Chimpazilla Posted September 16, 2016 Share Posted September 16, 2016 Hello OCR judges, Below is my information. Rodok. William Rhoden userid = 32400 Submission information. Game arranged = Legend of Zelda Ocarina or Time. Name = Bach to the Valley Song arranged = Gerudo Valley Inspiration: Many have done great arrangements of this song. I'm a classical violinist, and familiar with J.S. Bach's works. I thought it would be cool to try and combine the two. I did this arrangement as stress relief while working on my Masters in Music. Thank you all for supporting a great community for music! Will Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chimpazilla Posted September 16, 2016 Author Share Posted September 16, 2016 Track starts very abruptly. That female vocal sample, oof and also ouch. The drums sound stiff and dry. The organ at 0:32 is another ear-piercer. I am not sure how well this overall concept is working, there are instruments here which need to sound more natural than this, everything is so grid-snapped and rigid. I feel like the soundscape should be full, but it often has an empty feeling even with lots of elements playing. That female vocal is repetitive and painful in the highest register. At 2:32 the bass playing lead sounds very jumbled and awkward. Oh man that ending vocal is cheesy. I'm afraid this isn't resonating with me at all. NO Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gario Posted September 20, 2016 Share Posted September 20, 2016 Haha, oh man, I can totally feel where you're taking this, and I love the concept. I didn't think this would sound great as a Bach-toccatta fugue style track, but you've convinced me that it could work. I love most of the ideas that you present in here, and I'd argue even when the arrangement is a little more stilted it works for the style you're shooting for. The style seems to constantly be in flux with this track, though. The organ polylines that plays throughout rings 'Bach', but then there are other elements that take me out of the arrangement. The drums, the vocal clip, the synths, etc., all seem to be reaching from different genres and styles, and in this case I don't think they mesh very well. While I'm not one to say pick a style and stick with it, you do need a little more focus on what elements you deem important, and work on making those elements stronger rather than stacking other things on top and seeing if it works in the end. Part of what contributes to this idea that the instruments and styles don't mesh is partly due to the differing levels of quality and reverb that each has. The drums are incredibly dry in comparison to everything else, for example, and the synth is pretty vanilla and uninteresting (as far as sound design goes - it has some really cool themes and lines). I personally think the vocal synth is okay, myself, but I can see why Chimp would say it's pretty fake sounding, as well. I think there's an exporting error in the very beginning, there. As far as the rest of the production goes, it has some pretty noticeable clipping throughout the track. Looking at the waveform it's easy to see it hitting the ceiling all over the place. You need to pay attention to your levels and make sure you're not clipping, there. I do have to say I still enjoy this track quite a lot (the arrangement is, again, very clever), but it has some issues that hold it back as far as production and instrument quality goes that I can't ignore, unfortunately. NO Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nutritious Posted September 26, 2016 Share Posted September 26, 2016 Yeah, as said before the very start of the track sounds like it's cut off. I've had this happen with FL Studio before and my solution was to shift the whole mix forward a bar to prevent it. If that happens to be what you're using, see if that'll fix it. Hmm, this is quite loud and piercing. The mix is pushed pretty hard against the limiter, but the sounds that seem to be emphasized the most are around the 2-4K ish range which makes this one fatiguing on the ear. Sounds used are a bit of a mixed bag. The organ and voice sound pretty good sample-wise, but the bass sounds pretty lo-fi fakey and the strings aren't really cutting it with realism (though with some reverb to mesh them in, they could work better). Drums aren't super awesome fantastic, but could work with some TLC on how they're processed (see below). The various parts sound pretty dry and therefore unconnected. The drums in particular seem to occupy their own space, irregardless of the rest of the parts, making them sound disconnected and pasted-on. Try re-balancing the track to tame some of those piercing parts and using some tasteful reverb to mesh things better together. Arrangement is fantastic and I love the concept. You've chosen a really ambitious approach, which I applaud. Unfortunately, the production needs to come up quite a ways to match it. NO resubmit, please Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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