Liontamer Posted September 28, 2006 Share Posted September 28, 2006 Devon Press DevonPress@Gmail.com Final Fantasy 6 "Kids Run Through the City Corner" Hello, Attached is a remix of the song "Kids Run Through the City Corner" from Final Fantasy 6. It was recorded with mostly real instruments including guitar, bass, glockinspiel, wood block, finger cymbals, autoharp, harmonica, violin, tambourine, claves, shaker, cha cha rattle, feadog tinwhistle, banjo, and few other things all played and recorded by me!! It was a lot of fun to do and I think you'll find it interesting. Hope you like it!! Thanks, Devon Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
The Orichalcon Posted October 17, 2006 Share Posted October 17, 2006 Many production issues present immediately. It started off pretty cool with the glockenspiel intro, but you went from having an interesting idea to following a plan almost too religiously. I understand the appeal of using nothing but live instruments, but if it starts to sound bad you need to change something. I like the idea behind the mix, but it isn't performed too well. You stick very close to the source in regards to the arrangement, perhaps hoping the variety in instrumentation will make up for that. I'd like to see a bit more rearrangement going on here and there. Make sure your instruments are all in-tune, some things sound just a few cents short of a dollar. Also make sure you balance the EQ, thicken up any thin recordings and such. Don't be afraid to properly master your recorded tracks, it doesn't take away any of the authenticity behind the recording. The important thing is to make it sound better. Either way, the arrangement is the downfall here. You repeat the source on note right the way through, even to the point where you used a fade-out at the end rather than bother to fashion a proper ending. You could take this one back and make it sound better, but all you'll really end up with is a very fancy sounding cover. A lot of people would find that enjoyable, but OCR is about more than simply upgrading the original. NO Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Liontamer Posted October 20, 2006 Author Share Posted October 20, 2006 http://snesmusic.org/v2/download.php?spcNow=ff6 - "Kids Run Through the City" (ff6-120.spc) Nice music box-style intro. Shifts over at :31 with some 16-bit style sounds before throwing it for a loop with the corn cob geetar or whatever that is at :36. I liked the strumming on support to fill out the track, as that wasn't in the original. Variations coninuted with a woodwind at 1:02 which was pretty shrill. The bassline behind that was all new. Switched over into acoustic guitar and tambourine at 1:30 with a relatively good crossfade. Loved the constant harmonization of the melody here. Ugh, the soundfield sure got crowded from once things got really busy from 2:01-2:28. Harmonica was there for all of a couple seconds from 2:16-2:19 and 3:01-3:03 which made little sense. The production's a bit imbalanced, but there's nothing so wrong with it as to dramatically hurt the presentation. There's nothing wrong in principle with a fadeout. Despite keeping the melody the same, guy never once used the same supporting writing as the original, instead choosing to rearrange that while arranging the melody for the respective instruments used. The track has a very personalized performance despite the cover arrangement of the melody, the textures constantly evolved, and there's plenty of subtle additions, rhythmic variations and rearrangement ideas based off the supporting parts of the source tune in the back. Hey, this is pretty pimp. Perhaps I just don't mind tuning as much, I dunno, but I didn't here anything bad in here in terms of the performance. As far as the arrangement goes, you look beneath the surface and there's a lot of good things to be found. He changed the genre, he made new countermelodies, he altered the instrumentation and dynamics. We have plenty of other cover-ish mixes that employ the same techniques. The overall presentation is definitely a creative and unique take on the source material to me. Best of luck on the rest of the vote. YES Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Vig Posted October 22, 2006 Share Posted October 22, 2006 Nice music box-style intro. Shifts over at :31 with some 16-bit style sounds before throwing it for a loop with the corn cob geetar or whatever that is at :36. It's a banjo. a poorly recorded banjo. It's odd..the sequenced instruments sound mechanical, and the live instruments sound sloppy. the performances are sloppy, the tones are thin, the intonations (and toungings, in the case of the winds) are well..sloppy. sometimes a tuning issue isnt enough to warrant rejection, but unfortunately in this track, the tuning issues, when compounded by weak recording and performance, definitely pushes this to NO Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JJT Posted October 22, 2006 Share Posted October 22, 2006 yeah, the blend between live and synthetic instruments is pretty awkward. once the banjo takes over for the glockenspeil(sp?) it sounds like we're in a completely different song. the fadeout ending is a copout. honestly, there are some great ideas here, but the overall presentation just doesn't do it for me. work on eq'ing those live instruments, and making your samples sound a little more organic. the arrangement is fine as far as i'm concerned. nothing too daring, but there's also a lot of creative ideas and personal touches that are easy for the listener to pick up on. finally, intonation also needs some work. NO RESUBMIT Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jillian Aversa Posted October 22, 2006 Share Posted October 22, 2006 Haha, this is fun! Are you Bert from Mary Poppins or something? Seems like you can play everything! This remix is a little schizophrenic, but I think you can definitely pull it off if you keep a few things in mind: The main problem here is your banjo part. It's sounds slightly flat, and is mixed with too much reverb, which makes it sound distant. With live recorded instruments, your goal should be to make them sound like they are all "performing" in the same space, at the same time. The guitar parts are tuned okay, but the performance itself is a little inaccurate at times: at 0:56 when you're going up the scale, for example. You need a real ending! Fadeout is a copout, as JJT remarked. Coming up with something original for that should help with the arrangement side of things as well. At the moment, it's a little too conservative for my taste. And finally, I would distinguish between your instruments with a little more panning. Anyway, I would definitely YES this one if you could successfully implement those suggestions, so I really hope to hear an update soon! NO, RESUBMIT Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DarkeSword Posted October 22, 2006 Share Posted October 22, 2006 I'm in total agreement with Vig. Pretty sloppy performance and production. Everyone's already talked about that, though. My biggest issue is the arrangement. This is, for all intents and purposes, BGM. Theme just loops a few times, and then fades out. Not much of an arrangement. Some more creative ideas would help this piece out; rhymthmic variations, meter changes, etc. The arrangement is pretty simple. NO Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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