Gario Posted January 12, 2017 Share Posted January 12, 2017 Contact Info: J-BHarmonized James High https://soundcloud.com/jbharmonized 33741 Submission Info: Final Fantasy IV What Mountain Ordeal? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Liontamer Posted January 12, 2017 Share Posted January 12, 2017 Heh. The tone of the booming drums at the outset gave me a "DK Island Swing" vibe that got a chuckle out of me. Kind of weird to hear a goofy light-hearted approach to this theme, but the energy is good, and feels like a personalized approach to the theme; let's see where this goes. Very subtle detail, but the mallet perc tones from :14-:24 were a nice touch. The chorused opening strings were exposed and sounded pretty fake, but get the job done in this context. The sax sample strains for credibility also, but I've heard DarkeSword get mileage out of it. That said, the sax chorusing at :44 is a rarer example where layering actually made a fake-sounding sample sound worse (rather than mitigate the realism issues). Would love to see some musician Js' advice on what's making these samples sound lacking and how to make better usage of them. At 1:08, the writing was sounding like a cut-and-paste of the opening aside from some minor instrumentation tweaks. The quasi-comping piano at 1:27-1:46 sounded sloppily performed and lacking energy; it may be subjective, but from the writing I heard, it seemed as if the piano should have been more forceful-sounding and more in the foreground. More essentially cut-and-paste rehashing of the arrangement from 1:46 until the end, which was a negative. Please understand, I really like the energy and arrangement approach in terms of making this a more upbeat theme, but then you just repeated the sections wholesale instead of further developing the arrangement ideas; that doesn't make the piece inherently bad or poorly done, but we are looking for a further level of creativity and personalization than that. Main issue: develop/vary the arrangement a lot more. You could also see what you can do to improve the realism of the strings and sax samples, but (IMO at least) a more developed arrangement with this soundset could pass the production quality part of the bar. Good base here, James. I hope you're willing to revisit this one, or at least submit some more material down the line, because it's clear you have the right idea in terms of arrangement; you just need to take the concepts further instead of just looping the good ideas. NO (resubmit) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MindWanderer Posted January 20, 2017 Share Posted January 20, 2017 Agreed with Larry on all points. In addition, I thought the piano arrangement was really strange, with some unusual chords that I didn't feel fit the overall style or energy level at all. There are some clever ideas, and I definitely encourage you to pursue arranging in this direction, but the repetition and lack of realism here are significant issues that need to be addressed. NO Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gario Posted January 20, 2017 Author Share Posted January 20, 2017 I actually do like the arrangement on this one - the harmonizations are legitimately very interesting, and I feel the sax sample was handled well (with one or two exceptions). If the style was more RnB or hip hop where the fake string stabs make more sense I'd say they were alright, but for all intents and purposes this track should try to breath some more realism into its strings by giving them some more dynamics. The part writing for the instruments is pretty slick, though. As I said before, the sax is alright, but the slides on that sax are too extreme at 0:24 (and all parts similar). A slide into your note is fine, and you handle most of them like a champ, but honestly that wobble just sounds like it hits the wrong note. The section Larry hears as problematic (0:44) has to do with how precisely the slides line up - for one part it may make sense, but that may not apply to the backing instrument. When two instruments line up that perfectly it takes the realism down a notch. If I make two instruments accompany one another I more likely than not utilize two samplers or synths in order to be able to separate the envelopes, as necessary. I hear the copy pasta that Larry is mentioning, but I will note that there ARE faint backing elements that are different the second go around (like the xylophone coming in earlier, for example), but those differentiating elements are faint and nearly unnoticeable. We've heard the part that you play most prominently, either give some room in the mix for the elements that make it different come out more, or change up some of the copied elements to keep the listener interested. Love the bass work underneath, it does add a whole lot to the track as a whole. Yeah, lots to like about this, but the instrument realism and copy paste are noticeable issues with it. I did get a kick out of the harmonies and small changes you made from the source - lots of subtle love went into this. Hope to see the issues fixed up and have this resubmit at some point. NO Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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