*NO* Journey to Silius "The Machines Must Die"

[Gario]

Hello! About 8-9 years ago I submitted a track for evaluation, and I was fairly new to the remake process. I don't believe it met the requirements, but I've recently revisited some of my old work and made some fairly substantial changes to it (enough to hopefully qualify for a new submission). If not, that's cool too. It might be a little too close to the originals, but since I was remaking it anyways for my youtube channel I just figured it couldn't hurt to try. I've been a long-time fan of the site.

Thanks for your consideration!

 

Link to the track:

*removed*

I was going to attach, but the file is fairly large so I wasn't sure if I should. If you want me to respond and attach it, I can, but the link should work.

 

ReMixer name: metalac

Real name: Adam Chandler

Website: none

 

Name of Game: Journey To Silius

Name of Arrangement: The Machines Must Die

Name of the individual song(s) arranged: Title, Stage 1

Original Soundtrack: 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yCNJuxV5EJg

 

Originally when I was coming up with the inspiration for the song, I kept having the title and stage 1 themes stuck in my head, but I couldn't ever remember which one was which. That made the think they might make a good melody blend, or belong in the same song. Basically I worked off that, trying to keep the original energy of the song. I'm also a sucker for melodic basslines, so I really pushed that pretty hard in this song. I think that the base has a lot of presence in the original, but I wanted it to command more presence in melody.

 

 

Edited October 8, 2019 by prophetik music

[Gario]

If you weren't confident that this track would pass out arrangement muster, I think you had nothing to worry about; this does a nice job suspending harmonies and creating cool counter melodies and variations that really make it your own. It also does an excellent job keeping things fresh with the soundscape so it doesn't sound sound too monotonous, even with all of the relatively basic waveforms used throughout. That's not even to mention all the bends and effects used to really get the most out of your instruments - it's all quite good.

There's one issue that impacts this arrangement, and it's not insignificant - the entire track sounds overcompressed. Lots of instruments sound like they're diving in and out of the mix (like backing rectangle wave at 1:56 getting drown out at 2:10 by that bass); it's really difficult to tell whether that was intentional or just a poor mixing job covered by the compressor. The issue is relatively subtle throughout the arrangement, but it's almost always there in some form or another.

I'm on the fence on this - I could go either way. On the one hand it's a cool arrangement with a lot of energy, but on the other hand, dat overcompression, but on the other OTHER hand it's a Journey to Silius remix... I'll defer to the other judges for a little bit on this.

[Liontamer]

The stereo panning's too wide onto the right side. I only realized it once the intro finished at :22 and you heard the beats come in, but it's actually a problem from the very start.

I wasn't hearing anything where I was worrying about overcompression, though 1:47-1:58 was crowded. While the core snare beats had some snap to them, I actually though that part sounded lackluster and needed to be even denser/more impactful-sounding AND more varied with the patterns.

Arrangement-wise, no issues here though. We just need to the get the mixing/balance addressed, so until then, it's a NO, but just waiting for the tweaks to be turned around into a YES. Nice work so far, Adam!

[Sir_NutS]

Hey, I think I've heard this OST before.

I think you have some very neat ideas here with the transformations, structure changes and adaptation.  0:40 and 3:10 are interesting ways in which you transformed the original melodies, as an example.  I think you're good on the arrangement front here, but you also need to cut down on repetition.  More on that later.

There are a few aspects holding back this one for me: the mix balance can be off at times, when you have an instrument panned to one side but nothing on the other side, it makes things feel lopsided.  There's also the original melody used maybe one too many times.  I would shorten this track to around 3 minutes to make it short and sweet and cut down on needless repetition.  The mix can get very crowded and over compressed in sections like 1:47 and 3:10.  Relax your master compression and let me mix breathe, it will be for the better.

I would love to hear a refined version of this one, so hit us up again.

NO (Resubmit)

Edited October 3, 2019 by Sir_NutS

[MindWanderer]

I think we're all describing the same issue, though we're hearing it in different ways.  Sounds more like overcompression than overcrowding to me--I can hear all the parts, but it's pumping like crazy.  I also agree with NutS that it wears out its welcome: even though there are a lot of interesting arrangement ideas, the textures are so similar that it comes across as too same-y to justify a 4:30 length.  I'd rather see you transform the instrumentation than cut length, personally.  There are plenty more sounds you can make even with a restricted synth style.

I definitely want to see this come back, but those problematic sections do need some love before we can post this, IMO.

NO (resubmit)

[prophetik music]

agreed that it's got some really weird stereo separation - like, the left side is maybe at the 50% left mark, and the right is like 75% right. it's like i'm listening to a set of speakers with my head partially turned. the pumping is really evident on the crash but it's through the whole track. i also agree that it's super similar throughout - normally i'd be for it, but i was tired of the snare before halfway through the track, and it never goes away or changes.

i found the different ways you tried to play with the melodies interesting, but ultimately the mastering issues and the lack of textural variation really pull the track down i don't think this is really there yet.

 

 

NO