*NO* Super Mario Bros. & Super Mario series 'For All Ages'

[djpretzel]

Probably a textbook example of medleyitis... but it's the panel's opportunity to explain whether & why.
 
-djp
 
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This is a sort of Big Band medley I created of theme tunes from nearly all of the Super Mario games (Hence the title), and that is including “Super Mario Bros”, “Super Mario Bros 2”, “Super Mario Bros 3”, “Super Mario Land”, “Super Mario World”, ”Super Mario World 2: Yoshi’s World”, “Super Mario 64”, “Super Mario Sunshine”, ”New Super Mario Bros”, “Super Mario Galaxy”, “New Super Mario Bros Wii”, “New Super Mario Bros 2”, “New Super Mario Bros U”, “Super Mario 3D Land” and “Super Mario 3d World”.
 
The medley is almost 6 minutes long and was played on a synth called “Novation Launchkey49” with “FL Studio 10” as my choice of music program.
 
Hope you like it!
 
Best regards,
Hugo Junstrand (aka. Toxodentrail)

Edited December 6, 2015 by Liontamer
closed decision

[Liontamer]

The timing of the performance of everything should have smoother. The mixing was also incredibly cluttered and imbalanced in the fuller sections, with parts stepping all over each other (e.g. :56-1:04, 1:12-1:20 as the first two examples, but MANY, MANY time throughout the piece).

 

3. Acceptable Source Material

2. Submissions incorporating more than one source are allowed, but are not given special consideration or leniency with regard to the submission standards.

• Your submission must have a strong focus and direction. Medleys must sound like a single song, not multiple songs pasted together.

With that in mind, arrangement-wise, I would argue this isn't an extreme case of medley-itis. Though the themes are individually there for short periods of time, all of them are arranged with legitimate interpretation and there's care given to making most the changes from theme to theme smooth, plus there's frequent interplay of multiple sources at once as well as the main SMB theme being used multiple times instead of one-and-done.

The arrangement's creative, but there's a total lack of polish on the mixing side as well as lots of loose timing that kills this dead. Wonderful concept, Hugo; for future works, you need to give more attention to the post-production detail work.

NO (resubmit)

[Emunator]

Have to cosign with Larry - the part writing and arrangement here is actually really good - I love the dynamics and instrumental variety as well as the smooth flow between songs. The precision of your performance and the lack of balance in your mixing is extremely problematic though... For example, your low-brass and organ tend to dominate whenever they're present, and the track just sounds cluttered.

 

You've got a very lively approach going on here and you clearly have a good ear for melodies... I see a TON of potential here, so I'd love to hear this resubmitted at some point, but the mixing and performance needs to be significantly cleaned up before this has a chance of passing. Good luck!

 

NO (resubmit)

[Chimpazilla]

That organ, oof.  Brass and xylophone, same.  Yeah cluttered mixing for sure.  The writing in this mix does tend to get too busy in some places, too many competing elements, it would be really hard to mix them all together well.  I suggest going back through the mix and deleting any elements that aren't absolutely necessary at each part, leave what is important.  

 

Make sure you have a low-cut on your reverb, there's just a touch of low-end reverb mud on everything.

 

Wow I love these sources.  The arrangement does sound medley-ish but it's cohesive overall and blends the themes rather well.  I don't have a problem with loose timing, actually, it's enough to give it character without sounding too sloppy, imo.  Just gotta declutter the part writing, and mix it better.  (That said, once you remove parts here and there, the performances will be more exposed and then you may need to address the timing of things.)

 

Such a cool idea though!  Let's hear this again!

 

NO (resubmit)