Majora's Mask - Great Bay Temple

[Mr. Hu]

Hey there, decided to finally make a song for OCR after thinking about it for 17 years.

It's a linear track and many of the frequencies are quite extreme, for maximum tension-building. It has a piano run through a guitar amp to add a bit of volatility to its character, and other than the little flourish from 1:45 - 1:47, every note is sourced from several different Zelda melodies, with the Great Bay Temple being the most prominent chord-wise (and obviously percussion-wise). As the song goes on, it's meant to put the listener in that psychological space many people find themselves in at least once in their lives, when you're swimming underwater and suddenly everything goes from uncomfortable to desperate. Maybe I've over-explained myself, but let me know what you think, if you care to. 

Here's the OG. 

 

Here's mine. 

https://drive.google.com/open?id=18DPdGUQSrXCZcUZ0ZV8eLJe9zYISha7H

 

My one concern is that the panning on the gated high frequencies is too extreme, or perhaps too loud on certain speakers, especially after the song quality is degraded on something like YouTube. Thoughts?

[Souperion]

My first impression is that this is the maddening song that plays in my head as I continually get lost in all Legend of Zelda water dungeons ever.

It's definitely a minimalistic piece. To be perfectly frank, I think it may be a little too minimal. But if your aim is to keep it simple, I think you've got a decent basis to begin with. Most of it is exclusively the piano soloing, but then you add the extra beat around 2:04, it starts to get a little more interesting, even though the piano disappears. I would consider layering the two more consistently through the piece.

I think you've got a very interesting concept for your arrangement, keep at it.

[Geoffrey Taucer]

Props for attempting this; a minimal, ambient piece like this can be really hard to arrange. Let's see what you manage to do with this

EVAL:

Arrangement:
.... well, when I listened to the source, I was expecting something experimental and avant-garde, and you certainly did not disappoint. Some cool ideas, a creative and unusual approach, which shows originality while still using the source in a recognizable fashion. I'd love to see the motifs of the original come in earlier; the arrangement takes too long to get to something that is recognizable, but once you do get there, you do a good job of it. I'd also love for this to go on longer; it ends right when it's starting to get interesting.
It's very minimalistic, and honestly I'm not entirely sure how to assess it on those grounds. Generally, it sounds very sparse, and the more active parts are rather discordant, but I think both of those things are intentional, and are a (largely successful) attempt to capture the creepy feel you're going for. It's daring and creative, but I'm honestly not sure how the judges panel would react to such a minimalist arrangement. The ending is also very abrupt.

 

Production:
I think it's clear that you're making your production choices deliberately weird. In some regards, it works, and in others it doesn't. The piano in particular sounds too mechanical, and could use more variation in velocity; I also think the intro needs more going on in the upper-mids, either by bringing those up in the piano, or perhaps adding some ambient noise in this range.

 

On the whole, I don't think this would make it past the panel. I think it's just too sparse, and too.... weird, for lack of a better way of saying it. I get that this sparseness and weirdness is deliberate; this would work well as the backing track to go along with a video, but I think it's too sparse to stand as something to be listened to on its own.
If you want to get this past the judges, I'd shorten the intro, and extend the track, expanding it into something a bit more active in the later sections.

[Geoffrey Taucer]

[This is an automatically generated message]

I've reviewed your remix and have returned it to Work-in-Progress status, indicating that I think there are some things you still need to work on. After you work on your track and feel that you'd like some more feedback, please change the prefix back to Ready for Review and I'll review it again! Good luck!

[Mr. Hu]

The piano is pretty mechanical, isn't it? Giving my ears a break for a month, I can see some little issues I could fix, but I think I'll just keep this version and make a whole new version that's more accessible. A remix of a remix, one that's less "dry" sounding. Thanks for the feedback!! It was more than I expected, and super helpful. 

[Slither2Unknown]

Did you ever come back to this?

The bones of this track seem promising to me, just waiting for some extra flesh to bring them to life.

Some thoughts as to what:
Perhaps sounds of lapping and rippling water could be incorporated in somewhere? Small echoing drips, maybe?
Or if you wanted to take it in an entirely different direction, it could be brought outside to storm and rain, perhaps crickets...
The rhythmic tapping that comes in from time to time, what if there were more versions of that with sounds of something else tapping? What if in one or two places it echoed?
This seems like a theme you could do a lot of interesting with looping back on itself in layers, fugue-like.
I suspect keeping the melodies simple and all in this soft piano is a big part of the mood, and would be well preserved, but perhaps having some subtle hazy tonal drone fade in and out underneath it like you might hear in a horror game soundtrack, could help flesh it out without competing at all for the melody lines, such as they are.

You wouldn't want to make it crowded, of course, but somewhat less barren, this could get really interesting.

Hope this enthusiasm and advice has not been unwelcome, anyway.

Good day!