djpretzel Posted December 23, 2005 Share Posted December 23, 2005 Contact: Mystik3eb Dan Scannell mystik3eb'at'gmail'dot'com http://www.geocities.com/dfscanl/index.html ReMix: Chrono Cross The Star-Stealing Girl Mostly focuses on my own interpretation of Star-Stealing Girl, which has got to be my favorite video game song ever, though there are snippets of "Memories Of Green" from Chrono Trigger, also arranged to fit the key. Played on a Yamaha Motif ES8 and recorded with Garageband. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Liontamer Posted December 26, 2005 Share Posted December 26, 2005 We don't accept anything over 6MB, so watch that filesize, please: Submission Instructions & Standards]Bitrate should be as low as possible to achieve the desired sound quality, within reason. We recommend and use the free MP3 encoder LAME. If it's a really short song, feel free to bump up the bitrate a bit, but do not exceed 192Kbps . . . if it's a realllly long song, and won't fit under 6MB, please consider cutting a shorter, alternate version. It's a bandwidth thang ^^ http://www.tzone.org/~llin/psf/packs2/Chrono_Cross_psf.rar - 306 "The Star-Stealing Girl" http://www.snesmusic.org/spcsets/ct.rsn - "Memories of Green" (ct-1-05.spc) If anyone else has significant qualms on the complexity/depth of the writing, I definitely understand. Though that wasn't as much of an issue for me here, the bar is pretty high on piano pieces and this didn't compare on that level. Not saying you need to speed it up or flood it with more material, but more could have been done here. The performance is ok, though potentially too simplistic, but the main problem is the sound doesn't have the body and realism of a live piano performance even though it's played on a Motif. Motifs offer a lot more than this low-quality sound. There's some sustain on here, but the overall sound is pretty barren and exposed. It's particularly glaring when you're playing any type of chords (e.g. 3:16-3:23, but practically anywhere); there's just no meat on 'em. The performance obviously is human and performed live, but the sound quality merely says keyboard. Dunno what kind of piano soundfont/sample was applied to this, let alone what you did in terms of fine-tuning the sound, but you've gotta work on filling the track out and having it sound less synthethic, Dan. The post-production is no good. NO Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
The Orichalcon Posted January 9, 2006 Share Posted January 9, 2006 The mix starts off very quiet, and not in a great way, I feel that this particular piano sample sounds flat when it's quieter, it is possible to have a piano sound quiet, while still being prominent in the mix. Overall, the sound of the mix is pretty. It's well arranged, though I felt that some parts of the mix, an example being 1:28, felt like they were just too.. simple, like more could have been done in these sections with a little more work. The left hand of the piano consists a lot of just banging out the same chords again and again with no major variation, which I find grating on the ears. It's not too bad, considering the arragement is pretty clever, but as it stands, I think it's too bare and needs just that little more work on the arrangement to make it sound more fluent. At least, that was my major concern with the piece. Otherwise, a fairly nice mixing of the two themes. I look forward to hearing this one again when you resubmit it (hint.) NO Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
GrayLightning Posted January 10, 2006 Share Posted January 10, 2006 There's two ways of looking at this mix, one is the way liontamer did. But frankly, I don't think he listens to a lot of slow piano solo music. I can see where he's coming from though. Personally, I think the voicings and left hand needs to be ornamented more, as does your performance. I think pieces of this nature need strings or pads in the background to play supporting roles in terms of harmony and texture. The production is generally fine. There's nothing really bad going on here. Not superlative, but it's solid. My main qualm here is sometimes your stronger passages are too over the top. the f, ff, fff layers are a bit out of place in my view. While I appreciate the dynamic contrasts here, I still think it's particularly sharp. I think there's good arrangement going on here, but at other times it's also too straight forward in my view. I'd like to see more variation in the left hand, and more variation in terms of the arrangement concepts. Personally I really like this. It's very emotive and dramatic, within the context of its pensiveness. But it's still not there yet in my opinion. Keep working at it, you have a lot of potential. Borderline NO. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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