Gerudo Valley (The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time)

[mirev]

SOURCE:

As always, it's free. Anybody think it'll make the cut?

-----JourneyJay's My Gerudo-----

From the title: "The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past" 1998

https://soundcloud.com/journeyjay/my-gerudo

Edited March 4, 2014 by mirev

[arglactable]

Overall, I think this is a pretty good deviation from the source material in terms of basic harmony and structure

Right off the bat, that piano part sounds incredibly stiff and artificial throughout. Right now, it very clearly sounds like a mouse-sequenced performance. Some velocity variety, beat emphasis consistent with the meter (beats 1 and 3 in 4/4 time), and perhaps a tasteful touch of rhythmic sloppiness would help a lot. Given the prevalence of this instrument in the track, it would be a pretty major change.

In terms of instrument choice, I think you could use something to fill the frequency range between your bass parts on your melody (maybe some harmony) in a lot of the track. A pad could do the trick. It would also give you a bit more timbral variety, because you have a lot of sharp, plucky sounds with short attack.

Your percussion part is pretty good, but I think it could be a bit more forward in the mix and I would personally add some variety to the hi hat part (some open hits), because straight 16th notes isn't terribly interesting, especially given the kind of loop-oriented structure of the piece. You might also consider putting some snare hits a beats other than 3, for pretty much the same reason.

I'm not a big fan of the fade out ending as a rule. It usually ends up sounding like you didn't bother to write a legitimate cadence. Your source may be a looped track, but your remix should have an ending.

[mirev]

Can you explain "Cadence"?

Honestly, I was attempting to do something new with this track. That fade out is the new thing. The inspiration comes from essentially all popular 80's rock songs...they almost always continue in a seemingly never ending loop that begins to fade as it starts repeating near the end. That last bar is unnecessary but the fade makes it acceptable.

[arglactable]

A cadence is just a harmonic progression that indicates the end of a phrase, section, piece, etc. You could go into the specific classical cadences (authentic, half, plagal cadences), but I basically just mean some variation of your progression that tells your listener that they've reached end of the track.

I think that fade-out style works a bit better with a more traditional pop song structure (though, it's still not my personal preference). Your remix is basically an "A" section, followed by a bridge back into the "A" section. Attempting that kind of fading chorus without the contrasting verse seems kind of awkward to me. It doesn't sound like the ending of a pop song as much as the beginning of a loop fading out much like simple album edits of looped vgm.

Just my thoughts on the matter.