Gario Posted June 6, 2017 Share Posted June 6, 2017 Hi OCRemix! I'm Batistella and this is Moonlight Dance, a trance/house styled remix of the song "Powell" from the game Seiken Densetsu 3. This game marked my childhood, specifically the area in which the original song plays in (Moonlight Forest). I felt the original song's style went nicely as a house rhythm combined with the melodic fundamentals of the trance genre, so I was inspired to remix the track! Link: The 192kbps .mp3 is also attached to this e-mail, if you prefer. Thanks for listening! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gario Posted June 6, 2017 Author Share Posted June 6, 2017 So many things come together in this that I absolutely love: Seiken Densetsu 3 music, dance, clever use of the source material, etc. I was bouncin' for most of this track, with a nice phat beat carrying the music well and a rich soundscape to compliment this. The production in this is a bit of a mixed bag. The big opening to this sounds great, and the quieter moments are well done. After the 1:21 mark synths start coming in with rather high release envelopes. The afflicted instruments change throughout the arrangement, but when faster moving elements are affected by the high release the music gets crowded quickly, which messes the experience up considerably. In something like this with such a rich soundscape you can't afford to have quickly moving synths that have such a wet release. A smaller issue, but the synth at 4:02 has some distracting panning involved, and the actual synth/sample used doesn't really fit with the rest of the arrangement - it's thin, it's never heard before and never heard again. At the very least, give that synth some more presence, since it carries the theme in that portion. I really enjoy this, but I think the crowding caused by the wet synths puts this below the bar, as the crowding can make this difficult to listen to. Handle the release envelopes carefully in this, making sure the mix doesn't get too muddy and I think you'd have a pretty awesome dance arrangement for us to post. Don't forget to give the lead at 4:02 some more presence, as well. Nice work, and I hope to hear this one again! NO Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MindWanderer Posted June 6, 2017 Share Posted June 6, 2017 Takes a while to get going, but that's typical of the genre. The source material is little more than hinted at in a lot of the mix; I heard it from 1:32-2:46, 3:19-4:16, 4:24-4:39, 146/306 seconds, or 47.8%. That works by me, since there's definitely subtle reference to make up the remaining 2.2% in my book, but I imagine Liontamer will want to listen carefully to see if he can pick out any explicit references I didn't. The dynamic range of this was pretty wide. I had to keep lowering the volume while listening to it, since it starts off moderately quiet and slowly gets a lot louder. I agree that the balance is frequently an issue. 2:02-2:16 is an example of a particularly crowded section where several instruments are stepping on each others' toes. Gario's right that cutting the release/reverb/delay a little shorter would help the instruments stand out against each other much better. I actually really liked the flute-like synth at 4:02, but I agree with Gario that it needs to pop out more there--it's a big impact moment, since it's the part of the source melody that hadn't been used yet, and it's stylistically unique. I didn't notice a panning issue with it, but I might if it were more prominent. I like the arrangement for the most part, and it's a cool approach that I think worked out quite well, but it has several small issues that add up. I think it needs to be a little cleaner to be front page material. NO (borderline, resubmit) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DragonAvenger Posted June 9, 2017 Share Posted June 9, 2017 Not much to add on here. Great concept, and I do think it's relatively close to where it needs to be, but the guys are right that when this gets crowded it's really pretty distracting, and definitely needs to be fixed up. The volume variations are also a little bit on the extreme side, but I don't see that as being a super big issue. Would be nice if it was tamed down a touch though! Hope you send this one back to us fixed up! NO (resubmit) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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