Phantasy Star II - Rise or Fall

[Byproduct]

Hi!

So I'm making a sort of Drum'n'bass meets guitar remix of this tune here:

. A friend of mine turned 30 and I gave him a remix wish (of any old video game) for a birthday present. He chose this one.

Remix here: (link)

Taking a few liberties because the original is just a 54-second loop.

There's a few details still to work on (intro and outro particularly), but I think it's getting pretty close to the final version. Anyway, if anyone wants to give any feedback, that'd be awesome! I was thinking of releasing the last version sometime next week, so I'll still have plenty of time to take any suggestions into account.

Also, do you think I should submit it to OCR? I'm not sure what kind of music they're looking for these days - the last time I tried submitting something was back in 2008.

Edited June 16, 2013 by Byproduct
Updated link to the newest version

[timaeus222]

This is pretty catchy. The arrangement could be shortened to maintain its catchiness. Gotta cut out some stuff! Try crossing over to a new genre.

Sounds a tad muddy in the low end. Did you sidechain the kick to the bass yet? Howz about doing some smooth-sloped noise gating or bass (frequency) compression on the kick? Snare needs some more high end to really own it.

Drumwork is alright, but it needs some more (logical, fitting) fills and a more progressive structure. Right now it's what people call autopilot.

The first saw lead is great, but it would be even cooler with modwheel vibrato and some portamento!

1:06 starts to get really crowded, so things are way too loud. Try turning the whole song down by around 5 dB! Brickwall limiters are a no-no in my book unless you have control.

1:58 is a little simple with the PWM synths, but it's okay as long as the drums are more audible. The synths are taking ova.

The ending needs more finesse. Dropping things out is almost like fading out... except you chose to slow things down a lot and drop tunings a lot as well. Try coming up with something more creative. Sounds great so far, finish it! Maybe this will help.

Edited June 1, 2013 by timaeus222

[Kumori]

Love the source and love the way you took it to the 21st century. I can't give you any detailed or expertise feedback since I'm still learning, but I can only say that yeah, the drums in this remix are obviously something you want to add variation to, I agree with timaeus, and I also agree on the "finish this!!!" part! love the energy!!!

[Byproduct]

Thanks a lot for the feedback, much appreciated!

Especially the portamento/vibra was like yeah, why didn't I!

There is already some sidechain, and I can increase it a bit, but I'm not a fan of an audible sidechain effect though.

Cool track, that Zircon one. Anyway, I'll take all your suggestions into consideration when making a new version. Coming soon.

Oh and the original link works again (domain expired on it, oops).

Edited June 2, 2013 by Byproduct

[timaeus222]

The sidechaining was just a reminder. It's kinda hard to hear sidechaining on DnB.

[Byproduct]

Here's a new version now! (link)

Changes thanks to timaeus (& Kumori):

- a little more sidechain in the low end

- louder snare (esp. hi freq)

- louder drums at around ~2min (although they're still supposed to be secondary)

- some portamento notes in the lead

- some more variety in the drums

Also, BPM from 155 to 165 (after listening to some DnB I felt like it needed a tempo boost

plus a few little tweaks and fixes here and there

The ending is still as it was, having a little trouble coming up with fresh ideas there. Also I wanted to add vibrato to the lead, but for some reason I can't seem to get quadraSID's midi control to cooperate with me. (And I haven't found a decent, free stereo vibrato VST - if you know one, I'd love a link!).

Any more feedback, or should I put it out to the interwebs?

Thanks again.

Edited June 3, 2013 by Byproduct

[timaeus222]

Okay, it's sounding better for sure. It would really benefit from some minor detail-oriented improvements. Just a few last things from me:

The kick is a little clearer now, but there's something else you can do that can make it even clearer. You can increase the treble just a little bit more, and do a notch filter on the bass where the kick is, and a thin peaking boost where you had notch filtered the bass. Usually this is near 80~140Hz.

It would be interesting to hear how much clarity can be achieved simply by panning more creatively at, for example, 1:06. It can be as simple as separating the lead harmony into two lead instruments and panning one left and one right. Even to the extent of 16~40% would make a difference in the clarity and leave some room for the kick as well since the kick is logically in the center.

I still think the vibrato would make a huge difference. I checked out quadraSID to see if it can do vibrato in any way, and it seems it can. Are you sure you're doing the MIDI control correctly? You may have forgotten to assign the modwheel to what is being modulated, or maybe the assignment is dependent on the mix level and it happens to be untouched at 0%. By the way, I'm imagining vibrato that is extreme like this:

https://soundcloud.com/zircon-1/augment at 1:21

It's like an LFO on the pitch to the extent of +/- 2 whole steps, or something close to that, with the LFO amplitude modulated by the modwheel or some other MIDI control parameter.

1:43 makes for a neat transition to me, great work! The only thing I would have wanted was maybe a cymbal at 1:51 or some sort of distant crash/white noise. Something to connect the two sections even more solidly.

2:14 would be a great time to pan the PWM detuned saws wider (creative delay) with automation (maybe 40~60% in extent), if possible, or in some other way, to make room for the lead guitar (which sounds panned center). It sounds really crowded and a tad too bright at 2:40~3:30 when both the synths and guitar are playing at the same time. My headphones are quite clear in the midrange, but the clarity is still a little iffy to me.

--------------

0:16 makes a huge difference to me, great use of the portamento! 2:08 had a great use of the drums, and is what I would have been looking for. Guitar is highly expressive to me (great tremolo picking and hammer-ons), it just needs to be brought out a little more with that panning.

for how you can make your synths more expressive. 0:35, 0:55, 1:36, and 2:32~2:39, in particular.

Tempo boost makes sense to me. I wrote something DnB that's 160 BPM recently.

Edited June 3, 2013 by timaeus222

[Byproduct]

Thanks once again! I'll try these things out.

As for the vibrato, I'm going to need a stereo vibrato effect (e.g. VST), or alternatively, I need to figure out what's wrong with QuadraSID. I already asked at ReFX and a couple of other places so an answer may be on its way.

The keyboard works otherwise fine (sends notes, pitchbends etc) but for some reason in the modulation matrix, none of the assignments of MIDI-Ctrl (0-127) have any effect to anything at all (pitch or anything else), everything just acts as 0 no matter what I do with the keyboard. Hoping it's some elusive setting I just haven't found yet.

I also tried splitting the signal and using mono vibrato effects, but that made vibrato phase out of sync (and sounded otherwise bad too), and I also tried automating channel pitch in FL, but that was buggy and just a bad solution in general. I could also go with some other synth besides quadrasid for the lead, but it's already layered from 3 quadrasids and I like its sound so I'm hoping for an easier solution first.

Edited June 3, 2013 by Byproduct

[timaeus222]

I also tried splitting the signal and using mono vibrato effects, but that made vibrato phase out of sync (and sounded otherwise bad too), and I also tried automating channel pitch in FL, but that was buggy and just a bad solution in general. I could also go with some other synth besides quadrasid for the lead, but it's already layered from 3 quadrasids and I like its sound so I'm hoping for an easier solution first.

I don't think I know of many free VSTs with stereo vibrato. Maybe TAL-Noisemaker, but aside from that, not many are actually easy to use. I just use Zebra2.

[Byproduct]

Ha, solution found - finally! Vibrato coming up in the next version.

In case someone has the same problem (QuadraSID and MIDI in FL) and stumbles across this thread trying to find the solution, here:

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/92244749/misc/Quadramidihelp.png

This is a lot of derail but I hate it when people post "I got it!" and then don't post the solution.

Edited June 3, 2013 by Byproduct

[timaeus222]

Ha, solution found - finally! Vibrato coming up in the next version.

In case someone has the same problem (QuadraSID and MIDI in FL) and stumbles across this thread trying to find the solution, here:

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/92244749/misc/Quadramidihelp.png

This is a lot of derail but I hate it when people post "I got it!" and then don't post the solution.

Oh, okay. I guess the problem was not that assigning it didn't work, but that it was confusing how it should be assigned. I couldn't find a good way to do it since the demo page screenshot cut out the mod matrix (), but it turns out the Pitch control was the one. Yeah, that's why I love Mod Matrices.

[Elrinth]

I absolutely love what byproduct already did with the song, and I downloaded it and made just some jamming during the ending cause I thought it's current fade out ending needed a bit work, perhaps there is some idea here?. https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/5145312/WIP/weird-o-lympics/Untitled_-_2013-06-04_03-49-49.mp3

Really, really looking forwards to the finished product. Really love the original song despite never having actually played the older Phantasy Star games very much.

Edited June 4, 2013 by Elrinth

[Byproduct]

Alright, new version up! here

- Pretty much everyone I sent it to said the ending sucked, so I wrote some new stuff there. The previous ending is now a transition to a third run on the theme, and the overall length went up to ~5:30

- Stole a few details from Elrinth's ideas

It would be interesting to hear how much clarity can be achieved simply by panning more creatively - - it can be as simple as separating the lead harmony into two lead instruments and panning one left and one right.

That sort of a thing was already in place, but I made it a little wider and it did help somewhat.

I still think the vibrato would make a huge difference.

There now is some (particularly audible around 1:50 ->)

2:14 would be a great time to pan the PWM detuned saws wider - - if possible, or in some other way, to make room for the lead guitar

Ended up taking the synth backing of the early part of the solo away altogether.

There's something else you can do that can make it [kick] even clearer. You can increase the treble just a little bit more, and do a notch filter on the bass where the kick is, and a thin peaking boost where you had notch filtered the bass. Usually this is near 80~140Hz.

Done.

+ a few more details and tweaking here and there, as usual.

[timaeus222]

Sounding great! The only thing I'd do now is slightly low pass the PWM saws at about 17000~18500Hz with a slope of "2" or "Steep 4" (relative to Steep 6 and Steep . It sounds pretty bright now, especially at 2:42. The tremolo picking guitar is a bit hard to hear behind the backing synths.

Edited June 8, 2013 by timaeus222

[AngelCityOutlaw]

I have nothing to add except that this track is on the kicking end of ass kicking.

Great work =D

[Byproduct]

I have nothing to add except that this track is on the kicking end of ass kicking.

Great work =D

So, it's not ass, then! Good!

It was the main lead being hissy, I did a filter on it as Timaeus suggested + some extra filter during the solo. Thanks a lot once again.

Newest version here.

I flagged it for mod review. I can't be very objective of my own tunes, so I'd appreciate anyone's opinion on if you think it's good for submitting.

[Byproduct]

Apparently no mods around, so I just went ahead and submitted it. Marked it as finished too.

Final version now in Soundcloud.

[Kumori]

Love the final version! Good luck in getting it posted in OCR! It surely made it to my playlist!

Edited June 17, 2013 by Kumori

[AngelsDen]

So powerful *-*

Good luck Byproduct!!!!

[Byproduct]

Thank you