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Corridors of Time celtic-ish remix


Ivan Hakštok
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Link to the remix: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/93696675/corridors.mp3

Yeah this source has been done to death but yesterday I had this idea for a remix inspired by Yasunori Mitsuda's celtic-style works such as Creid and An Cinniuint.

I need to humanize the instruments a bit, and record live guitars and bass. There's almost no mixing done here except for the panning, but I thought this WIP turned out pretty good and wanted to share it :D

Comments/critiques/feedback are welcome!

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I love the intro. I love how it fades into being, with the low drone-note. Very well done. But the percussion that comes in at 57' is off-setting and doesn't do justice to the flow of the piece itself. One thing about Celtic styled music is that it has smooth percussion, usually something with a deeper resonance too. What you're using in this is far too choppy. The same can be said for the bass as well.

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@Garpocalypse: I have one repeating pattern for the hand percussion, I was planning on making several variations once I start humanizing other instruments. The bagpipes are from the library that comes with Kontakt Player, but if you meant the low growling sound that plays from the very start, that's just a synth :P

@timaeus: Yeah I tried messing a bit with note start times to give it a bit of variation, but then I repeated the same pattern so each one has the same two or three out-of-rhythm notes :tomatoface:

@Trinity Dragon: Well I tried adding some progressive elements in the song (like lots of time signature changes), and I also wanted the drums to follow the lead a bit. So this is more like... "progressive celtic"-ish. Is that even a thing? XD

But I guess I could do something about the drums' sound, they sound a bit lifeless.

Thanks for the feedback guys, I'll try to finish this as soon as possible.

Edited by Ivan Hakštok
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While the drums and bass that come in at 0:57 detract from the celtic sound, I disagree with Trinity and think that it sounds nice. Sounds modern, I guess.

I'd try to hop back and forth between this modern sound and the celtic feel in your mix; I think that could work well :)

Definitely add fills and general humanization to the percussion, including the bongos or whatever those are.

Good WIP so far!

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Ok, the song is updated, same link: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/93696675/corridors.mp3

I still need to do some minor tweaks to the arrangement and humanize the instruments a bit (especially the percussion), but this is 90% done. I'm still thinking whether to play live bass/guitars here or not because I'm really lazy about recording these days. :tomatoface:

As always, comments and critiques are welcome!

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The rhythm issue is gone on the bongos.

Nice bass tone so far, even if you didn't do live yet. If you can imitate that bass tone for the live recording, that would be great. It kind of reminds me of the Jaco fretless bass.

The violin at 2:59 is pretty fake-sounding, and I think you know that. The sequencing gives it a weird retrigger-like envelope effect on each note.

Otherwise it sounds great. At least, on my bad headphones.

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Wow, this is very good! What sample is the harp? I love how it sounds slightly detuned or something.

I don't dig the drums much, I get that you want to achieve a "prog" feel, but they sound so unfitting to me... I think this would sound much better with standard drums instead (like it does after the beggining!).

By the 2:20 mark the song feels a bit stale, you could try a tone change or something there. Or maybe mute the percussion and harp for a while and let another instrument take the main spot for a small while, I don't know.

In any case, I love the mood of the song. Very unique for such a remixed tune!

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  • 1 month later...
Link to the remix: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/93696675/corridors.mp3

Yeah this source has been done to death but yesterday I had this idea for a remix inspired by Yasunori Mitsuda's celtic-style works such as Creid and An Cinniuint.

I need to humanize the instruments a bit, and record live guitars and bass. There's almost no mixing done here except for the panning, but I thought this WIP turned out pretty good and wanted to share it :D

Comments/critiques/feedback are welcome!

I dearly love Chrono Trigger so whenever I see a Chrono Trigger remix on this forum, I absolutely must check it out. And you didn't disappoint! This is quite excellent! My only suggestion is recording live guitar and violin.

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  • 2 weeks later...

A/B this song with Mitsuda's Dajil arrangement from Creid or a similar song that has great sounding drums. I think you can EQ & Compress your drums to make them really kick, right now they sound wimpy. Even the handdrums, maybe you can add a little brightness and punch to them. Give your kick some thud at 70 hz and give your snare some snap at 8khz, add compression to them and a bit of reverb on the snare.

Edited by michael-collins
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The Dajil song I mentioned below is actually a great example as it starts out with hand drums, listen to how they pop! They're very bright and in your face and have a satisfying "clomp" to them but they sit great in the mix. A/B with the song again, and try to get your hand drums to sound like his, as well as your drumset. (If you have the mp3 of that song - Xenogears Creid Dajil - open it in your sound editor, cut out a short part that features hand drums, and save that as a separate file, and cut out another short part that features the drumset, and now you can A/B your song with those on repeat until you get them to sound the same. I'm no expert but when I do that kind of thing my shit starts sounding way better. If you want it to sound like the pros, well, you gotta compare it to the pros...

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The Dajil song I mentioned below is actually a great example as it starts out with hand drums, listen to how they pop! They're very bright and in your face and have a satisfying "clomp" to them but they sit great in the mix. A/B with the song again, and try to get your hand drums to sound like his, as well as your drumset. (If you have the mp3 of that song - Xenogears Creid Dajil - open it in your sound editor, cut out a short part that features hand drums, and save that as a separate file, and cut out another short part that features the drumset, and now you can A/B your song with those on repeat until you get them to sound the same. I'm no expert but when I do that kind of thing my shit starts sounding way better. If you want it to sound like the pros, well, you gotta compare it to the pros...

You say all those things, but you're assuming he's guaranteed to "get" what you're suggesting. Clomp? Honestly, never heard of that term. Hakštok might not hear things the same way, and I highly doubt we two hear things the same way either. When you give feedback, it's a good idea to keep things simple, familiar, or suggest more than one method of adjusting something to your preference.

Edited by timaeus222
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I'm very familiar with Dajil and this song was indeed inspired by Creid (I listen to the album almost daily) but I'm not trying to sound exactly like Mitsuda. Songs on Creid are much more dynamic and energetic than this one in writing, not only production.

Anyway, I don't think I ever posted the completed song so here you go:

https://soundcloud.com/haki-1/time-changes

I'm not planning on submitting this as it is my first attempt at this genre, maybe I'll redo it from scratch in the future. We'll see. :)

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The percussion does seem to have a few issues with latency as stated above, but this is sounding VERY promising again, as stated above lol. My only advice it the EQ'ing could use some tweeking in the first half of the song, an also around 2.55 the harp panned to the left (or the right not sure if my headphones were in the correct ears)really could do with being less single sided and could benefit with some more eq'ing and tinkering with the reverb. I think that could really make it sound more empowered especially if you maybe up the bass a bit with some more variety around that part. also possibly might be worth playing with some more samples for the harp as it feels like its very synthetic while trying to sound legit.

Ill be following this one! great work!

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