Emunator Posted April 26, 2015 Share Posted April 26, 2015 (edited) Contact InfoRemixer - Bass-SickName - Lion Cardenas-HeathEmail -Site - Soundcloud.com/bass-sickSubmission InfoGame - Donkey Kong Country 2Arrangement name - Forest InterludeComposer - David WiseLink to Original - Edited May 11, 2015 by Liontamer closed decision Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Emunator Posted April 26, 2015 Author Share Posted April 26, 2015 I'm intimately familiar with this source tune and lately I've been getting deep into this futurebass/chillout style you've adapted it to, so on a personal level I was really excited to hear this track. Reminds me of some of the more chill songs off of Madeon or Porter Robinson's new albums There's a couple things holding this back from being ready to post, in my opinion. First, the gating/sidechaining effect that you use on a lot of your sounds is cool, but I think it needs to be applied more sparingly. It knocks out so much from your soundscape that there's often times where you're sitting on a lot of dead space, and it's rare that the song sounds truly fleshed out. 2:51 is a good example of where this song shines, if you could get more of your remix sounding like that, I think this remix would be much more effective. I'm hearing some significant distortion being caused by the filtering you used in your intro/outro, that's something that needs to be looked at and tamed. Your drums are genre-appropriate but also very dry, I think a touch of reverb might improve the sound here. This is especially noticeable during the breakdown around 1:40. On the note of that section... the transition into it really doesn't make sense at all. It feels like it comes too soon in the arrangement and does not flow smoothly at all in or out of that part. There's a lot of issues present, and truthfully I believe it would take a LOT of work to get to a passable state, but I really enjoyed the concept of your track and would love to see this again someday. Thanks for submitting and good luck in the future! NO Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Liontamer Posted May 11, 2015 Share Posted May 11, 2015 Sounds like the intro may be directly sampling the original audio, not just the melody but the ambiance. I'm definitely frowning on this so far, because this doesn't readily display enough original ideas/contributions to stand apart enough from the original song, and it's leaning on the direct audio sampling hard, but we'll see where this goes. OK, so this is definitely sampling the original audio very heavily, just with some of the SPC channels turned off and the speed slowed down. Finally at :59, we get some original instrumentation added to supplement all that. The various new parts added in at 1:00 are fighting to be heard until 1:40, so the mixing doesn't make much sense. Also, the lead from :59-1:40 is arranged, but it's repeating a lot, like there are no other ideas for the melody. Next section at 1:40's just more sampling from the original audio, plus beats. The dry kick/clap pattern quickly became monotonous, so I was glad when it dropped around 2:11. Weird, abrupt transition at 2:21, but we'll see where this goes as well. 2:50 shifted back to the source melody, finally for the first time without direct audio sampling behind it. The increase in intensity at 2:50 was noted, but the soundscape never sounds sharp and the various synths just aren't mixed well; the lead is just abrasive and loud, yet also somewhat struggling to be fully heard vs. the other parts here, just like from 1:00-1:40. The effects tended to muddy up the soundscape, and while the surrounding writing did change around the lead, the lead just repeated over and over again from :59-1:40 and 2:50-3:51, and it got old. Production-wise, clean up the soundscape some and properly balance the parts so the lead is truly the lead and the supporting writing supplements that instead of mushing together with the lead in the same frequency range. Arrangement-wise, reduce the sampling of the original audio and see if there are other ways to explore the theme, since there was too much leaning on that one 9-second loop of the melody. Interesting approach, Lion, it's just not cohesive yet. NO Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chimpazilla Posted May 11, 2015 Share Posted May 11, 2015 The first note starts too abruptly as if the render didn't catch the very beginning. You might want to intro with a filtered swoosh or something. Everything sounds super dry, and it really shouldn't sound so bone dry in an ambient mix. There are too many harsh mid-high frequencies in the mix. The hard panning is VERY distracting, it makes for a choppy soundscape. Gosh, please don't pan things so harshly. It may not be that noticeable on headphones, but on speakers, it really sounds weird and disconnected. At 2:22 the severe gating is not enjoyable, it sounds empty and robotic. Larry and Wes both made some very good points. The mixing needs to be cleaned up, making the instruments audible while eliminating unpleasant frequencies. There is a good deal of repetition in the arrangement. There are parts that don't seem to have meaningful leadwork. The lead writing I hear is predictable and pretty much grooveless, sorry to say. Lots of boring whole notes. The drumming is tedious. I'm sorry, I know this sounds harsh. I think you have some good ideas here, but they aren't produced well enough yet. You might want to drop this mix into our workshop forum and get some more guidance from the folks there. I think this arrangement can work but it will need quite a bit of work. NO Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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