*NO* Final Fantasy 7 'A Bomb and an AVALANCHE'

[Chimpazilla]

Contact Information

Checkmat3

Derrick Booth

www.youtube.com/rookiemonster86

53364

Submission Information

Final Fantasy VII

A Bomb and an AVALANCHE

Bombing Mission

Nobuo Uematsu, Playstation

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S8NGDsnv34M (Wasn't sure of a good place to find a link, I hope this suffices.) 1:12 is where the music of my arrangement starts.

I love many Final Fantasy games, but VII has my heart. It was my first RPG (I lived under a rock.) Every time that you start a new game, this is the song that you hear. I loved it and wanted to give it a proper update, but keep the nostalgia intact. Every last note in this song was transcribed from sheet music, and many sounds are of my own creation. Even the breakdown, which is mainly some wooshing noises (I was pretty proud of that. )

[Chimpazilla]

This is transcribed almost too well, the writing is the same as the source just about verbatim. However I find the soundscape completely different, I really like the sounds used (with the exception of the most detuned of the saws where they are playing lead, but that's a personal preference). The track has a nice deep bass presence. Nice filtering effects. Drums are groovy, there are some nifty hat patterns, and I like the 909 rimshot quite a bit.

While it is quite a conservative arrangement, I feel like there are enough additions to this track that differentiate it enough from the original. While the instrumentation stays the same throughout, I don't find any repetitiveness in the arrangement. I am enjoying this quite a lot.

edit 4-22-15: With a strong disagreement from Larry, I listen again. I'm now hearing some bits of distortion in the filtered intro that I missed before. Perhaps the track is a bit overcompressed. The hats are probably too loud, yeah they shouldn't be this much louder than the leads. I still don't care for the wide/detuned saws used as leads, Larry and I agree there, they do end up bleeding into the background. What about layering a narrower more expressive lead over the top of the detuned saw? Something with some delayed vibrato? It might make a better statement and you could add some solo-y bits to the writing.

I should not have said I don't hear any repetition in the arrangement, clearly there is a lot of repetition. I feel like there is just enough variation added to keep it interesting, but it's a close call. More unique elements in the sections would really help distinguish them from each other.

I'm going to flip my vote here and throw it back to have the compression addressed and a bit of an eq cleanup as well, cleaning up the bass in particular may be all that is needed to fix the distortion and muddiness. The hats need to come down in volume. While you're in there, you might want to experiment with better (and narrower, more impactful) leads. Still, I really like this!

NO (resubmit)

Edited April 22, 2015 by Chimpazilla

[Liontamer]

Opens pretty conservatively with the fade-in dance groove; we'll see where it goes. Yipes, the saw leads finally introduced at :56 were SUPER generic-sounding, AND just bled into the background; I could hardly distinguish them. The source's familiar countermelody is also barely audible once that line stops being doubled at :56. The core beats shouldn't be louder than the leads. Pretty sloppy mixing up to 1:24, and the same exact issue from 3:25-3:38 when that section repeated.

Chimpa said she heard 0 repetition, but I heard areas of similarity that made the overall feel repetitive:

0:00-0:28 vs. 1:52-2:06 vs. 2:42-2:56

0:28-1:10 vs. 3:10-3:38

0:56-1:10 vs. 3:25-3:52 (saw lead)

1:32-1:52 vs. 2:06-2:35

After the quick dropoff and rebuild at 1:38, I was appreciating the overall intensity and energy of the piece; there's certainly some personalization to it.

That said:

1) the track hovered at the same high intensity level with the same grooves for too long and needs more dynamic contrast

2) the sound design is pretty underwhelming, with lots of shrill, vanilla electrosynths that get fatiguing, especially the saws

3) there was enough recycling of portions where the writing felt repetitive

The sound design and overall arrangement structure both needed polish and dynamics, respectively.

NO

[Emunator]

I'm falling a little bit between Larry and Chimp on this. I personally wouldn't be as generous as her, but I think I enjoyed some of the subtleties of your arrangement more than Larry. At the core, your beats are pretty neat, although they do ride the same grooves for a while I think your beat writing is interesting, especially the hi-hat and kick rhythms. It's a cool adaptation and I felt like there were enough breakdowns that it didn't feel too static, even if those breakdowns didn't last very long.

 

This track is very close to the original source, melodically, but the adaptation to dance style earns you some points. It's a conservative arrangement, but you've got enough going on to differentiate this from the original. The arrangement was repetitive and toward the end it did feel like you were just treading water, but I didn't find that aspect of the track to be a dealbreaker.

 

I'm not a huge fan of the synths that Larry critiqued either, but I didn't think they were that bad! I'll agree that the sound design is underwhelming, but for the most part it works for the style you're doing, and everything is pretty cleanly articulated and sequenced.

 

Mixing is a little troublesome, easing up on the compression and taming your bassline would give this a bit more breathing room. Maybe lower the volume on your hats just a touch.

 

I actually feel like this is really close, I think you've got a lot of solid feedback to go off of from the judges above and I'd love to see what you can do with that input to improve this and hopefully tip it over the bar!

 

NO (resubmit!)