*NO* Castlevania 'The Gate of Nightmares'

[OceansAndrew]

Your ReMixer name: BONKERS

Your real name: Nicholas Steven Perry

Your email address:buttwipinglord@yahoo.com

Your website:http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1310105117

Your userid:31818

Submission Information

Name of game(s) arranged: Castlevania (Akumajo Dracula) ,Castlevania 2 (Dracula II:Noroi no Fūin) ,Castlevania Rondo of Blood(Akumajou Dracula: Chi no Rondo),Castlevania Harmony of Dissonance (Castlevania: Byakuya no Concerto) , Castlevania The Dracula X Chronicles (Akumajou Dracula X Chronicle)

Name of arrangement: The Gate of Nightmares

Name of individual song(s) arranged: Poison Mind,Nothing to Lose,Heart of Fire,Out of Time,Black Night,Bloody Tears,Vampire Killer,Underground/Name Entry 2k2, Player Death, Voyager, Wicked Child,Stalker/Vampire Killer:RoB,Poison mind:Another Nightmare and Boss Victory.

Link to the original soundtrack: (A cross-fade medley of 99% of the original tunes, I forgot Black Night -http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EiJy2w2hlMg)

Your own comments about the mix, for example the inspiration behind it, how it was made, etc:

I originally signed up to do this song for VV(Vampire Variations) back in September of 2010. It was going to be a simple Heavy Metal Medley of 4 songs that had yet to be claimed. I had a burst of inspiration and thought I could make a quick turn around.

BOY WAS I WRONG.

I came up with an intial concept

>

And then It sat for a month...two months...until finally around January/February rolled around.

I had a different idea this time. And essentially I started working on what you hear now in the finished song. I had this GRAND idea of expanding the original 4 songs into just as many songs of the soundtrack I could fit in significantly as possible. It would have tons of tracks and music written for an entire orchestra almost.

Except that I started sequencing everything out of ORDER starting with Underground/Name Entry 2k2. I don't recall why, but I started transcribing the percussion(which is a bitch by the way if you ever want to try) and didn't finish. And left it there until the point that in the timecode of the project file I needed the space. I didn't know how long the song would be by that point(around March/April) so I just kept moving my Tempo marker and all the MIDI files over and over. This resulted in (because of tempo changes made in between the previous original tempo and the tempo of this section) the files being all kinds of messed up, with half of them being at weird looping points.

At this point, I was about around I think at Out of Time. I stopped working because I had to work on other songs. And then in late May, I spranged my knee somehow at my Aunt's house for memorial day while playing volleyball or chasing down my cousin's dog or someshit like that.

Now a sprang may sound like nothing, but HOLY HELL. I've never felt this kind of pain before, i've broken bones and it hurt less. The night of, my Knee had swollen to about the size of a big grapefruit. And I couldn't move my leg at all. Just to get up to go to the bathroom I had to have my mother help me. As bad luck often goes, late in the night I had to go on my own by crawling on my hands and knees and when I got back to the couch where I was staying for the night I couldn't get back up. I tried but the pain was just too immense, to the point where I started (crying from pain)yelling for people in the house to wake up and help me. That didn't help much even after my mother and brother came out to help.

Eventually my mother slept in the living room with me that night. I however couldn't sleep.

So I watched "The Green Hornet" movie,and some other stuff to kill time until morning. Went to urgent care around 11am,got some crutches and a perscript for pain meds. However they screwed up with communication somehow at Walgreens so I didn't get home with my meds until 3PM (with a stop at my grandmother's house to pick up a wheel chair to borrow).

Needless to say I got high from pain meds and felt ok. However I didn't fall asleep until 7am the following day.

Then in July I had to move back to Oregon, and I wasn't better yet. It wasn't until August that I could sit in a chair long enough without extreme pain to work on music. So I worked on overhauling my FF:Random Encounter songs.

Then In September I started working on Vampire Variations stuff again because release was drawing near. It was around this time I claimed Wicked Child from The Dual Dragons. I pegged that song a lot quicker than this song(although with a lot of last minute fixes). And the entire month up until the 31st I was up around noon/2PM'ish , eating, doing basic household chores and then working on TGONightmares until around 5/6 AM average (sometimes more sometimes less)

I had to work quick to get everything done in a competent way and get all the production the way I wanted it. I use samples that already have un-removeable reverb from being stage mic'd when they recorded them. So I did some research on the Sample Set and what hall it was recorded in. So I then figured out the physical dimensions ,etc and created many custom Reverb presets based on this depending on the instrument/effect/position of the above/etc.

I wanted to make this sound like a live recording as much as possible with the time and tools I had at my disposal(yeah laugh if you want. But just know that I have 0 hardware other than my PC/Instruments and my Line6 Guitarport. Everything else is done in software)

(forgot to mention) That also Viking Guitar and I had planned for him to do a Solo over a year prior. With a week or two to spare I got to the point ;structurally; where his solo was going to go. But I needed to finish the structure and then flesh it all out before he could get his hands on it.

We both use Reaper(F*** Yeah!)so I created a Mixdown of that section, inserted it into a COPY PROJECT file at the exact same time point, removed all other FX . Created a .Txt file with instructions and possible ways we can handle processing/mixing. Rar'd it and sent it to him. Got it back a week later, with his own .txt file and different .Wavs with different levels of processing/mixing I could use.

I won't say which one I used, Nyerk. Like it matters though.

The end of October drew near and I was almost done, the last few days I kicked it into overdrive. Tweaking/adding in everywhich way possible to polish up and round of the corners of everything. From going back to the Intro and completely re-writing parts to creating a voice FX chain that would make my voice sound like Dracula in a sort of low-bitrate/samplerate way that was done on Consoles in the early 90's.

I think I finished with just a few days to spare.

Now, I know it's not perfect. But I poured my heart and soul into this song to make it as perfect as I possibly could with what I have.(which is not a lot by any standards) It's like my One hit wonder shitty Magnum Opus!

AHHAHAHA

Being realistic, by this point we all know how much I LOVE and respect Castlevania music. That's why this song's instrumentations isn't like any other song i've ever done. I wanted to be creative, while retaining "The Castlevania Sound" and tried not to alter Melodies too much whilst going to town on harmony , percussion and other lines.

I built this PC specifically to work on songs like this. I maxed out my 6GB of RAM by the time it was finished (while using a 32-bit DAW that lets you farm out VSTi to dedicated processes! W00T! Thanks Reaper) and I ran into more slowdown from RAM usage (in other programs) than CPU usage. Which to say wasn't even significant! (Also is a HUGE difference from the P4 rig I came from. I couldn't run more than a few plugins without maxing out my CPU on that PC, this i7 950@4.2Ghz scoffs at nothing!!) not even an 82 track song could bring it to it's knees!

82 Tracks. : Including FX sends/busses and groups.

LATER YO

~BONK

[OceansAndrew]

This is really cool, but it really way too much of a medley for OCR. I think you really did a good job playing the original material, but the transitions weren't really smooth in a way that felt like it was a single song; it felt like it was a 'best of' Castlevania track, and as such it rocked. Production sounded great and you clearly got dem skillz, but it's just not what OCR is looking for, I don't think.

No

[DragonAvenger]

Little to add to what Andrew already said. The track is awesome, but it's too much of a medley. Still pretty sweet though, man!

NO

[Liontamer]

This is really cool, but it really way too much of a medley for OCR. I think you really did a good job playing the original material, but the transitions weren't really smooth in a way that felt like it was a single song; it felt like it was a 'best of' Castlevania track, and as such it rocked. Production sounded great and you clearly got dem skillz, but it's just not what OCR is looking for, I don't think.

As far as the first 8 minutes, aside from 3:03 the transitions sounded fine to me. Not ZOMG great, but nothing that screamed poor. One could argue 7:12's switch-up in particular with the jingle was abrupt, but it was also fine upon repeated listens, IMO. I didn't hear anything big UNTIL 8:33 that indicated this arrangement wasn't reasonably (and fairly cohesively) structured. There were three very jumpy transitions in quick succession in a little over a minute (8:33, 9:21, 9:46) that didn't flow, and that ultimately makes it a tougher call, but it didn't seem like enough to tip the scales in the big picture.

The mixing felt somewhat cluttered most of the way, but the overall production quality seemed OK. The arrangement of the various songs I recognized was certainly personalized, and while there were some jumpy points with no flow late in the game, this felt overall like an extended piece where the focus changed every so often. Most of the theme usages seemed brief, but there were a few extended segments that showed off good development. I'd need to break this down and compare it to the list of songs just to verify the source usage, but I didn't get the sense of it being a dealbreaker merely on account of it being a mega-medley.

Will come back to this.

EDIT (8/16): I checked out the "loledly" MP3 Nicholas provided that featured all of the sources stitched together just to verify all the source usage, and everything checked out fine. The final section from 9:46-10:32 was a bit of a disappointment, as that was a super close cover, both in structure and mood, but it wasn't a big deal given the overall length of the track.

Giving this a few more listens, I still recognize the issue the NOs are taking with the medley structure, but I also still feel the sources were substantially personalized in their performances, and the structure flowed more than adequately enough for the first 8 1/2 minutes. The structure sounded a lot like a rock opera style piece, where there are a lot of twists and turns that nonetheless worked well in the big picture.

Again, it's a shame that the final 3 minutes, at least in my opinion, didn't have the reasonable transitions like the first 8 1/2, but at the end of the day, this was cohesive ENOUGH for me to give it a YES. Not the strongest YES given the structure, but it's above the line for me just the same. The performances and production was very strong, and the level of interpretation was solid enough given the expansive treatment each source tune was given.

[Palpable]

Dunno Larry, I won't say most of the transitions were awkward, but it felt like there was way too much focus switching, places where one melody picked up after another with not enough flow to it, or where there was basically a full restart of the track. And there were some transitions that were just plain awkward to me, not just the ones you mentioned. The production was definitely over the bar if not perfect. I don't mind leaving this one open a little bit longer to get more opinions, but this felt very much like a medley and not a cohesive piece.

Nick, your stuff is awesome so don't get the wrong impression here. I loved the ideas you brought to the table here and I hope you keep sending us more stuff that fits what we're going for more.

NO

[Fishy]

Sup bonk.

The production is usual bonk which is good stuff, so no worries there. Yeah this is really just a matter of figuring out whether or not this suffers from medley-itis.

Five minutes in and I'm still waiting for any kind of theme repeat or development. I mean there's nothing wrong with the transitions but it's just impossible to have enough development in-between them when they come along this quickly, so it's all functional but does come across as a 'best of' as my colleagues suggested. Theme after theme, with as quick a transition as possible whilst still being musical. It's not really what OCR's about, so on the whole I can't really call it a cohesive piece in it's own right. There are choice sections where it comes together, but it definitely comes across medley-ish for the most part.

It does look like this is heading for rejection and you really shouldn't take that the wrong way, it's just not an OCR compatible arrangement in it's fundamental approach. It's great for what it is, but dems da rulez about medleys.

NO