*NO* Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time 'Nabooru'

[DragonAvenger]

https://soundcloud.com/nachoswolf/nabooru

ReMixer name: Nachoswolf

Real name: Jonathan J.

Email:

Userid: 47595

Game arranged: The legend of Zelda - Ocarina of time

Name of arrangement: Nabooru

Name of individual songs arranged: Gerudo Valley

Gerudo valley is a song I really enjoy jamming around on the keyboard, and some night I felt an urge to make an arrangement around this song, so I sat through the night and worked. It turned out better than expected, and now I want to 'test' it through you to see what a professional judge panel might think. The song is named after the character Nabooru who's like the gerudo leader under ganondorf.

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Edited February 28, 2014 by Liontamer
closed decision

[OceansAndrew]

The booming drums are really nice, but when the strings come in, they feel weak, thin, and not in the same room; i'd push them back a bit in the stereo field and increase the number of them to be more ensemble. If you want the sharp contrast, you can keep the soloed versions in the mix as well, but a blend is needed. The variations on the theme were really nice, and the track evolved pretty well.

Everything is clicking except for the solo strings; I recommend replacing them with something a bit more lush, or doubling the parts up to create a more cohesive soundscape. The percussion is sweet, the arrangement is nice, it just needs a bit of sample cleanup. This is actually really close to passing as-is, and just needs a minor tuneup to make it over the bar for me.

No, please resubmit

[Chimpazilla]

Yay, Damage drums! I love 'em. Very cool arrangement on a great source.

I feel like the entire track has too much reverb, that could be dialed back quite a bit, especially for any leads. Also the reverb can use a lowcut, it is bordering on muddy.

The strings are noticeably fake in timbre and sequencing but it doesn't bother me terribly. Andrew might be right about using a more ensemble patch to thicken the timbre a bit.

I think all the instruments need another pass at the eq, I'm hearing a lot of low-mid mud in the bass and lower instrumentation, especially noticeable in the low bells, low pizz strings, and the guitar.

I'm hearing borderline overcompression in the heavy portion before the outro. Make sure you aren't overdriving your limiter.

NO (resubmit)

[Liontamer]

Pretty mechanical-sounding strings attacks at :11 that were very, very exposed. There was some light reverb on 'em, but otherwise, you could hear how rigid the timing was throughout the track, and I had more of a problem with that than the other judges. There needs to be more sonic glue to properly pad out the soundscape and give the strings something to sit in and mask the fakeness a bit.

Also, having the attacks like this the entire way also undermined what little dynamic contrast was in the composition.

There was some distortion around the 1-minute mark, but man, this got pretty cramped, distorted and buzzy from 2:03-2:27. What HAPPENED at 3:11 with that abrasive, dissonant instrumentation? Just an awkward addition for the finish that merely barreled over the string lead and didn't click with anything else there. There was no need to mix it that way. Then the ending cut off abruptly in the middle of the fade, which was sloppy.

There are some interpretive ideas arrangement-wise, so I'm not trying to rip on this piece overall, but anything going in the right direction's completely hampered by really weak execution. The textures are just thin and dry (effects notwithstanding), there's needless clipping/distortion, and there's imbalanced mixing. Sorry, Johnathan, it's just very unpolished so far and sounds like a work-in-progress that's more of a compositional sketch without any detail work on the production side.

NO