Chimpazilla Posted December 6, 2014 Share Posted December 6, 2014 (edited) ReMixer - RoeTaKa Name - Alex Roe Email - UserID - 9374 Games Arranged - Dark Souls Arrangement Name - E.S. Gwyn Songs Arranged - Gwyn, Lord of Cinder Game info - Dark Souls Composers - Motoi Sakuraba Systems - Playstation 3, Xbox 360, PC Comments: If you couldn't guess from the title it is blatantly an homage to E.S. Posthumus, two brothers who are amazing composers but sadly one of them passed away. I was listening to the track 'Kuvera' and I just thought it would be a great idea to do that sort of style with Gwyn, he is a badass and he needs a badass remix. ------------------------------------------------ Edited January 31, 2015 by Liontamer closed decision Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nutritious Posted January 22, 2015 Share Posted January 22, 2015 Arrangement-wise, the intro plays it really close to the source with just a key changeup. However, it gets quite a bit more expansive as soon as the main elements all join in. Good use of source material as the main driver of the melodic content in the mix. The production side is when things get problematic for me. As soon as it kicks in at :25, things are already sounding indistinct with the way they are mixed heavy in the mid range and reverb levels. Once 1:04 pops in, more instruments join in the same mid range eq, which clutters up the soundscape a lot. Once you layer the drum tom fills on top of this, things start sounding distorted due to pushing the compression too hard. I'd recommend taking another look at the mixing and try to get the guitar parts & low strings not to overlap too much in their frequency levels. Also, watch the high mids between piano, trumpets, & strings to try and give each section their own space. Drums sound a bit distant, but that's not necessarily a bad thing in symphonic rock. One could argue they could come forward a bit, but that's a matter of taste I think. Speaking of drums, I would've liked to hear a bit more variation in their writing. I do hear where it fills either every 4 or 8 bars, but there are times in the piece where a long stretch of the exact same drum pattern will play. It's a relatively minor point for me, but worth noting. I've focused a lot on criticisms here, but overall this is a really sweet track. The writing is really well done and there are excellent ideas on display here. I just think it could use some production tweaking to get it to reach the bar in that regard. NO resubmit, please Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Emunator Posted January 25, 2015 Share Posted January 25, 2015 Indeed, I'm hearing the same mixing critiques that Nutritious pointed out - there's a very distant, muddy quality about the arrangement all the way through that doesn't seem to click with the style you're writing in here. The rhythm guitars are marginalized in the mix to the point where I can barely discern them most of the time. One major thing that bothered me about the first minute of this track was how rigidly-quantized everything was to the grid. The drums, guitar chords, and strings all follow the same consistent pattern, which made that portion of the song sound very boring and simplistic to me. Luckily this issue goes away as the song progresses and the writing/rhythms become more complex, but the lockstep rhythm in the first minute did not give me a good initial impression of this track. Things get a lot better as the arrangement progresses - you have some really excellent writing going on as your track builds to a climax. Past about 1:45, this is top-tier RoeTaKa work as far as the arrangement is concerned. Throughout the track, I agree with Nutritious that the drum writing left something to be desired in terms of variation. There are a decent amount of fills to be found, but the core of the writing isn't wowing me like the rest of the writing was. Did anyone else find the ending awkward and a little corny, though? Something about the isolated stabs and the quick decay on all of the instruments for the final cadence did not work for me at all. I'd love to hear if anyone else has any strong opinions on the ending one way or another. Overall, this is a great adaptation of the source that skillfully introduces your personal style into the original melodies. I appreciate the ambitiousness to your approach, but the mixing issues coupled with the other issues I've pointed out make this not as strong of a showing as your previous remixes. I'd love to see you take another stab at this, there's a huge amount of potential to this arrangement but there's a few things holding it back from reaching that level. NO (resubmit!) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Liontamer Posted January 31, 2015 Share Posted January 31, 2015 Definitely co-signed with Nutritious and Emunator. When the percussion joined in at :24, the mixing was very muddy and indistinct, the string timing was very rigid, and the drum pattern was plodding and repetitive. I also didn't feel the tone of the drums clicked with the rest of the instrumentation. You have a workable concept here, but the this needs a lot of fine tuning to humanize the timing, vary the perc patterns, and declutter & re-balance this mixing. I disagreed with Emu about the rigid timing going away after a while; I felt it came back in full force at the key change at 3:31 (and never really went away). I agree with Emu on not digging the ending. It DID sound trite. The second-to-last note at 4:47 was just super exposed, and didn't sound smooth. Thought there'd be a nice bowed string or just the piano (with a lot of airyness), just something that transitioned from forceful to delicate for the finish. At least, that's what seemed to be telegraphed but then didn't arrive, at least for me. So yeah, it sounds like it's a ton of criticism on this track when the core arrangement idea is promising, so don't take all this the wrong way. These bros gave some actionable advice on the production. I'll be honest: to take what's here and make it passable would definitely take some work, and I'm not sure it can be done. But if you can rise above it, Alex, your all-around game will go up considerably. Hopefully you give it a shot! NO (resubmit) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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