The Irony of a Hero (HoMM IV - Hope Remix)

[Iullus]

I've always loved the Heroes series, except Heroes IV. I played a lot of Heroes IV when I was younger, before I knew much about video games. Because of that the soundtrack was ingrained into my brain. I recently rediscovered the OST of it, and it blew me away. The ironic thing was that HoMMIV had the best music, but the worst gameplay. But let's get onto the track:

https://soundcloud.com/rimcast/iullus-the-irony-of-a-hero-wip

I slowed Hope down to 80 BPM and used various instruments that differ from the original arrangement, it also doesn't feature any vocals, since I don't possess any good software for that kind of thing (recommendations for some vocal/choir software are more than welcome). The original "Hope" is the first half of the song, then it continues on into something I composed (and sampled).

The transition between the two is janky at best at the moment, but I will fix that in the coming days. I will also add more orchestral percussion. That damned Irish low whistle will be replaced when I find something more suitable and less sucky sounding, the drums at the end are pretty placeholder for now (the drum samples in any case)

And, there you go. All suggestions, criticism et cetera are very much welcome.

[timaeus222]

This isn't bad. Although the harp is fake-sounding, the sequencing is leaning in the right direction towards realism, save for a few velocity stiffness issues in the triplet notes and the minimal differences in the RR timbres, if there are any at all. However, harps are nearly the easiest instrument to make sound humanized I suppose.

The strings are more prone to fakeness, but the sustained articulations don't sound as fake as the brass backing is, save for each note not ending a bit after the next note starts. The samples for the brass sound like horns, but not clearly what kind (French or English).

1:04 is where instruments start to sound surprisingly dry. Maybe it was because the strings filled in the ambience gap somewhat, earlier. The violin lead at 1:33 would be very hard to sequence well, so props for trying anyways.

2:07 also sounds dry since the harp is by itself. It doesn't hurt to have just enough reverb so that the spatial feel changes a little. It's enough if you can hear that it has some sort of decay. The instrument at 2:13 sounds extremely fake. I honestly can't tell if it's a messed-up bagpipe or a bad zourna, but my guess is a suuuuper fake zourna. The articulation for grace notes keeps repeating over and over again, so it's...

The violin lead at 3:02 is okay, as its volume is at least swelling somewhat, but the notes it plays are disconnected and sound like it's swelling from an internal envelope with no release. The drums at 3:12 honestly imply dance or dubstep somewhat, but not ethnic orchestral, due to their conveyed power, so they don't match the intended mood. Clickiness in the kick and Roland TR-808/909 snare qualities imply some sort of dubstep/EDM/hip-hop/rap genre.

Overall it boils down to mostly sample quality and sequencing issues, but some production issues that don't have to be addressed right now. It's okay as it is now, but it could be described as "lofi", "held back by sample quality", "not realizing its potential", etc. Keep at it.

Edited October 15, 2013 by timaeus222