*NO* Silent Hill 2 'Memory'

[Gario]

Contact info:

Remixer name - Lily Arciniega

Website - https://www.youtube.com/c/LilyArciniega

 

Submission info:

Game arranged - Silent Hill 2

Arrangement title - Memory

Track arranged - True

Comments - I wanted to insert some jazz elements into this track as well as give it a more definitive chord progression. This was also an attempt at getting better at mixing and mastering acoustic instruments since I mostly do electronic music.

 

 

Edited October 8, 2018 by Liontamer
closed decision

[MindWanderer]

An extremely conservative take on this source.  It's mostly just a minor re-instrumentation (with a ping-pong organ, one of my pet peeves).  The leads of the original (piano and cello) are retained, and the percussion is only slightly tweaked.  It also consists of two loops of what sounds like exactly the same thing to me.  There are some interesting ideas here, but I don't think it's anywhere near what we look for in terms of interpretation.

NO

[Liontamer]

Yeah, this is cool cover, and it does do some different things with the drumwork as well as some vox additions after 1:05. But the piano, initial drumwork, and later strings at 1:05 are all pretty close to the source. This does have an expanded and bigger sound to it than the original, of course; I liked the bassline writing in particular. The piano timing was also too rigid and unrealistic sounding; I know the piano in the original sounds similar, but here the mechanical sound is much more pronounced.

There are definitely some further creative directions you could take this in order to make the arrangement even more substantive and fleshed out. It's not quite "mostly just a minor re-instrumentation" like MindWanderer said in the sense that I can hear how you worked to incorporate some other ideas into the picture and give this a different feel; I'll say it moves in the right direction of an interpretive arrangement, just not far enough.

Interesting approach thus far, Lily; if you're interested in revisiting this, see if you an get another section out of this, but also use it as an opportunity to get more interpretive with this, whether that's changing instrumentation, rhythms, tempo, adding more original writing, or some combinations of those things.

NO

[Gario]

There are some new, richer chords incorporated in the track, and the instrumentation does have some cool variation periodically (the celesta being replaced with the vocals, the interesting drum work, etc.), but overall the arrangement sticks with the source material a little too faithfully for OCR. Most of the instruments used are similar, if higher quality, outside of the jazzy chords not too much has changed in the source usage, and the structure matches the source close to one-to-one. The production quality is borderline solid, though it does get muddy when all of the instruments are playing at once (like at 2:32).

As far as learning how to balance acoustic instruments, I think you've almost got the hang of it based on this track, so I think you accomplished your goal. While a pretty good listen, it's not something that we can post on OCR. Appreciate the submission, though.

NO