Final Fantasy VIII - Fragments of Memories

[Oneiric]

I tried to expand on the original a little, giving it some energy while playing around with the melody. Not quite sure how well I did with this one, much more used to writing originals. Any feedback would be appreciated

[Brandon Strader]

Hey! The sample quality leaves a bit to be desired. The intro section doesn't work too well with the changed lead writing, no bass accompaniment.. The samples are dry which really accentuates that quiet part at 0:42 -- No atmosphere. 

The drums sound cool, but the reverb should be on everything but the kick. This is backwards. You have a reverb kick and the other pieces are dry. 

The overall mixture of sounds gets better at 1:32 -- although there's a really weird drumfill at this point. The amount of instrumental accompaniment here is the best in the whole WIP. The drum writing is absolutely ridiculous. At 2:21 are you trying to write Fragments of Memories, or "Decimated Fragments of a Satanic Winter Moon"? Did you accidentally trip over the death metal switch on the drum machine?

There's some cool ideas in here,but in general the writing needs to be made more enjoyable and accessible, and most importantly, consistent. Changing up the lead melody isn't even all that necessary if you do a good enough job of expanding the supporting instrumentation. The intro goes on for too long with sparse writing, the drums are produced oddly, and the structure needs a lot of work. There's no additional original structure writing to go along with the original source, so it's like a cover with crazy drums and some weird notes in the lead right now.