Chimpazilla Posted February 27, 2015 Share Posted February 27, 2015 (edited) Good afternoon. This is Pyro1588 (userid 28735). I am submitting a mix of 3 songs from Golden Sun and 1 from Chrono Trigger: Saturos's battle theme Saturos and Menardi's battle theme Fusion Dragon battle theme Masa & Mune's battle theme (aka Chrono Trigger boss theme 2) The name of the arrangement is Deadly Duo. Setting the stage: You're a young man whose village suffered a catastrophe 3 years ago. On that fateful night, you and your friend were attacked by a pair of vagabonds. They've just now returned, kidnapping your friends in their quest to unleash a forbidden and long-sealed-away power on the world. You have finally cornered them on top of a tall lighthouse, and you have gained the upper hand in battle. As they fall to their knees, lightning flashes and they fuse! A light blinds you, and as you blink the spots out of your eyes, you see a two-headed dragon where your foes were! My name is Andrew and I'm a violinist who loves working with video game music. One of my formative RPGs (and one of the few that I've had the attention span to finish) was Golden Sun on the GBA. It has a remarkable score by Motoi Sakuraba (of Tales of Phantasia, Star Ocean, and Valkyrie Profile fame), and I remember the first time I plugged headphones into my GBA and realized that the battle theme became an epic base-backed stomping theme once you were free of the shackles of GBA's tiny speaker. I've dabbled with some of those songs in years since, but I only seriously started working on a remix in 2009. I trialed Renoise and found it to be just the interface I was looking for, so I set to work remixing a couple of Golden Sun tunes. The project eventually encompassed 4 songs, and while it was a bit much of an undertaking for a first project, I feel the result is workable enough. I've gone back and forth on it as a part-time project for the past few years, and I feel that it's as good as I can get it. Thank you for taking the time to listen! Edited March 22, 2015 by Palpable closed Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chimpazilla Posted February 27, 2015 Author Share Posted February 27, 2015 Ok, you're a violinist, but this sounds sampled? Regardless, this is quite a detailed arrangement. The strings and brass sound obviously sampled, the flutey thing at 0:55 sounds very fake, and the piano also sounds mechanical. The drums sound distant and plodding. The overall mastering is very quiet, peaking at -3db. I wanted to have the other judges take a listen to this, it is a medley but the arrangement is cohesive enough. The production is holding it back though. Gotta find a way to bring a bit more realism to the performances in a 100% organic-yet-sampled arrangement. NO (resubmit) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Vig Posted March 20, 2015 Share Posted March 20, 2015 Vig: How is it that the violin is flat? actually, a lot of the samples are flat. The flutes HURT. The writing is intricate, which I appreciate, but on the whole this is quite...frenetic. Messy. You're clearly talented in terms of composition, but this piece needs work in terms of making space and building dynamics. NO zykO couldn't handle the out-of-tune strings (which is saying something cause that motherfucka don't tune his guitar for shit) and went for a walk to his car. NO. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jivemaster Posted March 22, 2015 Share Posted March 22, 2015 (edited) Good stuff for a first remix project, quite ambitious. I think there are a few primary issues that you need to address. Firstly, being a completely acoustic instrument based piece, your mix is too stiff and could do with a bunch of humanisation across the board (more varied velocities and note timing adjustments) to make things feel more realistic. Your drums need some work, they play a very similar marching pattern throughout and should be varied more. Your drums are also lost in the mix and need to be brought out with some EQ. Mixing wise things feel a little clashy and could do with some EQ tweaks to separate the instruments more. Some of your levels could also do with some changes - your piano is quite loud compared to the other elements for example. Being a violinist, did you play in any of your own violin? If you haven't, I think adding some of your own played by hand would strengthen this piece. Your overall mix is also very soft and should be mastered louder. Still a few things to fix in this one. NO Edited March 22, 2015 by Jivemaster Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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