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Xenogears, Civ 4, Chrono Cross - (You Give Me) Wings


Ivan Hakštok
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Link to the remix: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/93696675/you_give_me_wings.mp3

Sources:

Xenogears - Wings (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SOetrgQge8A)

Civilization 4 - Baba Yetu (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nb-jk6Ftx7o)

Chrono Cross - Dream Of The Shore (

)

This remix was my entry for the January DoD, and it ended up being 3rd (probably the highlight of my musical career so far XD). I got some feedback on DoD forums and IRC, and I think I fixed everything people thought was off, but it still wouldn't hurt to get additional feedback here before I submit this :)

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Nice! This reminds of Journey/Dream Theater, stuff like that.

The toms feel a bit too weak and the kick is a bit too clicky (that's a bit unfitting with this softer rock imo). Try to see if you can make both of them more powerful! You don't have that much stuff in the low end so it shouldn't be that hard.

The rest is pretty cool, nice guitar playing and the synth is very fitting. Source usage seems fine but I'm not that familiar with all the sources you used.

EDIT: Woops, meant kick, not snare.

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The snare is fine to me, it's just too soft IMO. The toms are a bit weak though. Either make those louder too or layer them.

1:52 feels a bit bare. Try to add a few more things there, like fret slides, or neck scrapes, or something.

2:14 feels either muddy or overcompressed. The bass might be too loud there, or maybe you forgot to sidechain. It's happened to me before; one time I thought I sidechained, but I forgot to select the sidechain signal number, so it's like it wasn't actually doing anything.

The lead guitar feels a bit distant most of the time, so see if you can bring it out a bit more. The open hi hats and cymbals too, near the end.

The ending feels a bit weird since you had toms end it, and still left in a tail. Personally I would have ended it after those tom hits.

Sounds good so far!

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I did some minor changes to the toms (panning, slightly increased volume), the link to the new version is the same as the first version (a big yay for dropbox updating capabilities)

Now about some other points:

- kick drum - I left it clicky because this was originally gonna be more metalish, but even after the change of genre I thought the sound fit the song. I tend not to have my sounds selection narrowed down by my genre choice :)

- break at 1:52 - I tried to add additional elements but nothing seemed to work. I tried a synth line, I tried a guitar solo which then goes into Baba Yetu when the kick&toms enter but nothing really fit in there so I just scrapped it all and left the guitars+ride+bass. There weren't any complaints about it at DoD if I remember correctly, so I decided to keep it as it is.

- overcompression/mudiness - I suppose the song does get muddy in a few places, but mixing all the elements in this song was pretty tough. The reason why it's most noticeable at 2:14 is because that's when the most stuff is playing simultaneously - synth, lead, rhythm, bass and 1/8 notes on kick&toms. I literally spent days mixing this and I don't think I can make it any better with the tools at my disposal.

- ending - toms are just a nod to my former band's drummer who insisted on having the "last word" in any song, I don't think there's any harm in leaving them as they are :D

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MOD REVIEW

Ooo, nice rocking feel to this one. The genre is working nice for the Wings portion of it, and the Baba Yetu portion fits in pretty seemlessly. I'm not gonna lie, though - I can't quite pull Chrono Cross out of this one. Not a problem, but... yeah, can't recognize it. Oh well.

At 2:03 - 2:14 the lead gets lost with the rhythm. I understand that you want to have the other lead jump out right after, so instead of raising it an octave or even increasing the volume, instead try backing off the rhythm guitar at that part. The two parts share the same sonic space, so you need to give the lead some more room, there.

The kick is a little too quiet, still. Personally, I like the click it's got - it just needs a little more salience, as it's not coming through as well as it should.

Otherwise, a fun little track. I suspect if you fix that part where the lead clashes with the rhythm and perhaps push up the bass drum volume a tad you'll get a front page post with this one. Nice work!

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I don't really have time for a super-critical listen but I just wanted to say that I loved this in the DoD compo and have been listening to it a lot since I dl'd it there :-)

Don't take this as judge-approval that it's a-okay for submittal necessarily, since I haven't checked it out with my critical ear yet, but as a casual listener I loved this. By far my favorite piece from you!

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