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*NO* Legend of Zelda 3 'Before the Mirror' *FT* *PRIORITY*


Liontamer
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Hey there, when I first started up vgPiano I submitted one of my older arrangements

to ocremix to help fuel intereste.

I sent it March 2nd and have been popping by from here to there to see if it's ever been listed. I got the automated response to verify that the email received so I'm wondering what's going on.

I provided a link,

Does it normally take this long for a song to get posted? I hope not! :)

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I'll get right to it: the arrangement here is a letdown. For example, the main Zelda theme is far too straightforward. Some more interesting left hand work and harmony would have been nice there. The rhythms were also identical to the original which made it quite predictable. I don't think the multiple repetitions were necessary given that you didn't do much with the Zelda melody at all. I almost wanted to just skip past a few of them because they're simplistic, except for the end of the last one which is a little more engaging. The town theme is equally straightforward, unfortunately. When you're dealing with such simple melodies you really gotta go out of your way to do more with them, especially on the piano when you have no other instruments to fill things out.

Considering you are working with three themes here, I feel like you could have done a LOT more in terms of the arrangement. While this level of interpretation would have been acceptable a few years ago, our standards have risen since and I don't think this meets our bar, even though the production and performance are both fine. Listen to solo piano remixes posted since, say, OCR1200 and you'll get a good idea for where our bar is.

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This doesn't meet the (quite high, I must say) OC standard for solo piano ReMixes.

I thought that this interpretation was quite simplistic overall. I think that as the melody we all know very well was playing, some more expressive left hand playing could have been going along with it to give it a different feel. As it is it felt quite unoriginal due to the lack of movement at times and quite empty. From 3.40 onwards things did start to sound a lot better, however I do think that overall the arrangement lacks 'flow', for want of a better word.

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http://snesmusic.org/v2/download.php?spcNow=loz3 - "Church" (loz3-17.spc), "Overworld" (loz3-04.spc) & "Kakariko Village" (loz3-05.spc)

Dunno why this fell through in the first place, maybe the link was a 404 by the time it was reached last time. In any case, sorry about the wait, Mark. I hope you're not discouraged from sending anything further in the future.

Just wanna make clear that the performance and production are definitely fine. I loved the delicate intro handling "Church". Adhseive Boy had a good mix of that same theme that he dropped after he felt he couldn't improve it, but it's made me look forward to someone else arranging the theme. The arrangement here got a little more creative with the rhythms at :56, so on that level I was feeling things, though the apporach was very conservative. Sped up nicely starting around 1:26.

Changed into the "Overworld" theme at 1:53 without much of a transition. Again, the coverage of the themes is impressive, and Mark shows off his skills at adapting the material to solo piano, but the interpretation just isn't interpretive enough. The themes are handled very in a straightforward manner, and thereby doesn't evoke the feeling of anything unique

4:21 switches over to "Kakariko Village", again with no transition whatsoever, which simply felt like the themes were just jammed together with no flow, like my bro Malc mentioned.

The track ends with the "Kakariko Village" theme simply stopping, then three last notes; everything ended abruptly and resolved poorly. I agreed with the criticisms that the track was too empty at times; you gotta fill it out more.

I can't stress enough that (sans the abrupt transitions and lack of a strong ending) this is a beautiful piece with an approach that would fit fairly well on an official Zelda arrangement album. But as far as the standards of the site here go, the arrangement approach is too conservative and not interpretive enough.

Also wanna note that I love what VgPiano is doing, so I'll of course keep following what's going on there. Thanks a lot for organizing it, Mark. If you wanna try another go at this arrangement with more interpretive ideas in here, I'm sure we'd love to hear it.

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