Promise (Reprise) from Silent Hill

[Kaziko]

http://www.myspace.com/8lis10

Tell me what you think

You can ignore the other songs if you want.

[Ronyn]

An eeeeerie mix. Dig it. Gets a bit repetitive. You've got the hairs on my back standing. Now scare the !@#! outta me.

[Kaziko]

Any suggestions how to make it more scary?

I think.. big clangy noises echoing around your head.. distortion... but not going overboard like my other silent hill remix......?

[Ronyn]

I'm sure you'll come up with some good stuff. My one suggestion might be to do some scary weird stuff with that melody. Something seriously psychotic emotionally, maybe even literally, might be fun. I dunno.

[ifirit]

Silent Hill 2 - "Promise (Reprise)" by 8:

I have to compliment you on this piece that you've rearranged from Silent Hill 2. The style is a mixture of progressive rock screeches, industrial pop beats and flowing, pristine piano melody. The mixture seems to take a page directly from Yamaoka's book and even contains stylings from Billy Corgan and Trent Razor. The mood is lugubrious and the pace is slow, like walking without purpose on a cool, autumn afternoon. It's difficult to make such slow ambient pieces work, so it's a great pleasure and a huge compliment to give one's approval when someone achieves that.

Yet, in spite of creating such a wonderfully distorted and appealing song, there are a few parts of its slip showing. Namely, there is some over-processing on the distortion (EQ effect) used in the style. This appears when the electric guitar screeches become higher in volume and generally listening to this at an overall high volume. As the ebb and flow of this aspect is an important part in the structure of the piece, it becomes important to address this upfront. While listening to this on headphones, the guitar distortions when arised in volume begin to cause some clipping, though not entirely abrasive. I would suggest that you spend some time refining the EQ of that particular track to really balance out the distortion with the clearity to preserve sound quality.

In addition to tightening up the EQ on the guitar, I would also suggest that you tighten up the arrangement as well. The piece seems to be structured around the aspect of the guitar playing as if rising and flowing like the tides. As such, the individual rhythm of the guitar (timing) should reflect it better, particularly in the middle section where there are points that sound like verbatum useage of earlier portions of the track. As the rhythm of this track becomes more varied it will reflect on the mood in a greater way, adding tension and meaningful uneasiness. This seems to apply to the piece as a whole as well (apply the same techniques of rise and fall with piano melody to keep that section from sounding repetitive.)

Though, I love the way that the percussion and bass develop at the beginning of the piece, establishing a singular and empty soundscape for the guitar to thrive, towards the middle and most importantly ending, the percussion is leaving one wanting much more. In other words, there are some holes in your soundscape that leave the piece sounding too desolate at times. The greatest source of this problem stems from the very constant rhythm of the percussion and bass synth. I can almost set my watch to that timing. One is almost asking for some variety in the percussion. However, one must be careful in adding variations, since an ill-timed beat or poorly constructed note can tear apart the established pace of the piece. So, in cases like this, its best to use discretion. Add variations to the percussion elements (especially that twitchy bass synth, which is subtle) as is softly done in the drum track from 2'30" to 4'09". If the variations prove ineffective, layer in other soft-beat instruments or rhythmic sound effects. Show that there is something thing worth paying attention to underneath the song as well as on top of it.

It's difficult to give someone advise on a track that builds itself around the concept of a barren soundscape, because the addition of elements slowly fills that soundscape and changes it. However, to submit to OCR, a certain amount of that soundscape has to be filled. So it's a compromise of working to add as much variation, personality and tone to a song without deteriorating the soundscape. Yet, in this piece there is still room to provide increased numbers of elements without destroying the environment. So, in addition to working with what's already here, work to explore the soundscape some more also by adding in other elements and creating an interplay with the pre-existing ones. If you need a point of focus, then I suggest that you work on filling the middle section out more, by either adding some harmony to the piano, filling out the percussion, complimenting the guitar with other high frequency sounds or developing a midsection of pad work and accompaniment.

So, let's recap. This is an incredibly awesome concept piece that establishes a mood and atmosphere fitting to its source, but has quite a fair amount of room to grow. Focus on clearing up the distortion issues on the guitar, tighten the guitar's ebbs and flows for added dynamism, fill out the percussion section (with discretion) at the middle and ends to develop the piece as a whole, and experiment with additional elements to complete the soundscape for a truly unique experience. This piece is at a great level of completion, but it needs that extra personal polish to make it exceptional.

Peace, Love and Good Luck,

ifirit

[Kaziko]

I'll take your advice and see what I can do.

Expect an update sometime later, maybe today, who knows.

Thanks