Silence (F-Zero)

[OpusScience]

Hey guys,

Here's our take on Silence from F-Zero. It's part of an album project called The Opus Science Entertainment System that we're working on. An album of SNES music remakes/remixes. It's the flip side to our SEGA album we did. Anyway, I'm sticking it up for Mod Review. But if anyone else has any thoughts, critiques etc, please feel free to comment.

Thanks and enjoy,

OSC

SoundCloud

Edited July 6, 2014 by XPRTNovice

[Gario]

MOD REVIEW

Ooo, F-Zero, that's a game that doesn't get too much attention on here (at least as far as I can see). Nice, let's see what we've got.

Very fun choice of synths. They do seem pretty dry and vanilla. The synth brass and bass in particular are very dry and MIDI-sounding, so you might want to consider using some better 80's instruments in order to achieve a thicker, richer and ultimately more fitting sound. I haven't done much searching myself (being a Reason user, it's not something that I know much about), but I suspect a cheap/free solution to those particular sounds are out there.

The arrangement is pretty conservative, for an OCR song. While having a cover isn't a bad thing, OCR requires more interpretation to the arrangement. At the end you have some really cool wankery and solo-ing (that you fade out on) - more of that, and changing the arrangement up here and there will be necessary if you plan on using this as an OCR submission.

Production is clean and awesome - that is something you have down in spades. I like that part, for sure

Cool song, good choice of source, but I don't think OCR would accept it, if you were to submit it, for the reasons I stated above. The song is pretty cool in it's own right, especially that square soloing toward the end (I was bobbing my head to that), but OCR is looking for more interpretation in an arrangement than what you've provided.

[OpusScience]

Brilliant! Thank you very much for your feedback. Pretty new to the whole OCR thing, so it's nice to get a better understanding of how things work and what it is you're after.

MOD REVIEW

Very fun choice of synths. They do seem pretty dry and vanilla. The synth brass and bass in particular are very dry and MIDI-sounding, so you might want to consider using some better 80's instruments in order to achieve a thicker, richer and ultimately more fitting sound. I haven't done much searching myself (being a Reason user, it's not something that I know much about), but I suspect a cheap/free solution to those particular sounds are out there.

Interesting. The synth sounds I think you're referring to were created using a Roland Super JV1080. Don't know if you know it, but it's from the early 90s and has got a lot of tone palettes that are based on the old Juno and Jupiter as well as others such as the 101 and more. The bass and lead lines are from this. There's a Novation Ultranova in there on some sounds and a Nord Electro 2 for the electric piano. The drums are a mixture of Native Instrument Battery samples and some we've harvested over the years.

The reverb is a convolution reverb of an old Lexicon Digital reverb unit from the 80s (a large plate setting).

MOD REVIEW

Production is clean and awesome - that is something you have down in spades. I like that part, for sure

Thanks man

MOD REVIEW

The arrangement is pretty conservative, for an OCR song. While having a cover isn't a bad thing, OCR requires more interpretation to the arrangement. At the end you have some really cool wankery and solo-ing (that you fade out on) - more of that, and changing the arrangement up here and there will be necessary if you plan on using this as an OCR submission.

Cool song, good choice of source, but I don't think OCR would accept it, if you were to submit it, for the reasons I stated above. The song is pretty cool in it's own right, especially that square soloing toward the end (I was bobbing my head to that), but OCR is looking for more interpretation in an arrangement than what you've provided.

Agreed. It is a simple structure. Love the chorus on this song a lot! And therefore could happily just jam along to the chorus all day. I guess this was our thinking.

When we've made video game music in the past, we tend to work to the ethos of pay homage to the awesome composition as opposed to try and make it too much our own with more extreme arrangement and things. I think we worry we might detract too much from the original perhaps? I guess this is kind of a different approach to the Remix philosophy. Perhaps it's more like re-imagined as opposed to remixed...?

That said, we have done more diverse video game remakes where the arrangement is much more tinkered with and varied including some medleys of sorts. Might stick some of these up at some point in the future. Would be interesting to get your opinion on them. Also nearly finished a track from Yoshi's Island that's perhaps a little more "out there". When there's not so much to go in the original track, you're forced to explore more aren't you... So we might run a few older tracks past you guys as well the Yoshi's Island track we're working on in the future at some point. The feedback is very insightful. Even if not looking to get on OCR per-se, it's helpful as you're basically a totally objective pair of ears with the position to speak frankly and from a point of knowledge and understanding.

So many thanks for taking the time to feed back to us on this. It's very much appreciated and we shall look back through our work and see if there is anything that might better take your fancy.

Warmest regards,

OSC

[Gario]

Glad I could help

On the synths, just to clarify, the bass is one that you could probably get away with due to style, but that Roland Super JV1080 brass synth is actually VERY close to the GM sound used for brass synth. I completely believe that your synth isn't GM (especially considering the quality of instruments elsewhere in the song), but I must stick to the opinion that the synth sounds very low grade (in a not-cool-oldschool kind of way). I am far and away not the expert on oldschool instruments, though - perhaps Willrock would have a more experienced outlook on it, if you messaged him?

As far as the OCR-based review went, I actually compared your song to OCR's submission standard specifically because you posted it as a Mod Review - if it's posted as such, it implied you're looking to submit it to OCR. Glad you enjoyed the critique regardless, but understand that the users and staff on site don't generally look down on remakes and covers. It's just something that won't be posted because of the site's overall goal in reinterpretation of VG music. You can find details about what the site is looking for in submissions here.

That said, we have done more diverse video game remakes where the arrangement is much more tinkered with and varied including some medleys of sorts.

Tinkered and varied, awesome! Medleys... not as much, as far as submissions go. 'Course, you can read that in the link above.

Glad to see you're enjoying the OCR boards, though!

[OpusScience]

Cheers man. Much appreciated. It's interesting what you say about the brass as we intended the brass to kind of sound like an HD version of the brass sounds you'd get on the SNES. So I know what you mean, there is a GM quality to them for sure. Perhaps not for the better . But thanks again for the clarification and the link. Will read up further.

It's very interesting to have work properly critiqued, and obviously it would be nice to get a track or two listed on the site. Between supporting/giving something back to the retro gaming community and raising our own profile a little, it can only be a good thing. If we think we have something, or make something that we think would better suit the OCR style, we'll post it up.

Once again, massive thanks for the time you've taken to look at this. This experience has been extremely helpful and brought much clarity to our previously confused understanding of exactly how OCR works and what it looks for from artist submissions. If you've ever got some spare time and fancy listening to some SEGA remixes/remakes, by all means check out our SoundCloud page. I imagine you're very busy, but if you ever listen to it and think there's anything worth putting forward for a Mod Review, by all means say so.

All the best,

OSC

The Magical Sound Shower Project