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*NO* Deus Ex 'Sadevakio'


Liontamer
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Your ReMixer name: Eino Keskitalo

Your real name: Eino Keskitalo

Your email address:

Your website: https://sites.google.com/site/evktalo/

Your userid: 20708

Name of game(s) arranged: Deus Ex (PC/Windows)

Name of arrangement: Sadevakio

Name of individual song(s) arranged: UNATCO

(http://vgmdb.net/album/910)

Link to the original soundtrack:

Your own comments about the mix, for example the inspiration behind

it, how it was made, etc:

This piece is a part of the PC ReMix initative

(http://ocremix.org/forums/showthread.php?t=38300).

Here's another People's Remixing Competition piece from me. I started this one way back in PRC199 which was a very popular round. I've since extended the structure and spent hours and hours tuning the arrangement, mixing and effect automation in Renoise. To get started in the competition, I grabbed Mazedude's Zombie's Ate My Tracker for the sounds - he has the .IT file available on the American Album site. Thanks for that! Many of the samples are actually 8-bit samples from various old school modules, which I took as a challenge to make them sound good. After hours and hours of (very educational) tweaking, twisting and polishing, I'm not sure if I'd do such a challenge again. I like the resulting tracker aesthetic, hope it works to other ears as well.

The title "Sadevakio" is Finnish for something like "The Rain Constant", trying to make some sort of a wordplay how it's always raining in cyberpunk settings.

Source usage:

The main riff from the source is used practically throughout, altered to 3/4 in the intro and outro, and transposed lower in the middle 4/4 part. The melody at 0:23 in the source (

) is used from 1:40 onwards pretty much to the end (where it's altered to 3/4). Also the figure at 0:31 in the source (
) is used here and there, usually at an end of a part or some other transition/breakpoint (for example at 00:35, 01:58 and 02:18.. that might be all the cases actually).

I couldn't quite make out how the main riff goes in the source, so I used the MIDI provided for the compo. It actually had the riff a fifth lower than it should be. Big thanks to Gario for pointing this out during the competition. I was slow to react to the intel though, and had already extended the melody and written countermelodies.. and correcting the riff messed them up. So, I decided to add a part (the intro) with correct pitch and consider the "wrong" pitch a personalisation of the source, if an unintended one. And now that I listen to the source, I probably heard the 0:31 bit wrong too. Oh well.

A thank-you list: All the commenters from PRC199. All the workshop forum commenters. DjMorkam and Pleiade for supportive feedback. Gario for noting the source/MIDI disrepancy + workshop mod review. Rozovian for the workshop mod review. (Gotta love the workshop mod reviews. Extremely useful service.) My fiancée Pirjo for support, critiques and insights once again invaluable to me and for the development of this piece.

The Renoise project file if there's anyone with Renoise & interest:

And thaat's it. Enjoy!

--Eino

- better video of source
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Though I get that this is meant to have a throwback feel of sorts, some of the sounds felt kind of bland and unexpressive, and the mixing wasn't where it needed to be.

I'm feeling the concept, and up until 1:12, I was on board. Then we hit the first brief instance of parts competing with each other, and really hit a snag at 2:00.

When more elements are added from 1:20-1:31 and 2:00-2:25, the lead was flat in comparison, and the textures seemed busy, unbalanced, and unfocused. I LIKE the supporting writing ideas, but some of those parts need to be EQed so they're not stepping on the lead. Quiet, but clever usage of the source's countermelody (:21 of the source) at 1:40.

Interesting transitions from 3/4 to 4/4 and back to 3/4. 3:14's section also just seems muddy with the flat lead and the supporting synths bleeding into each other.

I could be articulating the issue about the leads incorrectly, so I'm hoping a J more savy on production can clarify what's going on here. To me, the arrangement's creative, but the mixing and expressiveness of the leads needs to be improved before this is ready. I loved your Castlevania 64 sub, so definitely don't be discouraged here, I think you're doing some good work overall. This one has potential, and the arrangement is in the right direction.

NO (resubmit)

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Really liking the concept of an electro-pop take on the Unatco theme. I'm a big deus ex fan what can I say :).

Wasn't really digging the crash cymbal hits spread throughout the track. I think it's a combination of overuse as well as the tone of it just sticking out in a bad way over the track.

Synths seemed to clash at 1:13, both in writing and in tone. If you're going to have another lead on counter-melody, I'd recommend giving it a contrasting texture to the melodic lead to better avoid clashing.

Love the bass work, love the synth toms. I don't think the leads bugged me in context. I mean, in ye olde synthpop, fairly flat lead tones were the norm, so I don't really have a problem with them.

I'd cut back a bit on the reverb decay of the backing pad-ish synths parts and maybe simplify the writing as well - it just is making things sound messy in this section.

Low end got really messy towards the end of the track. I'm on my mixing headphones, which give really good low-end response, so I'm hearing a lot of stuff in the 20-40hz range from 2:30 on. Each one of those big hits on the downbeats has a lot of sub clutter, which is fighting with the bass synth. It gets worse at 3:42, when you introduce another bass part. I'd roll off the low end freqs from the hits at the very least to help clean this up.

I know I gave a lot of crits above, but I really like the concept and direction you're taking this. Totally digging the creative ways you utilized various themes from the original, so I'm really hoping you bring this one back soon.

NOresubmit, please

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The intro is a bit slow but once the groove picks up it's pretty cool. I think sonically you manage to leave space without it sounding too empty.

The groove is pretty choppy and busy at times, I think you could have benefitted from simplifying it, maybe a four on floor kick accentuated by syncopated rhythms on a snare which are currently played by the kick. The rhythm just gets a bit lost and I can't follow along that easily.

The main issue I have is all the tempo changes just don't work for this piece. It wants to be a groovy dance sort of track, but when the tempo keeps jumping around it messes with the energy.

NO

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