*NO* Populous 'The Battle Between Good and Evil'

[Chimpazilla]

OC Remix,

ReMixer Name: Tonal Bliss
Real Name: Christopher Schmenk
Website: http://www.tonalbliss.com/
User ID: SegaMon (http://ocremix.org/community/profile/5633-segamon/)

Link to ReMix: 
Name of Game Arranged: Populous
Name of Arrangement: The Battle Between Good and Evil
Name of Individual Song Arranged: Theme Song / Title Screen
Name of Original Composer: Rob Hubbard
Systems this Game is Found On: Amiga (original release), TurboGrafx 16 (PC Engine and PC Engine CD), Sega Genesis, Sega Master System, Super Nintendo Entertainment System, MS-DOS (PC)
Link to the Original Piece: https://youtu.be/xBSRXweG7E8

Comments: I recently acquired the SNES version of Populous when thinking about what song I would like to remix. I grew up playing and loving the Sega Genesis version but the theme music for the Super Nintendo version had higher fidelity and was much more enjoyable. I made my decision: the song I wanted to remix was the theme song to Populous. Then I looked up what the original song sounded like. I found out that the game originally appeared on the Amiga and was composed by the legendary Rob Hubbard. After soaking in the original version of the song and listening to some of Rob Hubbard's other music written on the Amiga, I started writing the ReMix. I completed the introduction in the notation software NoteWorthy Composer. This gave me the foundation to transfer and finish the tune in FL Studio. I wanted the piece to have a lot of power, have the sound of a real orchestral performance, and be very percussive. I believe that I have accomplished what I set out to do. I hope that you enjoy this piece and that you will let me know what you think. Thank you OC Remix for the many awesome years of wonderfully remixed video game music.

Let me know if you have any trouble accessing the mp3 file.

Sincerely,
Christopher Schmenk

 

Edited August 31, 2016 by Liontamer
closed decision

[Chimpazilla]

This is a good source, and a bold choice to remix.  The instrumentation sounds a bit forced and unnatural though, and the soundscape sounds a little lifeless.  Drums (snare mainly) are too quiet, dry and centered. Idunno, what do you guys think?

edit:  Reading Gario's vote, he articulated what I was thinking, beautifully.  Gotta agree pretty much in full.

NO

[Gario]

Definitely a bold choice in source choice - not a common source, but it's a great example of an older system that tried to sound 'epic'. It's a source that begs to have something that can fully realize that sound it was going for, which this arrangement makes a solid attempt at doing.

The arrangement is fairly conservative, but it pulls a lot of motifs that occur later in the track and sprinkles them throughout the track instead. The string arpeggio motif that often comes in is something that is introduced later, but it's often used as a transition that builds tension. Things like that put the arrangement within our standards, and it makes the track more interesting to boot.

The use of space is quite good in this arrangement. Instruments are generally panned appropriately without having anything stick out in any glaring sort of way. It's a common mistake for people to pan something too much, or make it stick out like a sore thumb, but this track doesn't suffer much from any of that, and it certainly helps make the track sound very "big".

That being said, there are some issues with the instruments that are used throughout. The trumpet sample (the one that comes in at 0:31) sound like... well, general midi. OCR isn't against the use of free samples at all, as long as one can make it sound good, but that trumpet uses a distracting thin, terrible sample that can't be ignored. Most of the other samples are acceptable, if they're humanized well, but that trumpet is not good.

Overall, the use of dynamics to humanize the performance is quite good in this, but the instruments otherwise have a mechanical performance. Articulation and phrasing is something that you need to pay special attention to. Everything has the same attack throughout, everything uses the same amount of vibrato throughout, etc., which certainly makes it sound like it's sequenced. It's not an easy thing to emulate (some samplers come with articulation options, other times you have to fake it using attack, release, and volume envelopes), but once you get the hang of that your orchestra will sound amazing.

I hear the concerns over the quiet, dry snare in this. I don't think it's too quiet, myself - often snare is used more as a background element in an orchestra, as it is here. However, it IS too dry in comparison to the other instruments, and the longer drum rolls tend to sound like a machine. If you're hand-inputting some of the rolls be sure to add some variety to the volumes and velocity between the notes on your longer rolls.

I like it, I think the idea is a great one, and the source needs some more love on OCR. However, the instruments are pretty mechanical in this one, and some of your samples (Trumpet!) are not as high quality as they could be, even for free. Thanks for the submission, and I hope you pay attention to the articulations and vibrato in this and resubmit it.

NO

[Sir_NutS]

Gario pretty much said it all here.  I will say first though that personally, I enjoyed this piece!  it has kind of that charm that old pc game soundtracks had when midi sequencing was a thing for dos and early windows soundtracks, but although I enjoyed this on a personal level it does not meet the criteria of what we're looking for in OCR.  The instrumentation is too obviously sequenced and stiff, and humanization is lacking in pretty much all fronts.  I don't want to repeat the things Gario pointed out again so I'll just refer to his vote.

I liked the adaptation and it's definitely a different take on the original while also not straying too far from it.  The personal touches are there as I could hear changes in both structure and arrangement, so kudos on that.  I didn't have an issue with the drum parts, I thought they are one of the things that changed the feel of the song compared to the original.   As it stands though, the song needs a bump in production quality to get over the bar.

NO