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*NO* Castlevania "Dracula's Return"


Gario
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Hi dear judges, hope you're doing okay!
 
  • ReMixer name: Chernabogue
  • Name of game arranged: Castlevania (NES)
  • Name of arrangement: Dracula's Return
  • Name of individual song arranged: Nothing to Lose
  • Composers: Kinuyo Yamashita, Satoe Terashima
 
Notes: I made this track for Pixel Mixers' Scarlet Night album as a new attempt at arranging this classic Dracula theme from the original Castlevania (after my first remix from VV1). That results in another epic orchestral cover as I'm trying to pay tribute to one of the greatest video games villains. But enough talk, have at it!
 
Link to remix: 
 
Have a nice day. Cheers!
 
 
Edited by Liontamer
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  • 1 month later...

This is a pretty neat arrangement, taking a short and repetitive source and transforming it into an epic orchestral song, not an easy task, but I think that on the arrangement side of things this is pretty solid and I really enjoyed it. 

The production, not so much.  Right off the bat the instruments have that uncanny valley quality to them that distracts me from the song.  The soundscape seems very thin for this arrangement which just screams epic.  The centerpiece of the arrangement, the grand organ, feels very very thin and lacks the power and breadth that this instrument usually evokes, and also lacks dynamics.  The drums feel artificial as well, with the sequencing being very obvious.  Some sections show pretty good usage of the instruments to make them sound more believable such as around 1:25 where we can hear different articulations and details in the dynamics, but for the most part the song is very exposed in its artificial nature.

Now I'm not sitting here asking to be completely fooled to think that a real orchestra performed this, our standards are much lower than that, but I don't think this is quite over there yet.  I tend to favor arrangement over production and this IS a very good arrangement, but I think the production shows too many faults overall.

NO

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  • Sir_NutS changed the title to 2018/09/08 - (1N) Castlevania "Dracula's Return"
  • 2 months later...

Really good potential here. The main thing holding this back was stuff like the bowed strings and brass having silted timing. It immediately stood out, and so I have to also piggyback on what Sir_NutS said, especially because the issue immediately stood without without having read the other votes first.

The second verse at 1:44 sounded at about the same energy level as :31; even though there was more going on, the levels, textures, and writing felt so relatively similar that the contrast doesn't register as much as it should. I think you could probably reduce the impact and bombasticness of the first section to give more oomph to the second iteration, but it's more of an example of a way to create more dynamic contrast, not a recommendation that you employ that specific idea.

Otherwise, the arrangement was generally on point and shows off a lot of potential, Alex! Tweak it further and send it on back, it's well in the right direction.

NO (resubmit)

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