Kinda pissed nobody's made CHILD OF LIGHT remixes yet... so i made my own

[KyleHighwind]

Here's the battle theme from Child of Light, title "Dark Creatures".

Just sayin', I've been a fan of jRPGs for many years, played all the Final Fantasies, Chrono Trigger/Cross, etc...

...yet this battle theme was more captivating to me than any other battle theme I've ever heard.

I've been all like, WHY HAS NO ONE MIXED THIS YET!!?!?

So I made one.

~~~YOUTUBE~~~

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rvUrLT0R5sc

~~~SOUNDCLOUD~~~

https://soundcloud.com/i-am-kyle-highwind/child-of-light-epic-battle-theme-remix-i-will-destroy-this-heartbreak-by-kyle-highwind

[Uffe von Lauterbach]

I'm not sure what captivated you about the original, but your remix got my attention.

[KyleHighwind]

Yeeeeah I don't expect many others would find anything special about the original "Dark Creatures"

by Coeur de Pirate as "just another battle theme in an RPG", allow me to explain.

And btw cheers mate! I'm glad to hear my remix was enjoyed to some extent :)

The core emotion doesn't rely on its "main nostalgia-inducing melody". Most games create that

sense of nostalgia in us gamers (see note below) using the main melody. That's partly why gamers

LOVE video game music so much: nostalgia. "Dark Creatures" is unique to me because, while it

does have a core melody, its emotional power generates off of the chord progressions instead.

What you said makes sense. Though as for my perspective, the way I measure my appreciation for a song is by "how many times I

can listen to a song and STILL extrapolate something new from it." Which, is ideal when you're

playing an RPG for 20-50 hours; we don't want to hear the same thing over and over again (like

Final Fantasy 2's battle theme: yes it's amazing, but I got soooo tired of listening to it after the 100th battle).

I've tried listening to Dark Creatures over and over again, and I still can't follow all 7+ chord

progressions happening simultaneously. When I've listened to Jeremy Soule's work (elder scrolls),

I'm able to distinguish all the cool chord progressions he uses after listening to each song a

few times through, same with Nobuo Uematsu. But not with Coeur de Pirate.

Note: By that I mean, when I listened to Donkey Kong's "Aquatic Ambiance" when I was 7 years old,

and can still remember what the game felt like just by hearing a snippet of that main melody

[timaeus222]

Okay, something really bothers me in the beginning. There's some sort of upfront radio static until 0:49, and it gets a bit grating after maybe 10 seconds, so I skipped to 0:51. It just sounds like a live recording mistake to me.

Another issue is that this is very loud almost everywhere, essentially clipping. Are you using a limiter or a soft clipper (limiters are less prone to clipping, as you could tell from the names)? The bass is narrow at 0:50, though that's not as large of a problem. Some other things that are larger issues:

- The resonant white noise sweep at 0:59 is definitely clipping, and just too loud. I'm cringing. >.<

- The piano at 1:12 is locked to a quantized grid, and sounds mechanical. Needs more rhythmic randomness (without sounding sloppy) and sensible velocity variation to make it sound more realistic, especially with all the organic instruments in this electronic/organic hybrid. Might not be as noticeable if it's the first time you've heard this type of critique. This might help you to hear the difference (read the description, too).

- The low strings at 1:16 add substantial muddiness to the reverb amount, and clutters the low-mids frequencies, making things unclear. Also might not be too noticeable if no one's told you this before.

- The kick at 1:29 is too loud and boomy, and muddying things up a little more. Somewhat hard to notice but it's there. The main issue for me here is that it's loud though, not that it's bassy (even though it technically has bass frequencies).

- 1:52 is too loud, and again, clipping, so I skipped to 3:03, where it was quieter. This is an overall problem, and as you can tell, it makes it unlistenable.

- The piano afterwards is OK, though it can have more interesting chordal undertones. It's just a melodic line of one voice (monophony), without a left hand part. Perhaps it could work as-is if there was a pad underneath to fill in the soundscape, or if the notes were not so quantized.

So, I'm not sure I get the focus of this piece. Are you trying to win the loudness war or write a remix you like? The mixing choices you made gives some sort of notion of "epic", just from the sound choices, but the clipping, loud bass, mechanical piano, and overall loud mixing are just too off-putting. Sorry, but that's how I'm hearing it. Somebody had to tell you eventually.

Edited August 6, 2014 by timaeus222

[KyleHighwind]

Hey thanks for the feedback!

*scrolls through your post with fear*

Alright so reading back through your post...

I actually HAVE fixed a few of the things you mentioned, but the streaming links are permanent so I just left it. Can't do much about that lol. I should have put it up on some other file hosting site, oh well.

Also, the streaming quality miiiiight be a contributing factor to the overloaded-limit-breaking-awesomeness quality (it's not THAT different, but its not "production quality").

First off... MISSION ACCOMPLISHED! Lol that "white noise" was actually supposed to make people cringe. It made me cringe. And I liked it, it tickled. So I left it.

So a few things:

1. Static. I put it in there on purpose. Wait, did you think I was recording this live? I'm flattered!!! I tried to create a "music-over-a-static-radio environment".... sooooo I don't really know what else to say haha

2. The clipping. Yeah, you got me. I have only made a few ditties on Fruity Loops, I'm still not very well-read on all its features. While it seems elementary to you, I'm not a full-time musician, and this song is the only song I've fully remixed. I'm actually going back into FL Studio right now to fix that now that you've brought that up! This has been helpful!

3. Digital Piano. Yeah it bugs me too. But after about 40 hours of trying to get all the levels, harmonies, and wobbles right, I got very sleepy and didn't wanna spend another 2 or 3 hours working on 200+ individual note velocities (done that before). #ijustwanttosleep

4. The kick. Also a velocity issue. It sounds awesome though.

5. The ending piano. Well, I CAN argue put more effort into its velocities than the piano at 1:12 hahahaha. But as for the simplicity of it... also made it like that on purpose. I tried the compliment harmonies, but it actually sounds better and more "bleak and dismal" with the melody by itself. So, guess that's a matter of opinion.

Well, after reading through that grill, I was relieved to see that you were more bothered by the sound quality (I put very little effort into it), versus the musical complexion. Haha I'm glad you pointed out "Are you trying to win the loudness war or write a remix you like" because it was actually a mixture of both! Duuuuude i LOVED writing this song, and I was crazy excited to get other people to hear it, so I just felt like "YUSS! I'M GOING TO MAKE THIS AS LOUD AS POSSIBLE!"

Btw I produced this with earbuds, not stereo speakers. It sounds awesome with earbuds.

Dayum, I can only IMAGINE what this sounds like on speakers!

You were very helpful! I'm just glad some other human beings are listening to my work. I've been listening to hundreds of songs from OCRemix on my iPod for years now, so I wanted to contribute.

[timaeus222]

Hey thanks for the feedback!

*scrolls through your post with fear*

Alright so reading back through your post...

I actually HAVE fixed a few of the things you mentioned, but the streaming links are permanent so I just left it. Can't do much about that lol. I should have put it up on some other file hosting site, oh well.

Also, the streaming quality miiiiight be a contributing factor to the overloaded-limit-breaking-awesomeness quality (it's not THAT different, but its not "production quality").

First off... MISSION ACCOMPLISHED! Lol that "white noise" was actually supposed to make people cringe. It made me cringe. And I liked it, it tickled. So I left it.

So a few things:

1. Static. I put it in there on purpose. Wait, did you think I was recording this live? I'm flattered!!! I tried to create a "music-over-a-static-radio environment".... sooooo I don't really know what else to say haha

2. The clipping. Yeah, you got me. I have only made a few ditties on Fruity Loops, I'm still not very well-read on all its features. While it seems elementary to you, I'm not a full-time musician, and this song is the only song I've fully remixed. I'm actually going back into FL Studio right now to fix that now that you've brought that up! This has been helpful!

3. Digital Piano. Yeah it bugs me too. But after about 40 hours of trying to get all the levels, harmonies, and wobbles right, I got very sleepy and didn't wanna spend another 2 or 3 hours working on 200+ individual note velocities (done that before). #ijustwanttosleep

4. The kick. Also a velocity issue. It sounds awesome though.

5. The ending piano. Well, I CAN argue put more effort into its velocities than the piano at 1:12 hahahaha. But as for the simplicity of it... also made it like that on purpose. I tried the compliment harmonies, but it actually sounds better and more "bleak and dismal" with the melody by itself. So, guess that's a matter of opinion.

Well, after reading through that grill, I was relieved to see that you were more bothered by the sound quality (I put very little effort into it), versus the musical complexion. Haha I'm glad you pointed out "Are you trying to win the loudness war or write a remix you like" because it was actually a mixture of both! Duuuuude i LOVED writing this song, and I was crazy excited to get other people to hear it, so I just felt like "YUSS! I'M GOING TO MAKE THIS AS LOUD AS POSSIBLE!"

Btw I produced this with earbuds, not stereo speakers. It sounds awesome with earbuds.

Dayum, I can only IMAGINE what this sounds like on speakers!

You were very helpful! I'm just glad some other human beings are listening to my work. I've been listening to hundreds of songs from OCRemix on my iPod for years now, so I wanted to contribute.

Okay, so just to clarify a few things:

- Soundcloud streams at 128kbps, but that isn't enough to create the clipping (which is not a good thing)

- The static did not make it sound live, but it sounded as if you plopped in a live recording of a headphone amp over sequenced material. Personally I wouldn't have left it in, though. It's somewhat like the line noise hum in a guitar amp being undesirable.

- Winning the loudness war is not a good thing, but a nice way of saying that this is too loud.

- You can be loud without clipping, and it involves proper compression and saturation. It's not something that's easy, though.

Good to know that you're being open-minded about this. As for the piano, I just write velocity variations as I go so I don't have to go back and adjust it unless there are actual issues; then there are just less things to adjust.

[Brandon Strader]

To be fair, there's another Child of Light mix just slightly down the page for yours. So there's no need to be upset, and this isn't the first. It's also been on my radar for a while.

The static in the intro seemed too loud to me. I'm digging the dub. Not sure the song itself is too loud, but definitely make sure it's not clipping anywhere. This has a leg up on "Bad Koopa Dubstep" which is on the site, pretty good and I dig it. Even with the mechanical bits it's not at all jarring. You could definitely humanize the piano a bit.