is from the source.

I didn't think the clap is repetitive, but since it's from me my views might differ, so I'll work on the clap a bit (and of course I'll turn the volume down a notch)

Concerning orchestral sounds. Perhaps it could work, but I've never done anything orchestral and I don't have good orchestral instrument samples.

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Hey Yami!

Thanks for sharing! This one reminds me of the style of some of the OCR submissions when it was just getting started: synths, 4-to-the-floor bass drum with loop-based percussion. That's not a bad thing, but it does sort of have that typical techno remix feel to it.

The biggest room for improvement would be in the percussion, which just sounds like it is either on or off, but doesn't really "interact" with the music much, by that I mean have any fills or emphasis, except for the rapid-fire claps at one point (I've never heard such fast clapping before haha).

The atmosphere is kind of nice though, with the amount of reverb the lead has. Too much for some, maybe, but I'm a fan.

Usually this kind of music emphasizes the off-beat as well, which works well and I would recommend doing.

What's that sound at the end? It's like an off-key electric razor? Haha.

Overall, the source material is certainly obscure, which I'm always a fan of, and the mix is not bad, but nothing unique either.

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Hey Jean,

thanks for pointing things out. First of all, I know it's a basic techno thing and it sounds like earlier remixes, but

1) techno is what I was going for

2) I don't have the experience yet for making more elaborate mixes

Ok, then I need to work a bit on the percussion, thanks for mentioning. I think I'll try experimenting with some off-beats. I heard this kind of clap effect rather often (at least I think it was a clap) and I always wanted to try that thing out.

This sound at the end left me puzzled as well, I thought it was a plugin running wild, but it was just some strange delay feedback which kept playing, it is gone in my last version of the song.

BTW, the bridge theme from Darkwing Duck is my favorite theme in the whole game, and I really really like your take on it

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Hey Yami,

You've got some good ideas in there that when I have some time, I'll try and annotate your soundcloud file a bit.

The main thing I noticed was that there was a lack of emphasis on 2 and 4 (currently most of the emphasis is on the 1 and 3), and the bass would probably sound more techno/trance-like if the bass were on the off-beat (ie. on the "and" of every beat).

Here's an example of what I mean: there are two loops with a pause. The first one has the emphasis on 1 and 3, and the bass is on the beat. The second one (the example I'm trying to encourage you to try) has the emphasis on 2 and 4, and the bass is on the off-beat.

http://db.tt/cYBBuowY

Let me know what you think! :)

Oh, and thanks for the compliments on the Darkwing Duck mix! The judges decided that it was a good arrangement, but that it sounded too synthetic, so I have to make it sound more "real". That will be my next project. :)

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mod rev:

Here's my thought while listening to the track:

Drums... no, just no. Repetitive... too much. 1:25 finally something I like. More weird drums. Clashing bass notes. Some nice melodies towards the end, buried in problematic instruments.

ARRANGEMENT / INTERPRETATION

- Too conservative - sticks too close to the source

PRODUCTION

- Low-quality samples - not so much the samples themselves, but they're not mixed into the track right

- Unrealistic sequencing - this is not how trance/synth pop drums are written

PERFORMANCE (live recorded audio/MIDI parts)

- Wrong notes, general sloppiness - clashing bass notes, some melody notes in the latter parts

STRUCTURE

- Lacks coherence overall (no "flow") - might work if other problems are solved first. might not work. hard to say.

- Not enough changes in sounds (eg. static texture, not dynamic enough) - the drums dominate the soundscape, and the synths don't contribute much change to the track

- Too repetitive

Easy no. :(

A lot of your problems are related to the drums. The good thing is that you seem to wanna stay away from overused drum writing patterns. The bad thing is that this deviation doesn't work. The rest of the writing is simplistic, and has clashing notes. Read up on harmony and scales, and study the drum writing (and drum sound choices) in tracks.

I kind'a feel like directing you to the Mega Man compos. Listen to the tracks by ppl who were eliminated early in the compos, figure out why. Learn from it. Neblix has said he's learned lots from being in those compos, so perhaps you should study his tracks too, compare the older ones with his more recent ones. Actually, pick any artist whose old tracks you can find, compare to their new ones. See what you can learn from their writing, their sound design, their mixing, everything. :)

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