Gario Posted March 10, 2017 Share Posted March 10, 2017 Submission Info: Mega Man 2 Zippo Inferno Heat Man Stage Contact info: Gridscape László Csengő http://gridscape.online 28837 Thank You! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MindWanderer Posted March 10, 2017 Share Posted March 10, 2017 There's a lot here I like: a nice, high-energy beat, some fun original bass work (0:57-1:10 was a highlight), and you did a great job keeping such a short, repetitive source interesting. However, it's skewed very high on the frequency spectrum, with very little low end, and a lot competing for the high end, even the bass and kick. Much of it is pretty clear regardless, but there are some points--0:45-0:56, 1:11-1:22, and 2:02-2:40--where the highs crowd each other out. Also, 1:23-1:35 has that beep that's pretty piercing, and 2:27-2:48 had one synth that was very high and so loud I had to turn my volume down. I don't know if the vocoded voice was supposed to be comprehensible, but I couldn't make out anything it was saying. If you can improve the frequency spread by adding some bass presence, and either spreading out or EQ'ing those conflicting synths, I think you'll be in a pretty good position to get this passed. NO (resubmit) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gario Posted April 20, 2017 Author Share Posted April 20, 2017 Man, the synths are so damn cheezy - it's making me think of a combination of early 90's and early 00's. The production is pretty clean on the instruments, and while the bass is ever present I don't feel the EQ balance is particularly problematic. The vocoded vocals are definitely impossible to understand, though (I think I made out the word 'Fire' from time to time, so there are actually lyrics to this, I think), and they're mixed more to the middle of the arrangement rather than standing above the textural synths. It's not going to sink the arrangement, but the mixing does bring out the brighter texture as the cost of the vocoded vocals, which seems to be a strange choice. While the mixing isn't ideal, it's still easy to hear every individual element regardless, so at least it's not too cluttered. I think the rest of the arrangement comes through in a big way, though, with solid production values to boot. I think this one is good enough to share with the OCR audience. YES Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Liontamer Posted April 26, 2017 Share Posted April 26, 2017 Pretty odd production. The voice stuff can't be understood, which isn't necessary in an enjoyable song and can be chocked up to a stylistic choice. That said, I still don't think that works here. Just to be clear, that's not a knock on this simply for having robotic or processed vocals; what's getting me here is that the syllables just slurred together, causing the vocals to not sound melodious. Another issue was that the vocals were pushed way behind the instrumental, which made no sense here. As soon as they came in, they were behind the lead synth, then a countermelodic synth came in at :44 that was positioned way more upfront compared to the vocals (and again at 1:10), and was even a touch louder than the synth on melody. And again, why is the beeping from 1:22-1:35 louder than everything else? None of the placement in the soundscape makes sense; you have accent parts that just push forward and drown out what are meant to be foreground parts. Just wanna be clear I'm not angry or upset when writing this, I'm just trying to point out specific times and really hammer the point home that what's in place right now isn't properly balanced. The dropoff at 1:23 was a welcome dynamic change, but the lead synth at 1:36 was super dry and vanilla, and by this point the basic beat pattern was becoming pretty stale, which was also ironic since the track's mixed in a way where the hits often barely registered. To me, the soundscape was too dry and thin, the synth design was plain, and the energy level at the 1:36 section just seemed to hit a kind of a first-and-a-half gear that was trying to be energetic but sounded relatively empty, which undercut the energy intended in this arrangement. Getting more sophisticated/creative with the synth design and padding out the background more would help flesh this out and not seem too thin like it does now. Arrangement-wise, the approach is definitely creative, so I'm sorry for possibly seeming like I didn't like anything about this, László, which is not the case. But there are lots of production issues hampering your execution. Maybe it's because I listen on headphones, but with very basic instrumentation & processing, different parts so imbalanced here and lots of stuff mudding together in the same frequency range like MindWanderer timestamped, I have absolutely no idea how Gario could go YES on this as is. NO (resubmit) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DragonAvenger Posted May 8, 2017 Share Posted May 8, 2017 I see a lot of Larry's points here, and while I don't think it's as rough as he's making it sound, I do think they need to be addressed in regards to which parts are up front and which should be more supporting. There's definitely a weird priority here and it's throwing me off as a listener. Aside from that, I enjoyed the energy of the mix, and while I couldn't understand the vocode it was a fun addition and works well with the arrangement. Hope you clean this up a bit and get it back to us! NO (resubmit) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sir_NutS Posted May 18, 2017 Share Posted May 18, 2017 hmm I kinda understand where the remixer is trying to go here. kind of a mix of ideas though, the synthwave beat, bass and vocoded quips kinda clash with the acid filtered synthline and highly detuned stacked saw synths, as it wasn't usual for these two to converge, since they're basically a decade apart in usage. Regardless of the culture clash, the mix is very rough, and needs proper balance, since you are basically losing most of the beat to the bassline. The vocoding was fine, you don't need the phrases to be understandable as they can simply be used as just another instrument and is a technique used in many popular songs. The overall mix feels very dry, with a lack of prioritization in what should be at the front at any given time. Some of the backing harmonies were clashing melodically with the rest of the instruments, such as the bell-like synth at 0:45. I wasn't too sold on the arrangement, as it seemed pretty repetitive, but the production is the major issue here, which needs quite a bit of work to get it over the bar, imo.NO Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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