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*NO* Final Fantasy 7 & Super Metroid 'Harmony of Destruction'


Liontamer
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Track Name: Harmony of Destruction.

Your ReMixer name: Ellywu2

Your real name: Chris Elliott

Your email address: ellywu2@hotmail.com

Name of game(s) ReMixed: Final Fantasy 7, Super Metroid

Name of individual song(s) ReMixed: Those chosen by the planet, Lower Norfair.

This is an orchestral remix of the two themes, done in the style of Hans Zimmer (a thousand composers and remixers just cried out in terror!), which means brass, drums etc. Basically these two themes are by far the most badass evil themes in videogame history, and i wanted to combine them.

I hope you enjoy and thanks in advance!.

-Ellywu2

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well, interesting.

i normally hate hans zimmer type orchestrations but this didn't really strike me entirely as one. i was under the impression for most of it that i was listening to a jason hayes track of world of warcraft. i guess that may be more of the same, really. who knows but either way, your stylistic choice is accurate.

you're right about these sources too; i'm gonna have to pay them a visit. although i would have heard these themes far more murderous in a more basil pouledouris conan the barbarian sort of suit. but i digress.

it sounds clean. very nice on the ears despite its dynamic... the brass is very disruptive and effective in being so. further, the instruments were very servicable so there wasn't the typical problem of the brass sounding absolutely ridiculous. while brass, in my mind, is the hardest to appropriately synthesize, that was pretty decent brass.

this structurally serves as good game music for a warcraft type game, for sure. it has the same epic hans zimmer feel and it works well. then it goes out with a very somber but proud denoument and voila! you've got an ending

i think its good.

count it

YES

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Well, I personally dig HZ's style, and do in fact own several movie OST's that he did.

You pulled off his style fairly well, all things considering. I'd say you picked two sources that mesh very very nicely together, so you didn't have to get too complex or extreme to bring them together harmoniously.

The song is a little repetitive at times, and I think this coupled with the length makes it drag it's feet a little, but it's something I can live with and not lose any sleep over. I really would have liked to hear more attention to the taiko sequencing. The one-two-three-four thing got a little boring, and was in fact a heavy contributing factor to the over-repetition. There was some sink-o-pay-shun in a few places, but even they tended to repeat with minimal variation. Overall, I'd say that the piece still has potential as far as the arrangement goes, but this is just over the OCR bar. Ratio of source(s) to remix is acceptable. Arrangement (minus the previously mentioned gripes) is decent, and production leavs no qualms in my ears. Song could use more variation in certain places, and IMHO still has more potential, but yet in it's current state, I'd say this is borderline go for launch.

YES

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ellywu2: Mufasa.

Listener: Oooooh... *shiver* Say it again!

ellywu2: Mufaaaasssaaaa...

Listener: *shiver shiver*

ellywu2: MufasaMufasaMufaaaasssaaaa!

Yeah, it's kinda like that. (Okay, I know, it's been a long day...)

:tomatoface:

You're really milking the style here, and I gotta commend you for it. The arrangement may be a little on the repetitive side, but because you're imitating a film composer's style, I'll treat it like a film score. In that sense, you've certainly accomplished the mood you were going for. I'm quivering with feeeaaahhh!

Production's quite solid. Much moreso than some of your previous works... including our lovely Schala collab. ^_~

Might not be everyone's cup of tea, but I see no reason not to pass this.

YES

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So the first minute or two had me thinking this would go big places. the two-note vamp from SM sounded crisp and forboding. Unfortunately, nothing ever happens in this mix. There's very little in the way of arrangement of the source tunes; taikos + akward rhythmic changes to the melody are not sufficient. There's very little compositional escalation. It just jumps from one riff/melody to another and back again.

[01:08] <Vig> i suppose it's easy to be fooled into thinking the track is substantial

[01:08] <Vig> samples are good, forboding atmosphere

[01:09] <Vig> but the composition is really stupid simple

So yeah. The samples and atmosphere might sound good, but the longer you listen to this track, the weaker it sounds. Composition/arrangement here is nowhere near our bar.

NO

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http://www.tzone.org/~llin/psf/packs2/FF7_psf.rar - 305 "Those Chosen by the Planet"

http://snesmusic.org/v2/download.php?spcNow=sm - "Norfair Ancient Ruins Area" (sm-26.spc)

Interesting intro, pretty good energy. Liked the brief reference to "Those Chosen..." from :10-:15. Loving the tension with the drums, brass and strings although the strings at :32 sounded a little too close for my tastes. Nothing that negatively impacts a vote or anything, just personal taste.

Dunno what that percussion-style instrumentation at 1:06 was, but it sounded pretty nice. Still not really getting much of a connection to either source here. Not really sure what's being arranged at all here though up until 2:10 overtly references "Norfair Ancient Ruins Area". Strings upfront at :32 sound like nothing being arranged (except very far in the back on support doing "Those Chosen"); same with the brass at :42, the percussion at 1:06 and the strings/brass at 1:25. If you're referring to either source tune, it's unfortunately far from overt.

Pretty decent genre adaptation of "Norfair Ancient Ruins Area" from 2:10-2:52 with some alteration of the rhythms and other orchestral seasonings, but the theme hardly got any really interpretive treatment. Transitions fairly naturally over into an adaptation of "Those Chosen by the Planet" from 3:04-3:46, which IMO had more personalization and interpretation than the rendition of Norfair.

Nice segue back into Norfair with the glassy percussion lead from 3:46-4:29. A bit of a shame that it went back into the more straightforward Norfair arrangement from 4:29-5:11; could have been a good chance to at least expand on that aspect on those idea more rather than do nearly the same thing again. Still, some better ideas from 5:11 until the end at 5:42 to close it out with some more interpretive stuff, though that was pretty fleeting.

I agree with Vigilante on the composition ultimately feeling underdeveloped. I thought you were heading in the right direction with some of the more interpretive sections I heard, but much of the arranged sections were fairly straightforward and concise. I see you're trying to intelligently write supporting instrumentation that's original yet compliments the melody, but it's not adequately filling the song out.

Related to that, the samples seemed pretty good, though I thought the soundscape sounded a bit too clean and upfront. Almost every instrument sounded like it was right next to me, rather than being affected by any acoustics (the bell being a notable exception). The overall placement of stuff like the brass and strings doesn't sound very natural. It doesn't affect my vote strongly, but perhaps try for a denser sound on them that reverberates more. Right now, things sound fairly full given all the sounds in play, but the atmosphere actually didn't sound very spacious.

The sum total of the arrangement and production issues I had ultimately pushes me to go NO(resubmit). The production quality is ultimately a touch too unrealistic, but passable in the big scheme of things provided the arrangement is strong.

On the arrangement side, I would integrate usage of the sources into more of the liberal first half and work on revamping the writing of the supporting instrumentation to add more complexity and interpretation value to the more conservative sections of the arrangement. Keep up the progress, Chris.

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Larry echoed most of the issues I had with this one. Underdeveloped first half, soundfield that was overly pristine and somehow sparse, etc. I would love to see a denser texture throughout and more tangible connections to the source tunes in the first half. Also, if you really want to emulate Zimmer's style, use some synths too :) He always does things like layer synth bass under his double basses to give extra presence to the bass.

Refine + resubmit.

NO

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  • 2 weeks later...

i find myself in agreement with vig, larry, and zircon.

for being just shy of 6 minutes, the arrangement says way too little.

good atmosphere, and it sounds nice, it could just use some more love on the arrangement end.

i'm not going to tell you how to ReMix/arrange, but I will say that if this were my piece, I would trim the more repititive sections down and add some more layers to keep the momentum up.

NO RESUBMIT

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good atmosphere, and it sounds nice, it could just use some more love on the arrangement end.

i'm not going to tell you how to ReMix/arrange, but I will say that if this were my piece, I would trim the more repititive sections down and add some more layers to keep the momentum up.

Perfectly put. I really like the dynamics in this piece, but around the 4th minute it starts wearing thin. As I mentioned in another decision, moving lines underneath what you have can really help build a different kind of tension.

NO

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I don't have too much of a problem with the arrangement here. I think it's pretty creative, if not a little repetitive. However, I'm with Vig when he says that the song sounds less impressive as it goes on. This thing is too long for the style of mix it is. You could squash this into a 4 minute mix with the same level of arrangement and it'd still probably sound a little sparse.

That being said I think what we have here is an enjoyable mixture of sources, even given how sparse it is. I'm gonna go with a perfectly borderline pass on this one. It could be much better, but it's creative and enjoyable at the moment, while not tripping over our guidelines which is what counts.

YES

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This sounds great, I love the way that these sounds have been used. However, for me the arrangement leaves much to be desired; my interest level dropped off after the 4th minute due to the repetitive sections. This could have been fleshed out much more arrangement wise with quite a few original parts thrown in here and there. Norfair source is very sparse in itself, you could have added quite a lot to it if you wanted to. I would definitely like to see a resubmission of this.

NO (Please resub)

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