*NO* Final Fantasy 4 'Celestial Land'

[djpretzel]

LongeBane

---

Final Fantasy IV: Underworld theme, Airship, Chocobo theme, Overworld theme

Hello. I have always loved FFIV as a child, and loved the music just as much. Nobuo Uematsu is a wonderful composer, and I would gladly make a tribute to his works if I could. Here I have arranged some of the beloved and memorable songs of FFIV. This involved over a month of careful work, but I am finally finished, and would like to share with you this song. Enjoy

[Liontamer]

http://snesmusic.org/spcsets/ff4.rsn - "Land of Dwarves" (ff4-34.spc) [:00-1:47], "The Airship" (ff4-29.spc) [1:47-2:13], "Chocobo Forest" (ff4-s-01.spc) [2:14-2:32], "Chocobo ~ Chocobo" (ff4-11.spc) [2:32-3:24] & "Main Theme" (ff4-07.spc) [3:27-4:51]

While this was denser/richer than your previous submission, Long, I felt like a lot of criticisms from the last time around are still there in this new submission. I'm mainly talking about the lack of realism in the way the samples are used (which is less of an issue this time around, but still sounds cheaply orchestrated) and the potential medleyitis approach of the arrangement.

Browse the ReMixing forum and look for info on how to give your orchestrations more body, find other free samples to work with, as well as create much better humanization in the performance (which this completely lacks).

Frankly, there's no reason to point at minutia here when this is such a broad problem. It's unfortunate these issues are present, as they undermine some otherwise very spirited writing that has the potential to sound great and would fit well on an FFIV arrange album.

As for the medleyitis, that's not quite a killer for me, as I felt that 1) you worked hard to try and personalize an otherwise conservative set of arangements, and 2) abrupt transitions in orchestrated music can work well enough. Others may take bigger issue here, and I can see why for some of these transitions. The ending as well was very poor, and didn't resolve the track in a satisfactory way, IMO.

Looking forward to GrayLightning's opinion on this, as he could give more detail on how to improve it. The way you handle production really needs to be reasessed from the ground up, or your material is always going to sound lacking.

NO

[The Orichalcon]

Right off the bat, the percussion has too much percussion on it, sounds fake and beginner-ish, it keeps that wet-reverb sound right the way through, which make it sound like you're listening to the piece down a long hallway rather than through crisp clear speakers. This is especially noticeable when the toms come in to do their stuff, rather than being audible and powerful as toms should be, they sound muddy and hidden in the murky depths of the mix.

Moving off the percussion, the mix has a long flat sound to it right the way through. Some bits sounded interesting and at least showed some promise, the way the chocobo section was arranged in particular stood out for me, it was a little basic in the choice of instrumentation, but it was arranged well for what you did use. Unfortunately the next section of the main theme didn't utilise any really new ideas, keeping the same strings and wind instrument droning on.

The piece finishes really abruptly too, even if the rest of the piece was superb, I'd ask you to take the mix back and give it a proper ending. I feel that the ending of a piece is in most ways the most important part of the mix, as it's the last thing the listener hears, and as such the most memorable part of the mix.

As Larry already mentioned, the production is the problem here, and until you learn how to master better, the pieces will sound flat and unrealistic.

NO

[zircon]

I really like the writing and the arrangement here overall, though the ending is very abrupt, and the intro is somewhat lackluster. You could probably spice things up a little bit in terms of the "texture".. eg. adding more harmonies, making things sound more full. You don't necessarily have to add more instruments to do this, it's just a matter of trial & error unless you're a master of orchestration.

I would refine your production and maybe work on making the texture thicker as the arrangement goes on. I like what you have so far, some just a little improvement would go a long way.

NO

[GrayLightning]

I can see where the other judges are coming from with the meldyitis comments, but it doesn't bother me too much. It seems like you listen to a lot of Uematsu music. His arranged albums in particular have a very distinct structure in the meldey aspect that I can clearly here present in the structure of this mix. This is an educated approach in my opinion, on the surface.

I strongly disagree with saying that the percussion needs to be sharp. I do agree you overdid it with the reverb, but a lot of orchestral/symphonic pieces have the percussion this far back. I'd personally reduce the predelay and wet ratio some more. The strings need to be more upfront with less reverb.

Generally though, some of the same issues that plagued your older submission are present here, to a lesser degree. There's not enough supporting material, chords or underlying instrumentation or percussion. At times it just sounds too sparse, thin and over reverbed.

One thing you might want to consider is varying your snare pattern velocities. They sound stuck in the same dynamics during the repeated notes. It sounds a bit fake.

I'd work more on the ending as well, it was a real let down compared to the whole piece.

I think this has a lot of potential. I hope you consider resubmitting it. I generally like the arrangement and orchestration. I think Liontamer said one thing perfectly about this, this is very spirited work that is undermined by the littany of issues we all detailed.

NO, please resubmit

PS really liked all the chromatic and regular percussive section at the 2:35 area. Really neat stuff going on there.