*NO* Arkista's Ring 'Arkista vs. Grand Master Fang'

[Gario]

• 88bit
• Rob Kovacs
•  
• www.88bitmusic.com
• Your userid: 23320

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• Arkista’s Ring
• Arkista vs. Grand Master Fang
• Boss Theme 
• released by Sammy for NES, music composed by Sizlla Okamura
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wpALOWtMRyQ
• The moment I heard this music it grabbed my attention. It’s creates all the feelings that a good boss theme should - anxiety, suspense, gets you pumped up — but it does in it’s own way by using the snare drum pattern to creates rhythmic dissonance, using mixed meter, a brilliantly placed rest making you feel uneasy, and a great chord progression. I took these elements and developed them into four different sections — an intro, the build up, the release, and an outro. Thank you for listening! 

 

Edited May 17 by Liontamer
closed decision

[Gario]

I'll be honest, I personally think this is a pretty great little track. I do like how the performance shapes the phrases (with the dynamics, articulations and dynamic tempo), and frankly this does sound like a pretty tough piece to perform. That third section in particular has a lot of things going on under the hood, which is why the performance of it is less than perfect, I'm sure.

I can predict a couple of other issues that others might have with something like this (the 1:38 minute track length, the repeated iteration used to expand each section), but I'm less convinced on rejecting this outright on those grounds. The site, while rare, has posted sub-2 minute tracks in the past, and the alternative to that repetition (e.g. altering the second iteration to make it stand out more) could, in my humblest opinion, cause the track to be sound unbalanced, though a minor alteration to the second iteration of each section to make it sound like an antecedent/consequent arrangement could help make the track sound less repetitious.

Could be my piano bias, hearing similarities to other piano pieces like this in the past (like Chopin's "Aeolian Harp", for example), but I don't think the arrangement is at all far from passable.

Despite my defense of other aspects of this track, the performance does need to be in tip-top shape to be posted. I don't think I could justify posting a track in this unpolished state, but I do think a polished version of this would deserve a solid look.

So clean up the preformance, and perhaps give some thought on tastefully altering the direct repetitions so it doesn't sound like padding, and I could see this passing.

NO

Edited May 17 by Gario

[MindWanderer]

Sorry, but I'm going to do exactly what Gario was worried we'd do.  The transition after the first 30 seconds makes it sound like it's going to be a "variations"-style arrangement, which I can get behind, but there was just one other variation.  And that one was really repetitive.  I even checked out Chopin's "Aeolian Harp" to see where Gario was coming from, and there's no comparison.  This remix consists of three sections of 9-second loops repeated three times each, and one more unlooped section at the end, for a total of ten repetitions of the same simple melody.

It's a bold idea, but it's not enough to anchor an entire remix on, IMO.  There are a few other approaches you could use to turn such a short source into a full remix: adding original writing or another game source, layering it with other harmonies or even melodies, and adding additional parts are the usual ways.  But I personally wouldn't vote in favor of this one even with a world-class performance.

NO

[Sir_NutS]

I'm a bit more borderline on this one than the other Js, and I've mulled on this one for a while now.  Big sticking point is obviously the performance, which is not ideal, but also I think the mix could use some work, the stops go back to complete silence and loses any ambiance which makes it sound less natural.  As Gario pointed out, this is not an easy track to perform and I can take some of that into account but I also think this could be delivered and performed in a much better way.  I really think the track shines in its last minute, even though it gets really open with the timing.  It's also a bit repetitive for such a short arrangement.

Overall, yes I enjoyed this but I also think it needs some work.  I would like to hear another take as I don't think this one is quite above the bar.

NO (resubmit)