*NO* Chrono Cross 'Dreaming by Your Side'

[djpretzel]

Roe : You know me, I've failed so much, maybe I'll fail again. But it's not about failing it's about telling shnabubula he's dirty theory scum am I right?!!? Haha just kidding, love you shna really do .

Unlike my other mixes, and Gray telling me there's a 3 week gap between submissions (I didnt know this!) I thought for christ sake, I really wanna get on this damn hateful site. I spent a good week on this, by this meaning lots of breaks and then adding on, I wanted to take my time and be more careful. Hopefully that shows. I wanted to go on my strengths aswell, doing what I do in original works alot. I'm very pleased with this song overall, I loved making it too. Whilst being in tier 1 on vgmix, this is my first tier1 release im actually proud to have on there.

So, little description of the mix. It's a heartful acoustic ballad of my favourite song from Chrono Cross "Dream of the Shore Near Another World" in a different key, with a key change mid song. Has some really nice powerful piano parts, with a sweet violin pulling most of the melody off. Guitars are doing the same chords from the source, whilst not being my best strumming sequences, I feel they fit well. This lot backed up with some almost emotional drumming, and lined with some strong strings have come to make a very thoughtful and emotional mix. One other thing, I always keep laughing at 4:31, the toms sound like someone falling unconscious it's great.

I've said too damn much now, okay just hopefully this is my time.

[Sam Ascher-Weiss]

http://www.tzone.org/~llin/psf/packs2/Chrono_Cross_psf.rar - 107 "Dream of the Shore Bordering Another World"

Tempo changes were great. Key change at 3:14 was great. The layering and constant instrumental overlap was not. For nearly the entire song, you've got the same line up, not counting a few instruments taking very short breaks a couple of times. You have: your guitar and piano playing figures in the midrange without regard for eachother, the piano slamming bassnotes and tinkling around up top, the strings wandering around playing the melody on occasion while rarely coming to the forefront in order to do so, back-up strings ALWAYS sustaining notes all over the place, and loud repetitive drums that drive things but quickly become tiring.

ECONOMY is what you need to work on. No need for so much to be happening so often, especially when things aren't supplementing eacother. If the guitar was playing rhythmic patterns and the piano was answering it with a single chord at the end of each prhase... that might be acceptable. Do you understand the difference between that VS. the two of them moving around constantly? The princible can be applied to every instrument in your song. This is slightly masked by the simple chord progression, since modally all the instruments are in the same location... so they don't "clash". Instead the entire soundfield becomes soupy and a feeling of endless dragging insues. CONTRAST goes hand in hand with ecconomy. If you're not using every instrument for 80% of the song, then you can have them take turns, thus creating contrasting textures. That alone will alleviate most of the drudgery here.

I understand that it can be frightnening not to layer things to death, because then EACH figure you write becomes naked and exposed. If you do this however, you will be forced to make every single note worthwhile, because you'll know that your listener will be tuned into each one of them. YOU CAN DO IT!

n0

[zircon]

I have to agree with Shnabubula that this is a constant wall of sound. For a more acoustic mix playing at a slightly slower tempo, this is both loud and 'hot' (much like most of your mixes and originals). You don't have to have everything so overcompressed and maxed out. For instance, the acoustic drums sound more like rock drums than anything else, and the strings are pretty loud throughout. Work on dynamics here first. The arrangement is pretty good in comparison to the overall production, so if you just worked out the structural issues like the overlayering and constant texture throughout, I think this would be a solid mix.

BTW your samples are fine, and most of the frequency balance is fine. It's just dynamics that you need to work on insofar as production goes. Polish + resub.

NO

[Liontamer]

Shna's definitely right about using your various instruments a lot more judiciously. Same type of problems you had with MM2 "A Warmer Farewell" and Pokémon "Rest". Seemed like you had a Radical Dreamers reference with that piano intro. Decent stuff with the strings playing the source melody at :15 and then segueing into some original bits at :31.

As soon as more instrumentation joined in at :40, the volume wasn't as much of an issue this time (it's still too loud), but everything sounded messy and distorted regardless. Jayde was right when he commented on that as an issue at VGMix. There's no clarity or separation anywhere as various sounds just bleed into each other.

Things picked up a bit at 2:03 with another use of the Dream Shore melody, followed by some good rearrangement ideas with the piano & guitar. The string movement though needed to be smoother and more-realistic sounding. The subtle tempo changes are a good idea (e.g 4:05), but going back to what Shna said, if you don't vary up the instrumentation and atmosphere of the track the impact of tempo change is diminished. Good piano-focused ending at 4:50.

You need to learn how to create better dynamics in general, as you're too reliant on unceasing interplay with your instrumentation. When you learn to scale that back, your pieces will gain more observable structure and flow. It'll also make your phrasing/arrangement sound less haphazard, though that wasn't as much of a problem as it was for other stuff. Right now everything sounds too samey over the 5 1/2 minutes.

NeoS also pointed out your percussion as being too busy at VGMix, tying back again into these issues Shna & zircon elaborated on. Part of the problem here as well is that especially when the track sounds busy, the "performance" (as it were) isn't tight. Everything sounds slow and slightly off. The finer details, bro.

And no, I'm not getting sick of you. I DO wish you'd take more of our criticisms to heart considering all the feedback you've gotten from older submissions though. I'm looking at older submissions like Zelda 3 "Ordeal" & Grandia "I Watch Her" from March and April, and while you've definitely improved, the same core issues of busyness, clutter, lack of structure, lack of focus continue to be there. You should be camping out in ReMixing, not in Works.

I've got nothing against encouragement, but frankly I've just seen too many superlative type comments on your material from people who simply aren't critical enough or demanding enough. I'm not saying that having a VGMix Tier 1 or those people's comments are inflating your head, but I am saying that I don't think those people are being critical enough or observant enough in order to steer you towards substantial improvement. You need to get more diverse opinions from tougher critics before the material reaches us.

NO

[zykO]

the intro is nice but this does get particularly cluttered.

everything that needs to be said has for the most part. the dynamic of the piece is hindered by the fact that everything is doing something at all times and while that might be a stylistic choice, its very jarring.

it also doesn't help that its very loosely mixed together... the mix is half the battle when it comes to credibility and everything is very strained to stay together....

NO