Liontamer Posted August 24, 2006 Share Posted August 24, 2006 Greetings, I have completed a remix for your review (128kbps MP3): REMIXER NAME: bonfire REAL NAME: John Fuego EMAIL: fuego96@hutchcity.com (or the one above) WEBSITE: http://www.acidplanet.com/fuego96 USERID: 47018 NAME OF GAME REMIXED: Silent Hill 2 NAME OF THE INDIVIDUAL SONGS REMIXED This "Collage Mix" fuses three main songs from Silent Hill 2, namely "Apartment Background Music 014" (aka the SH movie theme song), "Hotel Background Music 009" which is heard after James Sunderland finishes viewing "The Video Tape" and last but not least, "A Letter From The Dead" (heard right at the start of the game after James exits the public toilet). All of which were originally composed by Akira Yamaoka (sound designer and music composer of all Silent Hill game series) COMMENTS ABOUT THE MIX This was originally just self indulgence. However, since everything from piano, drums, the over-compression etc. was recreated from scratch, played live and/or transcribed by ear -- absolutely no MIDI files from external sources were used. The melodies rearranged according to my style and although this remix had gone through several iterations which sounded fairly sophisticated, but the tough thing about keeping it "Silent Hill" was making it sound (and feel) exactly the opposite. So, a minimalistic, moody and solemn approach was used so as not to deviate (too much) from the original spirit -- by adding a big load of "new and original" melodies (just wouldn't be right). It is not to say that there aren't any newly composed melodies. There are, but done in a way that hopefully blend in well with the original. Percussive elements such as drums were sliced, diced, bit-destroyed and treated to sound muddy and low-bitrate'ish. This was mainly inspired by Akira's (also muddy) effects treatment toward drumlines. Sound effects were pulled directly from the Silent Hill 2 game to (hopefully) form a virtual collage in the listeners mind as they listen to the mix. Let me know if there are problems with my submission or downloading the mix. Best Regards, John Fuego ----------------------------------------------------- Sorry for not being familiar with Silent Hill 2's soundtrack, but when a soundtrack is not readily available in some form, with consistent tracknames no less, the onus is on you to connect us to the source material. Looking at both the official CD and an unofficial game rip with 75 tracks, I don't see any sources with the names you gave, and I'm not going to bother looking. If the arrangement is out of whack, hopefully someone else will recognize. Decent piano intro, though I dunno why it's panned so heavily into the right channel. Beats at :35 were really simplistic and boring. The track's atmosphere doesn't seem too empty only because the poor encoding adds a lot of hiss and artifacts here. String joins in at 1:10 for some cool counterpoint. Piano kept riffing from 1:25-1:59 with some cheesily-added SFX in there, before the beats changed up a bit and the piano and string duet again. Moved over into just the piano with some cooler thicker effects from 2:24-2:47, before going back into the piano + beats formula. Really not feeling how these beats aren't gelling with the rest of the instrumentation. Ultimately, you've got some decent ideas on riffing on the source with the piano, but don't explore the theme enough or interpret it as substantially as you could have. Most of the energy level is stuck in one place with the "piano and/or strings + beats formula", and the fact that the sound quality is so poor and that the textures don't click together did nothing to help. Not bad for a beginner, but you really need to work on dynamics, production, and textures. NO Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
big giant circles Posted September 24, 2006 Share Posted September 24, 2006 Sorry for not being familiar with Silent Hill 2's soundtrack, but when a soundtrack is not readily available in some form, with consistent tracknames no less, the onus is on you to connect us to the source material. Looking at both the official CD and an unofficial game rip with 75 tracks, I don't see any sources with the names you gave, and I'm not going to bother looking. If the arrangement is out of whack, hopefully someone else will recognize.what he said.Lots of cool ideas going on in this one. Very cool stuff. I love the mysterious and sad overtones that such a piano part can create. Very reminiscent of The Wingless's SH2 mix as far as the piano and mood goes. The drums sound a little LQ to me for a couple reasons. First of all, I'd tweak the EQ, because they seem to kind of have that muffled, noisy-neighbor-with-a-drumset-in-the-apartment-next-door sound going on for most of the song. Also, I think the bitrate may have eaten up a substantial portion of the audio's quality. At times, I agree the SFX are a little on the cheesy side, but it's not a dealbreaker, as zircon would say. All in all, I think the drum quality hurts this piece more than anything. Though there's not a lot of variance in the drum pattern, I don't think it fatally flaws the piece. The EQ definitely does, though for the time being. What I AM a little afraid of, is if you tone down the drums, try to make sure the piece doesn't fall a little on the empty-sounding side. There's a couple portions where really, it's just the piano and drums going, and without the aid of the SFX, that's all there would be. That's not a huge deal, but I enjoyed the countermelodies that the strings contributed, and wouldn't mind hearing more development in that area. I'd like to hear you come back with this one after the addressed issues have been mended. NO tweak/resubmit Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
zykO Posted September 25, 2006 Share Posted September 25, 2006 this is actually really nice. it flows very smoothly. the arrangement is excellent as i think i can recognize some of this music from the game and while this is simplistic it is not overly conservative the groove makes this very edible. it is weird, as well, and the style ultimately gives the track most of its personality. i know this isn't going to get many yes votes because i know our site standard and the nature of its implementation. to me this is a pity because this is good art if not "an acceptable remix" and while that is sad, take solace in the fact that you accomplished a good piece of music, nonetheless the point that will fail this; i love the eq but it is gonna be too muddy for most. this is very silent hill, very eerie, empty, uncomfortable but unfortunately, it will ultimately sink the ship like steve martin in my blue heaven: i'm wit you. what i mean is, i'm wit you. NO Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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