Jump to content

OCR03867 - *YES* Castlevania 3 "Baño de Sangre"


Gario
 Share

Recommended Posts

Hi everyone!

 
  • Name of game(s) arranged: Castlevania III: Dracula's Curse / Castlevania: Circle of the Moon
  • Name of arrangement: Baño de Sangre
  • Name of individual song(s) arranged: Nightmare
  • Your own comments about the mix, for example the inspiration behind it, how it was made, etc.: It was made specially for Viking Guitar's Danse Macabre 5 album, an album with a dark, spooky, terrorific tone. I love Castlevania 3 and Circle of the Moon, where "Nightmare" appears on both of them in very hard stages, those ones are my favorites.

 

 

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 1 month later...

Quick and dirty vote. Rocked out, loved the arrangement. Was initially concerned at the theme being quiet and de-emphasized at first when it came in at :20, but it eventually took the forefront at 1:40 for the rest of the arrangement, so no issues there. Great energy and loved the title too! Looking forward to the next one, Mauricio! :-)

YES

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Liontamer changed the title to 2017/12/15 - (1Y) Castlevania 3 "Baño de Sangre"

Well I can definitely hear Larry's issue with the source being primarily in the background of the track in the first half of the track. I'll never criticize a track for having the source in the background rather than the foreground, but I will point out the weak, almost GM-like quality of the instrument carrying the source at that point. The instrument quality is even more apparent when it's exposed at 1:40 - it's just thin, and it doesn't blend well with the relatively high quality instrumentation of the rest of the track.

The performances are pretty darn good, and the arrangement is solid, for sure. I can say outside of the strange choice of source carrying instrument throughout the first half there are some great, haunting SFX that are used to great effect.

Production quality on this one is a mixed bag. The first half, while having some concerns with the actual sample quality is mixed well enough, de-emphasizing the source for effect (which was kinda cool). The second half of the arrangement has some mixing problems, though - portions where the lead should be popping out (like at 1:58-2:14) are getting buried behind the rhythm guitar, and the doubling at 2:45 makes the lead sound like a muddy mess.

There's definitely something here that would be amazing with some polishing up, but there's just too many things going on at a time that hold this back to justify me giving this a thumbs up this time around. Upgrade the instrument carrying the source in the beginning of the track to something more appropriate to the quality of the rest of the track, and clean up the mixing & muddiness and I'd give this a clean pass.

NO

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I suppose I'll add some more comments then. I didn't mind the GM-quality of that synth until 1:40, but it being obscured helps it (a lot); no issue criticizing it, although I'd say the mud actually helps downplay (not eliminate) exposure issues. The little string stabs first used at 1:00 were also pretty fakey. Production-wise, it is imbalanced, but the perfect is being made the enemy of the good. On balance, much more works with this arrangement as is, and I can live with the mixing not being ideal.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 3 months later...

I've listened to this for a while, and I've gone and read the other Js comments on this one before putting down my vote because I'm pretty undecided here.  On one hand it's a very dark and heavy sounding remix which doesn't have the best mixing to make it shine.  There's quite a bit of mud and everything seems to fuse into the rhythm guitars at some points.  The low quality of the instruments is both problematic and kinda cute in a way. It makes sections like 1:09 sound really amateur-ish, but I also kinda love it at other points, i.e. 1:48 where it almost sounds like a nod to the original source's sample quality.  I agree with both Larry and Gario on their reasoning for their votes.

Overall I think this just makes it above the bar, but just barely.  It's kind of bittersweet to give this a thumbs up because the issues are very apparent and probably easily fixable, but not enough for a rejection IMO, so it just leaves me thinking what the track would've sounded like with just one more production pass.

YES (Borderline)

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Sir_NutS changed the title to 2017/12/15 - (2Y/1N) Castlevania 3 "Baño de Sangre"
  • 2 weeks later...
  • DarkeSword changed the title to 2017/12/15 - (3Y/1N) Castlevania 3 "Baño de Sangre"
  • 3 weeks later...
Guest
This topic is now closed to further replies.
 Share

×
×
  • Create New...