*NO* Chrono Trigger 'Vengeance of the Prophet'

[djpretzel]

 

Your ReMixer name: Joshua Link? My name. Or my username, joshualink.
Your real name: Joshua Link
Your email address:
Your website: https://soundcloud.com/joshua-link
Your userid (number, not name) on our forums, found by viewing your forum profile: 33000

Submission Information

Name of game(s) arranged: Chrono Trigger
Name of arrangement: Vengeance of the Prophet
Name of individual song(s) arranged: Magus Confronted

Your own comments about the mix, for example the inspiration behind it, how it was made, etc.:

 

Chrono Trigger was one of the first games I remember playing, and the unique and powerful atmosphere of the confrontation with Magus left an indelible mark on me. It felt like the standard for climactic moments had been set impossibly high. Of course, as the years went by and the SPC700 sounded gradually less futuristic and more antiquated, my memory of the moment and the reality of it diverged a bit. I still love the rawness and clearness of the SNES sounds, but I wanted to hear it as my young mind had fleshed it out. None of the adaptions of it out there really hit the spot for me, so I set out to do the track justice.

 

Adapting the unique instruments to "real" sounds was a major challenge. The high-pitched whistle, the impossibly cutting horn, the eclectic instrumentation -- nothing about the track seemed to work in high fidelity. I almost gave up, but with some persistence I eventually adapted all of the original sounds to my satisfaction, and added a significant amount of material to flesh it out. Some tweaks to the structure were necessary with the feel the track being as different as it is.

 

(non-"program notes":)

 

I'm not sure how you guys feel about submissions like this, fleshed-out reorchestrations. I figure this would be a borderline case, if anything. The structure is changed a bit (extended, repeat added) and there's quite a bit of new orchestration and stuff. I've been a quiet, lurking fan of OCRemix for a long time and it's always been around to develop my artistic development, even if I haven't been participating in the community until now. Thanks for listening!

 

Thanks,

Joshua

[Sir_NutS]

Production wasn't too bad, although the woodwinds were loud and piercing, and overly fake sounding.  Some other elements and performances weren't that belivable either but it works for the most part.  The arrangement however is too conservative, where it almost seems more like a cover.  It retreads the same structure as the original, and does it three times.  I didn't hear much variations between those, and if there was any was subtle enough not to have any effect on distinguishing one repeated section from the other.

Overall, not a badly produced song but too conservative for us.  There was some reorchestration and elements added in the background but the structure of the song feels more like a loop that repeats a few times than a cohesive arrangement.

NO

[DragonAvenger]

I'm mostly agreeing here with Mike, though I do feel like you have spent a good amount into personalizing the track with flourishes and re-instrumentation. I think the track does get too repetitive in regards to following the original repeats vs. developing a track that builds to a solid ending. 

The instrument quality definitely berries quite a bit, from realistic to pretty fakey. The woodwinds are definitely the biggest offender here. The laugh also gets to be too much after the first couple of times.

I don't think this is necessarily a lost cause but I do think the arrangement would have to be restructured and the production would need work as well. Whether or not you continue to work on this I hope to hear more from you!

NO (resubmit)

[DaMonz]

This is enjoyable, but I don't think it's a match with OCR. I agree that the winds are a bit out of the picture, but overall I think this sounds nice, and wouldn't be a dealbreaking problem in itself, in my opinion. Although, the arrangement is extremely conservative, and repetitive. The whole structure being copy-pasted to loop three times and leading up to a fade-out ending really hurts the arrangement's potential. I think that each repetition should at least be justified by notable alterations (to the structure, the instrumentation, the melodies, etc.) in order to expand upon it and add more of your own touch to the arrangement. So, in a way, I think fixing the repetition in your case would most probably also fix the conservative aspect of the arrangement.

If you want to submit your track again, I think the first thing you should do would be to either think of a structure of your own to try and customize things some more, or to get rid of the repetition altogether and focus on expanding the contents of a single run-through. Those are only suggestions, though, as there are many possible ways to personalize your music. In any case, I think you have great potential, and I hope you'll keep sending music our way!

Best of luck!

NO (resubmit)