Bonetrousle & Dating Theme Medley (Undertale) - Big Band Jazz / Fusion

[LongBoxofChocolate]

Hey everyone! Just kinda looking for some general feedback on this one, as it won't be getting any more edits. Thanks!

(also BIG shoutout to Marc P. for comin through with the Horn section)

 

Sources:

Bonetrousle

Dating Start!

Dating Tense!

Dating Fight!

 

 

[Bowlerhat]

I like the arrangement. If I had to say anything about it, then I'd say it's a bit jumpy. It goes from one section to the other, and then to the next, and it also nicely returns to the sections it has already visited before, and everything is connected by the big undertale theme. But musically I can't really find any kind of resemblance between the different sections, neither in groove nor style. Combined with the abrupt transitions it seems kinda medleyish. 

Then at the intro, when there's this kinda tension building going on, which evolves into this 4th interval building cluster chord, I'm not sure whether that piano glissando was the right choice. It's all white keys going through those clusters. It's a pretty happy sound to put at the end of those clusters, and seems kinda anti climatic. 

Besides that I find it kinda hard to focus on the lead at times. The way the alto(?? I hear an alto, but I see a tenor playing, not sure what's going on there. Probably an alto doubled an octave lower by the tenor, with the alto off screen, but I'm not sure.) plays together with the baritone-saxophone(?) from 1.08 till the bass starts walking at 1.19 for example is very confusing in my ears. The lines seem to distract from each other rather than complement each other. And after that, when it gets kinda French, for lack of a better term, the synth is just going straight to the melody with those glissando's and stuff. While there's also still saxophones playing and french horns. It just seems like a bit much. When the basses align and the french horn and synth play together it works great, but the countermelodies before that don't really work in my opinion. And not just there, it happens at a lot of places. So much instruments playing different melodies at the same time, or just confusing and distracting countermelodies in general. It's a shame, because the playing is really really good, but it just doesn't come out as well as it could have. 

The sax solo is great. 

I'm pretty sure Marc also plays trumpet, I think it could have fitted in quite nicely with the rest of this. It would have added an extra punch on top of those climatic target notes, and could also have dragged the balance a bit more in favor of the lead melodies because of its attention grabbing nature.  

Great dancing as well.

So, yeah. I really like this. The playing is great, the source material interpretation is original and very creative, there's lots of energy, the instrumentation is cool. It's just that the overall form could have had a bit more direction, a better flow, and more fluid transitions. And some of the writing, definitely not all of it, was distracting, which in my opinion made the great writing you had come out worse than it actually is. 

Still pretty solid stuff, though. Great job!!

 

[LongBoxofChocolate]

Wow, thanks for the in-depth response. Gonna mull this over with @HankTheSpankTankJankerson - get back to you later this week?

[Gario]

I really like this - just jazzy and funky as all hell. I do have some reservation about the mixing/dynamics from time to time - sometimes instruments that hold the themes get drown behind everything else. It's something that can be addressed in post production, though - raising and lowering levels a little to make the themes punch through a little more would pretty much make something like this perfect.

Great work!

[HankTheSpankTankJankerson]

First off, thanks for the criticism, @Bowlerhat, I agree with some of the things you said!  And you are a musician too, I know this is coming from a good place.  On to discussions:

19 hours ago, Bowlerhat said:

I like the arrangement. If I had to say anything about it, then I'd say it's a bit jumpy. It goes from one section to the other, and then to the next, and it also nicely returns to the sections it has already visited before, and everything is connected by the big undertale theme. But musically I can't really find any kind of resemblance between the different sections, neither in groove nor style. Combined with the abrupt transitions it seems kinda medleyish. 

Upon listening to it with this in mind, the big big jump I hear is the one going into 2:40ish, but looking at the score, it modulates to the subdominant, which might be what you are hearing (?), and texture-wise, its still pretty busy.  Shaker + set, saxes take a back seat, the orchestration is similar to all that came before.  HOWEVER, the textures are sparse during the solos to give them lots of room.  When the guitar takes over melody at 2:40ish, the orchestration gets thicker again.  That may be contributing to jumpiness / medleyness.

And yeah, technically it is a medley, too.  Really its 4 songs in 1, but Bonetrousle is dominant with the other 3 in the middle only once through or something.  NOW, I CAN TOTALLY see some lack of cohesion where you are talking about that piano gliss going into the more latin section.  That totally the arranger's fault (me).  I think the next sections make up for that some.

19 hours ago, Bowlerhat said:

from 1.08 till the bass starts walking at 1.19 for example is very confusing in my ears

How so?  The majority of that line is parallel thirds, I believe, maybe I rushed  when I was playing tenor

19 hours ago, Bowlerhat said:

the synth is just going straight to the melody with those glissando's and stuff

It's foreshadowing melody over A section material.  I would totally write something like that again, I thought it was cool.  @Mannywing gave me a pat on the back for that one, especially it finishes out in the second half of the true A section melody.  We thought it welded those themes together without intruding.

19 hours ago, Bowlerhat said:

While there's also still saxophones playing and french horns. It just seems like a bit much

I feel you dude, but I wanted FULL instrumentation there to prepare for the final cadence before those 4 bars of drums.

19 hours ago, Bowlerhat said:

The sax solo is great

Thaaank you so much - I was really proud of that one.  I had to spend time crafting it, tinkering.

19 hours ago, Bowlerhat said:

Marc also plays trumpet

@Mannywing would know better than I, but I hadn't thought about that.  Great suggestion.

In closing, I am aware that there are a lot moving parts in this machine, but it achieved the level of complexity I wanted.  I believe in finding more things to latch onto as you listen through than once.  I DO BELIEVE it would have benefited from being recorded live with all the musicians in the room, but unfortunately, that requires a lot of players, a lot of gear, and a lot of time.  We did this with 5 people, some mics, and a couple of preamps, and its a sure thing that mixing that many different tracks is tricky-dicky.

Keeping all your words in mind going forward, I am so glad you listened to it.  Currently, I am writing stuff with thinner orchestration, which might help with what you thought was distracting.  But, yeah man, I am glad I read your post!

Let me know what you think of my responses.
Peace,
- Hank "The Spank Tank" Jankerson -

[HankTheSpankTankJankerson]

14 hours ago, Gario said:

I do have some reservation about the mixing/dynamics from time to time

And this is always where my crippling self doubt comes into play right?  hahaha
If I was the one mixing, it would never get done.

Thanks for the compliments, @Gario.  Always means a lot!

[Bowlerhat]

15 minutes ago, HankTheSpankTankJankerson said:

Upon listening to it with this in mind, the big big jump I hear is the one going into 2:40ish, but looking at the score, it modulates to the subdominant, which might be what you are hearing (?), and texture-wise, its still pretty busy.  Shaker + set, saxes take a back seat, the orchestration is similar to all that came before.  HOWEVER, the textures are sparse during the solos to give them lots of room.  When the guitar takes over melody at 2:40ish, the orchestration gets thicker again.  That may be contributing to jumpiness / medleyness.

And yeah, technically it is a medley, too.  Really its 4 songs in 1, but Bonetrousle is dominant with the other 3 in the middle only once through or something.  NOW, I CAN TOTALLY see some lack of cohesion where you are talking about that piano gliss going into the more latin section.  That totally the arranger's fault (me).  I think the next sections make up for that some.

With jumpy i meant it more style wise. It's exactly as you say, the glissando going into the latin section is a bit odd, and the next sections do sort of make up for it. The groove you've got till the sax solo is pretty consistent. But then there's the drum solo which leads into the sax solo, and everything just sort of sounds like a different song. Of course, it is a different song you're covering, but that doesn't mean that it should sound like a different song. The part from the sax solo till the latin part is pretty fluent. The transitions between the songs are nice and work well. And the part after the latin section nicely picks up where the part before the sax solo left off. If you were to look at remix as a whole, not considering the fact that you're covering multiple sources, it's a bit of an odd form. The whole midsection, from the sax solo till the latin section, doesn't really fit in with the outer parts, and the transitions between them are odd and seem a bit random. 

32 minutes ago, HankTheSpankTankJankerson said:

How so?  The majority of that line is parallel thirds, I believe, maybe I rushed  when I was playing tenor

Woops, this is totally my bad. This part sounds great. The way the saxes correspond together is very clever and well worked out. I meant the part from 1.18 till 1.33. Generally speaking, of course there are exceptions, you never write a countermelody above the lead melody. The way the syncopated alto chromatically goes downwards against the melody at in the tenor at 1.26 is confusing and distracts from the lead melody. Same thing when it happens again at the french horns later. The whole section there is just filled with lots of different melodies going above the lead melody, which buries the lead melody in a lot of sound and doesn't make it come out well. When I write countermelodies I always try to make them complement the lead melody. This means that it's almost always lower than the lead. I never double the lead or bass, I try to write over the bar line and most of the time use question and answer. This way it won't distract from the lead while still adding some new material. 

45 minutes ago, HankTheSpankTankJankerson said:

It's foreshadowing melody over A section material.  I would totally write something like that again, I thought it was cool.  @Mannywing gave me a pat on the back for that one, especially it finishes out in the second half of the true A section melody.  We thought it welded those themes together without intruding.

Upon some closer listening I guess it's more of a balance thing. As Gario mentioned, it's a thing that can be solved post production. 

 

47 minutes ago, HankTheSpankTankJankerson said:

I feel you dude, but I wanted FULL instrumentation there to prepare for the final cadence before those 4 bars of drums.

Off course, climax working is an important part of music. But you can also have full orchestration while still maintaining the clarity. Having them play in unison for example can work great. Voicing so much instruments effectively could be difficult, but I don't think it's something you can't handle. If that's not what you're looking for you can also go for the polyphonic idea you've got now, but even with polyphony there has to be something to focus on. Bach is great at writing lots of melodies at the same time without them interfering with each other. It's worth studying. And if that's not your cup of tea you could also check out some of Jacob Colliers stuff. Hajanga for example has some great countermelody writing. 

So yeah. That's about it. Try to focus on the lead and think of the form. Less is more.

 

[Mannywing]

On 8/23/2016 at 6:48 PM, Bowlerhat said:

While there's also still saxophones playing

To be fair, they are only sustaining chords there...if I'm thinking of the right spot.

On 8/23/2016 at 6:48 PM, Bowlerhat said:

I'm pretty sure Marc also plays trumpet

Hank originally wrote the piece for 4 trombones. When we couldn't find a player, I reached out to Marc and transposed the whole thing into F with very slight changes. It may have done well as a trumpet section too, but as a former Horn player myself I knew it was in the sweetspot range (and am admittedly biased) . We were also running kinda low on time so I made an executive call to just get the thing done.

4 hours ago, HankTheSpankTankJankerson said:

It's foreshadowing melody over A section material.

If we're talking about the Dating Melody over the Bonetrousle battery, I think @Bowlerhat meant the part right before - the initial synth entrance. I stand by what I said about mixing Dating melodies.

19 hours ago, Gario said:

raising and lowering levels a little to make the themes punch through a little more

Hmm. We usually have a fairly lengthy process and spend a good amount of time on levels, so what you're hearing is likely deliberate. I'm really starting to wonder about what people think we "should" be doing.

ALSO we're about to move the entire studio so this is definitely something I want to pay extra attention to moving forward!

[Gario]

@Mannywing The levels are generally pretty solid, but as I mentioned there are a few moments where things like swells and texture overtake what parts had been the focus, leading to places where the mixing sounds a bit unfocused. An example: at 1:33 you've got the horns playing a duet on the theme, and the accompaniment has a presence that gives that duet enough room for that to be the focus, but at 1:38 the keyboard comes in a bit loud simultaneously with the swelling sax, overtaking the horns. 1:40 - 1:48 has the Bonetrousle theme still playing on one of the horns, but it gets overpowered by the accompaniment, which doesn't have anything significant in it, though it does have cool textures. That's one example of what I'm talking about - there are more, but I didn't/don't want to spend too much time outlining it. These decisions may have been purposeful, but if the listener gets lost regardless then you should still be aware of it.

I'm nitpicking what is overall a great performance & arrangement, and generally solid production, though - I wouldn't be doing any favors by withholding my reservations on some of the mixing.

[LongBoxofChocolate]

@Gario Perhaps we hear any given arrangement so many times in writing, learning and playing that things like that become skewed haha. Something to work on then.

edit: both this account and Mannywing are me btw. I just popped in with that one since Hank flagged it down

Edited August 25, 2016 by LongBoxofChocolate