Rexy Posted March 23, 2020 Share Posted March 23, 2020 (edited) Greetings, OC ReMix Judges! I appreciate the opportunity to contribute to this community. My name is Bryan. The following submission is a new take on a popular piece from The Legend of Zelda. All instruments were performed by the musicians who are copied on this email and credited below. A full playthrough video is available at: CONTACT INFORMATION ReMixer name: soloudithz Real name: Bryan Guess Email addresses: // userid: 36145 SUBMISSION INFORMATION Game arranged: The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess Name of arrangement: Midna's Laughter Name of original/individual song: Midna's Lament (or, Midna's Desperate Hour) Additional info: Already available on OCR Link to OST: Already available on OCR Comments: This piece was the result of a personal challenge to completely shift the mood of the original work by replacing all harmonies with their parallel major, minor, or modal harmony. The result is an overall lighter, whimsical, joyful feel (in contrast to the somber yet urgent feel of the original). This is not merely a reharmonization as the melody also shifts subtly with the key change while still calling back to the original. For the careful listener, several other motifs from the LoZ series are embedded in the arrangement as harmonizing lines. All instruments in the arrangement were recorded by the performers. No MIDI instruments were used -- with one exception: the bell set was reinforced by a subtle background layer that combines a sampled marimba and some synthesized bell tones. PERFORMERS: Piano -- RIchard Blumenthal -- @blumenmusic on facebook/Instagram Nyckelharpa -- Amy Hakanson -- @pickleharpa and varelse_music on Insntagram Bass -- Jon Chacko -- soundcloud.com/nojon1 Bells -- Bryan Guess Thanks again! --Bryan Edited May 29, 2020 by Liontamer closed decision Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
prophetik music Posted April 6, 2020 Share Posted April 6, 2020 about 3.5db headroom. feels pretty quiet too. this is a difficult vote. on one hand, i like the arrangement a lot. there's some real fun tonalizations in there with the intentional shift in modality, and i like that. the flowing piano feels nice. the instrumentation is an interesting combination as well. on the other hand, the instruments are poorly balanced - the bass is hard to hear throughout, the crotales are recorded and played in an non-optimal fashion (they need room sound and a thicker striker or else they exist solely in the higher frequencies with no actual attack tones), and the variation between the pizz and sustained tones by the nyckelharpa (i've never heard one plucked before!) were significant. notably the sustained nyckelharpa was pretty thin - thinking the mic was too far away from the bridge. lastly, it's very short - the track really starts around 0:03, and it's essentially over around 1:57 with 20+ seconds of fade-out. it's hardly longer than the youtube demo track. they get a lot of arrangement into a short package, but i don't know if it's really enough to call it substantial (to use the wording of the submission standards). i think the negatives outweigh the positives. if the levels were more even, the nyckelharpa and crotales were better recorded, and the track was another minute longer, this would be an easy yes. as it is, it feels like a first draft. NO Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Emunator Posted May 26, 2020 Share Posted May 26, 2020 I feel like Brad did a good job breaking this down and I agree 100% with his assessment. The real strength of this submission lies in the reharmonization of the original Midna's Lament track, and I appreciate the efforts you took with the instrumentation to accentuate this creative choice. I just don't feel that the arrangement has been fleshed out enough to pass muster by OCR's submission standards, especially considering how long the fades last on both ends of the track. An arrangement that short can work if the song is ironclad in terms of production quality, but in this case, I also agree that the soundscape feels unpolished from a mixing standpoint for the same reasons that Brad mentioned. Love the concept and creativity that went into this, but there's not really enough for me as it stands. Would be interested to see this back again in a more fleshed-out form! NO (resubmit) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sir_NutS Posted May 29, 2020 Share Posted May 29, 2020 I agree with Brad, which in turn makes me agree with Wes (Welcome back dude!). I think the arrangement lacks a bit of substance. As mentioned above, it's a short track that didn't get much time to develop, and if you take into account that the last part is mostly just an arpeggio fading out... it's not substantial enough imo. The mixing is not ideal either here, some elements are hard to hear or are clashing with others mixing-wise. The mix feels a tad claustrophobic. The performances are a highlight here, as I think the arrangement is well performed and some emotion can be felt breaking through the arrangement, but I don't think it's enough. I would have liked the arrangement to have more meat to it and a cleaner mix. We have short mixes on the site but they usually use that short time well to present a breadth of creative ideas from the artist(s) involved. I don't think this is bad but it's not there yet either. NO (resubmit) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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