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Undertale "Once Upon a Time" Orchestral Remix


Slimy
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Anyways, the opening song of Undertale is beautiful, and I wanted to make a remix.

 

I completely changed the chords of the first part, and the melody of the middle bit. There's a lot more instruments doing stuff in general. It also ends with a hint of "Your Best Friend"

 

Original: https://tobyfox.bandcamp.com/track/once-upon-a-time-2

 

Remix: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8YP3jAa70qY

 

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  • 2 weeks later...

I really like the reharmonization. But some of the orchestral sounds are bugging me. Especially at the horns. For example the oboe (?) that plays a few parts at the beginning. For example  at 00.07 and 00.40. I can totally imagine 00.40 as a nice oboe part, but right now the oboe sounds too round and clunky. It's first of all really obvious that it's played on a midi keyboard instead of through breathing, and there's not an ounce of emotion in it. The strings and percussion sound so much better. Some other part that sounds really odd is the english horn (?) at 01.27. It's really high pitched and just generally unfamiliar. 

But the idea itself is really cool and the reharmonization and instrumentation really creates a nice ambiance. 

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The athmosphere is really nice, and it's a nice song. I like the round-ness of your sound as well.

 

I think it could use some more expressiveness and dynamics. For example, at around 1:32 a theme is re-stated with a nice and full arrangement, and it would benefit the clarity of the form ("listen up, I'm re-stating the theme!") and expressiveness if the music would swell some more. 

 

I would also consider using staccato patches in the strings accompaniment starting at 00:32.

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Thanks for the feedback! The links in the first post have been updated.

 

- I think the egregious lack of emotion was coming from my clarinet and horn samples, I replaced them with something that will hopefully sound more expressive.

- Did a pass of humanization on several instruments/adjusted some timings.

- Made the middle section more complicated.

- I tried to make the theme re-statement thicker without ruining the mood. More brass, thicker string chords, emphasized the melody with a piano, added timpani rolls, cymbal swells, gong, and a bass drum.

 

I would also consider using staccato patches in the strings accompaniment starting at 00:32.

 

I didn't have any patches with the kind of long-stacatto I wanted, but I tried to improve it anyways.

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modreview/eval

Orchestra isn't my forte, so it's difficult for me to say much about the genre-specific things.

2 minute track? K. It's a short and somewhat repetitive source, so a short remix might not be a problem.

Sounds too quiet. Compare it to some (non-bombastic) orchestral tracks on ocr to see if your levels are about the same as theirs. There's a couple of actual orchestra recordings, but most are sound library works. Either should work for reference.

The sound seems a bit dark and muffled. With the piano, I suppose its a deliberate choice, but I can't tell if that's the case with the strings and other stuff. This might be why it sounds quiet - not enough highs. Again, find some reference tracks to compare to, and see if you're okay with any differences in sound and balance.

Source is there. It sounds rather conservative. I'm not familiar enough with the source to be able to quickly say much more. There's a fair bit of dynamics and mood changes compared to the original, and obviously more elaborate writing, so it's not just a copy-pasted genre swap. I think it's in the clear.

It's pretty. Nice work. Check the production against some reference tracks, and sub it.

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Final Version? https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/s/77sgqopwknitov6/A%20Long%20Time%20Ago%20Final.mp3?dl=0

Although the structure of the original song is mostly intact in this remix, I wanted to completely change some of the chord progression and give it a bit of a different mood. So that it could it fit the same role as the source song, but have a different feeling, if that makes sense.

The dark sound is a deliberate choice, but I think I might have overdone it a bit. I have given subtle, high EQ boosts to a few instruments. And I gave the volume a boost.

Any more critique?

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