djpretzel Posted December 4, 2015 Share Posted December 4, 2015 (edited) Repeats about halfway through, fairly minimal, seems to have some... strange intonation issues... but some nice textures going on, deserves feedback. -djp --- Hi,My name's Philip Aldous, and I'd like to submit my arrangement of Koji Kondo's piece, Gerudo Valley, from Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, for OC Remix. I've wanted to start doing arrangements for the site for a long time, but unfortunately my university studies have given me limited time for personal projects (I studied Music Composition for Film and Games at the University of Hertfordshire, UK.) Now that I've finished my degree, I've finally got the time to submit some music for you, and I really hope you enjoy my arrangement. I hope I've included all the submission information you require:Remixer Name: ThunderStrikeReal Name: Philip AldousEmail Address: User ID: 32461Name of Game Arranged: Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of TimeName of Arrangement: Moon Glow On Gerudo ValleyName of Individual Song: Gerudo Valley I arranged the piece in a chilled out, electronic style, contrasting the upbeat, energetic style that the original piece uses. I used ambient sounding custom synth textures, and I also heavily used the Wurlitzer. As the piece is based almost entirely on a repeated chord progression, I had lots of freedom to mix up different melodies, and weave between them, stack them up, or simply rewrite them. I tried to give the piece as much variation in terms of texture as possible, building the instrumentation up more and more, to a big climactic ending. Thanks for considering me, hope to hear back from you soon, Philip Aldous Edited January 30, 2016 by Liontamer closed decision Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chimpazilla Posted January 26, 2016 Share Posted January 26, 2016 Interesting choice of kick timbre, it actually kinda works. I wish the kick was louder though, and sidechained to at least the backing elements, the soundscape would really be grooving with sidechaining. The rest of the percussion is too quiet, the hats and crashes especially. I think if this were mixed better, this soundscape would actually work really well. The melody writing is really stiff and rigid, the leads could use some humanization and some more variation on the melody. I'd love to hear this back, mixed better, sidechained, and with some differences in writing and/or instrumentation in the second half (which seems to be primarily a straight repeat). Good start though! NO Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Emunator Posted January 27, 2016 Share Posted January 27, 2016 Kristina has a good handle on a few of the issues present with this track, but in my opinion the problems go a little further than just the mixing and variation. The sound pallet here is really cool in the way it lends more of an ethnic flavor to the track, and in all honesty I love the idea of a nighttime-sounding, downtempo Gerudo Valley interpretation. I wish I thought of it first! However, even for a chillout track, things never seem to progress or build up very substantially. The beat does ebb and flow to an extent but the actual level of excitement in the instrumentation stays almost too mellow the whole time and doesn’t build or layer as the track moves along. Experiment with layering and writing additional parts so that the track has more of a dynamic curve that follows the progression of your beat. It’s possible to write much more engaging, humanized melodies without compromising the vibe you’re going for, and right now I feel like you’re missing that mark. The production definitely could stand to be reworked, Kristina left some great feedback on that so I’m not going to re-tread much over it, but right now everything sounds very flat and quiet. You’ve got a cohesive set of samples that sound very nice together, and you’ve done a good amount to personalize the source tune to your own taste, but right now the production and the actual arrangement itself feels like it’s lacking in life. This is a strong concept and I’d love to see you expand on it. As it stands, I think it would take a lot of work back at the drawing board to flesh out this idea more fully, but I think it would be worth the time spent because, as I said, you have a great foundation here. The execution just needs to come up to par. Good luck! NO Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jivemaster Posted January 30, 2016 Share Posted January 30, 2016 Straight up, I find the placement of your instruments in the stereo space to be very strange, everything is panned to the right hand side, with only some ambience heading to the left channel. This actually prompted me to make sure I hadn't accidentally hard panned my headphones by mistake. For any kind of production, you need to try and centre things like your kick and bass, as bass frequencies carry a lot of weight and can offset your stereo field easily if panned. Your supporting tracks and leads should then be equally spread across the stereo spectrum. Otherwise your mixing was ok, but I can't fully tell with everything panned in this fashion, as the parts are sitting on top of each other. On the arrangement side, the minimal nature you have going here seems to work ok, and I honestly don't mind what you have going on here. I will say things felt very repeaty by the mid way mark. Some of this is due to the mood and pace of the track staying steady throughout, which is ok (sometimes) - but I feel more changes are needed in the arrangement to sustain the length, even if it's just some changes to notes here and there. Still some work to be done for sure, focus on your mixing, get the parts spread across the stereo space and work on strengthening your arrangement with some further variation. NO Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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