Kingdom Hearts - It Began With A Letter Remix - Messenger of The King's Creed (Pluto's Theme)

[Dzparks]

I recently bought Kingdom Hearts 1.5 + 2.5 and immediately began playing the nostalgic video game. Kingdom Hearts music and square enix music have always been great videogame music and scores. The song and score that stood out to me is "It Began With A Letter" by Yoko Shimomura that plays after Donald and Goofy realize that King Mickey is gone. I tried to sample the beat and create somewhat of a Pluto's Theme since he is the one who delivers letters through out the series. 

The beat has a ton of synthesizers, some drums, and two pianos.  The first part is somewhat vanilla. The second part is a mash of synthesizers all using different parts of the scores. The third part is experimental sampling and reversing of the music. Hope you enjoy.

Remix:

 

Original:

 

[Ronald Poe]

As many know, I love Kingdom Hearts and it's one of my biggest influences. I'm always all for KH remixes (there's surprisingly few of them on this site but the series has mostly great music) and am working on one myself (a Christmas remix of "Riku" theme). That being said, I thought this was pretty good and fits Pluto very well. It's mellow (the same could be said of the original theme though) and a little playful in tone. I like it and think it's interpretive enough but you may want a third  non-biased (because Kingdom Hearts and its music are my favorite) opinion. 

[Rozovian]

eval:

"I tried to sample the beat" - Yeah no. You can't sample anything from Square-Enix for something to be posted on ocr. We've got a deal with SE that, as I understand it, prohibits us from posting remixes with audio assets straight from their games. You'd have to recreate those elements yourself if you want this on ocr.

There's some weird harmonies happening here. Either you've misheard which key the original is in and the clashes stem from your elements clashing with the sampled elements, or you need to read up on harmony and key and stuff. Listen more closely to find the elements that sound out of place, harmonically. I'm hearing clashes at 0:50, 1:02, and 2:29, and the parts that repeat those things. Learn to recognize and avoid this.

The structure is really difficult to hear. I have no idea where in the arrangement I am at a given point. Two tricks I've found that helps with this is signalling and punctuating. Signalling is when you use something to indicate that a part is nearing its end, and the most obvious example is a long reverse cymbal in electronic music. Punctuation is when you end a part and start a new one with a big hit, such as a regular big cymbal, like a crash. There's a lot of ways to signal and punctuate. Even in my own meandering and messy arrangements, the parts are made distinct through signalling and punctuation.

I'll reserve comment on source usage until after you've removed/replaced the directly sampled elements.

This would get a NO, OVERRIDE currently. Sorry dude. Cool source. The arrangement might still work, provided it's cleaned up and more clear to the listener.

[Dzparks]

Ok, thanks for reviewing.

[Ronald Poe]

I re-listened to the piece after the eval and have a few criticisms I didn't notice at first. First that shrill cat-like string (I think) synth that appears often after the first minute has got to go (it clashes with the melody and has no place in a Pluto theme). I can't see any problems with 0:50 but 1:02 definitely has some harmonic clashing going on. I still like this mix but sampling Square isn't allowed sadly. Sorry if I sound harsh but it's still pretty good.