Castlevania - Bloody tears remix

[keypat reborn]

Hello castlevania fans. I made a remix of bloody tears using my own set of pop and thecno influences (celldewller, lady gaga,jordan rudess, etc) and my own sound. I hope you love it.
 

 

Original

 

[keypat reborn]

any feedback guys? I would appreciated a lot.

 

[The Nikanoru]

Hey, keypat. 10 days isn't too long for a response, I hope.

I was a tad worried that this was going to turn into something generic, but I was happily proven wrong as the track progressed.

That lead synth that runs from 0:12 to 1:17 (even with tone change at 0:59) is REALLY irritating me, in both tone (it's a little too bright, IMO) and arrangement (very repetitive). I like the timing thing between the lead and harmony you're trying to pull off, but it comes across irritating because of the synth sound, IMO - maybe if you try varying that lead up a little bit here and there like you do at 1:30 would help this. 

Drums aren't bad and keep themselves interesting in most places, but feel VERY sequenced and, IMO, the quality of the samples isn't wonderful.

Other than that, I like pretty much everything after the 1:38 mark. Love how you make the lead the harmony to support the fill-work at 2:00, sounds great.

I really like this, thanks for the listen!

[timaeus222]

You use the main CV riff for a good long while, and put off the main melody until around 2:20. I think that does differentiate it from other CV remixes. I do think the drums feel separate from the other instrumentation though. They're very simple and repeat without much variation, and if you listen to the piece as a whole, the dynamics stay fairly constant. I like the solo at 1:55 - 2:20 though.

[keypat reborn]

wow the feedback was even better than I expected, I really apreciate this, this song is my first videogame remix so I really wanted some good criticism from people that appareciate video game's music a lot, my boyfriend suggested this site and I even uploaded the song to be judged ,I followed the standard application and email but its been nearly 2 months and they haven't answered yet, so I submited here to have some feedback from the guys on the forum, my machine is very humble so I'm limited so some vst, I used sytrus vst for most of this song, I hope you enjoyed the song and sorry my english, it's not my my language I'm even using my boyfriend as a translator lol.
thanks again @The Nikanoru @timaeus222

[keypat reborn]

I hope everyone that listened had a good time

[Gario]

Sorry that your track hasn't been judged quite yet; it does take some time for something to get to the panel (I think we're about 5 months behind, atm), and another bout of time for the judges to actually listen, critique and give their YES or NO on it. It's done the old fashion way (with people listening and figuring out if there's anything that makes it unacceptable), so that can take some time, as well.

If you're ever curious to how it'd do on the panel prior to submitting it, you can post a track in here next time, and when you feel the track is in good shape to submit tag the thread with "EVAL". You'll get relatively immediate feedback from one of the Workshop Mods (a.k.a. Rozovian and myself, lawl), so you won't have to wait until it gets to and through the judges panel before you find out how it did. It's a nice little system for things like this, and it might help for next time.

On a QUICK listen, I would gather this would likely be sent back for the vanilla synth design in the first half and sometimes off putting rhythms (particularly the bass against the arpeggiation at 0:25 - 0:40 - it might be purposeful, but it's quite off-putting; later it doesn't sound as out of place), but the arrangement ideas are pretty sound past 0:40, and the production and mixing are solid. In all honesty it may or may not pass the panel, though I'd lean toward asking for a resubmission based on the off putting rhythm as listed and rather plain sound design.

Glad to see it on here, though - nice to be able to hear it before it gets to the panel.

[keypat reborn]

Thank you for you input, You won't believe in what kind of pc I made thse tracks, Its a really humble PC, anyway, I wanna ask you to be more specifiv In what kind of sound design you find more ''dynamic'' cause I don't get what you mean by ''plain sound'' it would be really nice to get into specifics, It would be ver awesome, to have that kind of imput, sorry if Im asking much, Im really new to all this, only been making track for 2 years in my home.
 

@Rozovian  can you give me some critique too, thank you.

 

thanks to everyone who responded, this is helping a lot.

sorry for my english

[Gario]

21 hours ago, keypat reborn said:

Thank you for you input, You won't believe in what kind of pc I made thse tracks, Its a really humble PC, anyway, I wanna ask you to be more specifiv In what kind of sound design you find more ''dynamic'' cause I don't get what you mean by ''plain sound'' it would be really nice to get into specifics, It would be ver awesome, to have that kind of imput, sorry if Im asking much, Im really new to all this, only been making track for 2 years in my home.

Actually, a perfectly fair question; it's difficult to put into few words. Fortunately, someone actually asked me the exact same question yesterday (because of my comment here, no less!), so I'll share what I explained with him (with a few edits, for clarity):

"Plain, unimaginative and/or boring sound design" is what vanilla generally means. There's some subjectivity to it, of course, but it does have some objective base to it. It's helpful to think of it using a basic litmus test: 

• A. Is it an easily recognized, overused preset (like Supersaw) or a pure waveform (saw, square, etc.)? If so...
• B. Is there a particular reason for it, like trying to emulate a particular sound (squares to emulate NES) or style (Supersaws for old school electronic music)? If not...
• C. Is there anything in the texture that makes them otherwise interesting (Quick arps, gating, etc) that might be muddy or messy with more complex instruments, or against itself?

If the answer to the first is 'YES' and the other two is 'NO', doing something with the sound design of the simpler instruments will objectively make your music sound more rich and complete, without losing something in the arrangement in return. Do know, though, that this does NOT mean use a different sampler/synthesizer/etc.; it means do something with your tools (envelops, layering, etc.) that makes the instruments more interesting.

Consider two of the three points in that litmus test in some detail: if you're actually going for a particular sound, then that not only justifies the use of simpler sounds, it may even require them ("8-bit" and "Fake-bit" is a genre that requires square waves for that sound, for example). Also, sometimes the use of pure sounds is necessary in order to apply more complex textures: doing hyper-fast 64th or 128th note arpeggios with virtually anything other than basic square or sines WILL sound like trash with more complex instruments.

One final point that sums all of this nicely: Above all else, make your choices sound intentional rather than incidental. If it sounds like the composer made a purposeful choice on the sound design/synth/instrument rather than chose an instrument/synth just to carry the notes, it'll probably sound correct.

[keypat reborn]

thank you, it was very nice of you and that  litmus test is very helpful, it actually blew my mind what you said, Im gonna put it into practice

[Rozovian]

Well, since you asked so nicely...

I agree with the crit about vanilla sounds. They're not terrible, but when not much else is happening they get a little grating. Like at 0:25-0:40. The same notes played the same way each loop. Once the reverse crash comes in, it feels like a buildup, but it should feel that way earlier. There are things you can do with automation (feels like the kind of place I'd automate an opening low-pass filter), but you can just start with low-velocity notes and increase the velocity. That makes it feel more like a buildup. If the synth responds to different velocity by making notes more muffled and soft at low velocities and brighter and louder at high velocities, you can get a lot of dynamics just with velocity edits like that. The point is to make it feel like someone's playing, like someone's putting some emotion into a performance. Right now, it feels like a loop of notes that a machine is playing. Any of the tricks I suggested should help make it feel more alive.

Note that I'm not talking about humanization, which is when it's made to seem like it was played by a real human being. That's a different thing, and not that important in electronic music. The emotion, the dynamics, the sense of performance is more important than any actual performance.

The sounds themselves aren't terrible. I'd be okay with something using these sounds, but they'd have to be mixed better. (and more alive.) Give each instrument its own space. There are many articles, videos, and other information on how to do this, but the basic idea is to use reverbs and equalizers to push some things back behind other instruments, and bring others more into the foreground. At 2:00 you have a lot of instruments playing, and it gets messy. Making some of them more clearly foreground instruments and others background instruments will make it less of a mess. It's also a way to bring out the big hitters like the bass drum more, if that's the sound you want. Just don't overdo it. That leads to other problems.

I like the arrangement. More dynamics, more life to the sound, and a more focused mix, and it'll be a really nice track.

[keypat reborn]

Sorry for the late response, your feedback was very informative as well, thank you so much for taking the time to do it, thanks again

[REMEMBER CITADEL]

Really nice work, loved the 80ies inspired pop feel of it. Interesting to hear an organ piece could work well for that kind of stuff.

[keypat reborn]

On 22/12/2016 at 3:23 PM, REMEMBER CITADEL said:

Really nice work, loved the 80ies inspired pop feel of it. Interesting to hear an organ piece could work well for that kind of stuff.

Thank you so much sir!!! I'm glad you liked my remix, I'm inspired by genres from the eighties and nineties like synthpop, synthwave and eurobeat. I also like to play a little with the tempo, syncopations and back beat in my music. (Sorry for my english. Isn't my native language).