Rexy Posted January 23, 2020 Share Posted January 23, 2020 (edited) Remixer name: Michael Hudak Name of game arranged: Dynasty Warriors 3 My arrangement name: It's 80's Night at 3 Kingdoms! Name of original song: "Superior" I couldn't find much info about the composer for DW3...I think it's a person named MASA, or a collective/band named MASA Group? Link to original: The original is one of those early 2000's earworms for me. The PS2 DW games were chock full of cheese metal, and maybe nothing was more stanky than "Superior". ~Think of club somewhere called 3 Kingdoms, and the 3 little armies that dance for supremacy of the city, each and every 80's Night....~ I got the idea for this mix from Big Audio Dynamite's "E=mc2", which is an 80's pop/dance tune with several clips from Nicholas Roeg films inserted into it. DW3 has a lot of great voice acting (THE JAPANESE VERSION AT LEAST), so I thought I could build a track around them. I originally wanted to put vocals into mine, but they didn't quite work. Removing them, the song was too sparse, so I beefed up the instrumentals a lot with toms, congas, and ancillary electronic percussion, and then stuffed it full of clips from the game's cutscenes. Eventually, there were TOO many game clips and too much stuff going on, so I stripped the whole thing down to the bare essentials - as much as I could without having it sound like a demo. I only kept the game clips and percussion tracks I loved, and just embraced the open spaces. I tried to keep a lot of that 80's synth grit and washy snare stuff for authenticity, while adding a bit of modern compression to not have it sound just old for old's sake. I *think* I pulled it off. Thanks for again for all your hard work in reviewing all this stuff! Voice clips, in order of appearance: 1:49 - "Excellent timing! I can not fight against commoners" "They are desperate! Attack carefully! All units, attack!" 3:14 - "The last twinkle of a dying flame is beautiful. Shall he die beautifully as well?" -Michael Edited March 17, 2020 by Rexy Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MindWanderer Posted February 18, 2020 Share Posted February 18, 2020 I'm afraid you overcorrected here. The arrangement came out extremely sparse, especially with the vanilla synths used here. You can make an arrangement this simple, but it needs instruments with rich, interesting timbre. Triangle waves and saws don't cut it. I referenced E=MC2, and I definitely see the influence, but 1) That song has vocals, which add a lot of interest, and 2) I honestly don't think I'd pass it either, even cleaned up to modern standards. I don't think filling up the space with voice clips is necessarily the way to go--it's hard to use a lot of that and have it still be musical--but you do need some more layers here. Add some pads, harmonies, counterpoint, arps, percussion, risers, sweeps, whatever. And maybe switch up or morph the synths you're using as well. Keep at it! NO Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
prophetik music Posted March 16, 2020 Share Posted March 16, 2020 yeah, i don't think this worked as well as you'd hoped. it feels pretty sparse in a bad way - like a backing track for initial recording that'll get fleshed out later after some live stuff gets layered in. the synths are generic in a bad way and the mastering feels pretty flat. this feels like a step back from the attention and care taken with a lot of your previous arrangements. you've shown an ear for unique sound design in the past, which is great, and could absolutely be applied here to flesh this out more. there's just very little body to this track as it is, and not much to recommend it on subsequent listens. give it some more character and fill in the track more, and this will be on the right track. NO Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sir_NutS Posted March 17, 2020 Share Posted March 17, 2020 Some nice 80s electro pop groove here. Getting some subtle Kraftwerk vibes with some of the synths, specifically reminds me of "Telephone call". Sadly this one is not as enjoyable of an experience, the synths and drums are snappy and warm sounding but the soundscape is pretty barren. It's missing something, maybe lyrics, maybe another harmony or pads, but it sounds way too empty at times. I wasn't a fan of the voice clips, they're not meshing well with the mix, as they aren't clean enough and the background noise is a harsh contrast to the minimal arrangement and clean mix. There's some attention to detail here if you look hard enough, some inflections in a few elements, for example some bass pith bending here and there, but it's all very subtle and not enough imo. The ending was a bit sudden. This just needs something more. NO Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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