Liontamer Posted May 31, 2012 Share Posted May 31, 2012 Street Fighter 4 (Main) and Street Fighter 2 Ok, I'll level with you guys; I never liked the Blanka theme, but speeding it up (a lot) and modulating it made it one of the most killer sounding melodies ever when put on top of a modified C. Viper theme. Who knew that was all you needed to do? Part DnB, part metal, fully aggressive; this arrangement trims away pretty much everything but the basics and keeps it tight. ToD stands for 'Touch of death' which is fighting game slang for a ridiculously brutal combo, ending in either a KO or stun. Such a badass name needs a badass mix, and I think this lives up to it. -Andrew C. Viper's Theme Blanka's Theme Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Liontamer Posted May 31, 2012 Author Share Posted May 31, 2012 I mentioned this to Andrew when hearing the early WIPs for this one during the compo, but I'm still legitimately bothered by the weak drum tone and sparse textures. There's a lot of volume, but the elements were thin. The strings lacked the body or warmth to fill out the background space. From :20-:41 and later on (e.g. 1:09-1:30, 1:50-2:00), it sounds like the cymbals and drums are clipping/distorting. There's a crunchiness or something going on that's really unpleasent. Loved the bass writing from :41-1:04, though the mixing for this section felt off. The background electric guitar & e-piano writing (if I have those parts right) was well-written, but too quiet to be fully appreciated. Enjoyed the Blanka arrangement in particular, as well as the tradeoffs between that theme and C. Viper's. The Blanka theme at 2:59 felt like too much of a copy-pasta as far as arrangement ideas, but it was brief, and the arrangement itself was strong. Honestly, I like the structure and flow here, and the arrangement works, but the persistent distortion (biggest issue), some thin-sounding instrumentation, and lesser balance issues dragged this down too much as is. Would love to hear this touched up so everything was sounding fuller and more cohesive. NO (refine/resubmit) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Emunator Posted August 26, 2012 Share Posted August 26, 2012 Definitely siding with Larry on this. Brutal arrangement/performances, as usual; those guitar chugs are intense! However, the balance/production feels... not quite where it should be. Like Larry said, the volume is pretty loud but there's a very thin quality to the instrumentation... can't tell if that's a compression issue or not, you'd probably know better than me anyway, Andrew But yeah, the drums sound very distorted and your snare is just weaksauce, and the levels aren't quite balanced in a way that fully fills out the soundscape when the guitars aren't there. Resub this, I've got full confidence that you can get a better sound out of this arrangement. NO (resub) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nutritious Posted August 27, 2012 Share Posted August 27, 2012 Great energy here man. I like the style you've brought here. Production definitely is a big issue here, though. There's a lot of distortion from hitting those compressors way too hard. I know you wanna push the loudness of the track given the metal/dnb genre, but you gotta be really careful with how you go about it. I can hear the crits on the thin sounding instrumentation, but I'd like to hear this with the levels toned down from overcompression before I pass TOO much judgement on them. Parts like the snare may sound quite a bit different once they're not being squashed down. There's a ton of potential in this track, so I'm hoping we see another go around. No, resubmit please Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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