FF7 - City of the AncientsRemix

[Jolly//Pls]

This was difficult to do solely because it's in 3/4 and trying to program drums in 3/4 is for whatever reason rather difficult for me. Thank you for looking!

[Jolly//Pls]

I spent a few hours on this tonight out of the blue. Any feedback would be appreciated. Thank you in advanced for looking ^.^

[DarkSim]

Hey there Jolly, I like how you leave previous versions up so we can compare.

Right off the bat I'd say I prefer the Spanish guitar as an instrument choice over the piano. It sounds a lot more natural - the piano sounds very rigid, as do the plucked strings. The overall loudness in the original version is also lower, adding to the suspenseful buildup which I vastly prefer over the WIP 3 version - sorry! For me, the first 30 seconds are way better in the first version.

From 0:45 in the WIP 3 it starts getting much better though, despite me still wishing you'd kept that Spanish guitar.

Nice build to 1:50 but 1:50-2:06 seems like you could delete it and not miss it from the arrangement. I'd like that beat to kick in after the build, and it seems like those 16 seconds are unnecessarily teasing.

When the beat does come in though it's absolutely my favourite section of the track. You said you find it hard to program drums in 3/4, and what it feels like here is you've tried to do a 4/4 style beat in a 3/4 project. That might not be the easiest thing to do, but the result is this really rhythmically interesting composition that has me trying to work out the time signature.

There's a nice break 2:44-3:15 with some more good synth work, and then that cool polyrhythm kicks back in for a bit. Man, I could listen to those bits all day.

Solid outro with some nice textural effects and a gritty timbre to finish it off.

OK to summarise, try taking the first 30 seconds of the original one (hope you saved the file!), keep the guitar instead of the piano/plucks, and then pretty much leave the rest as it is. Would love to hear you finish this one off, it's got a lot of potential.

[Jolly//Pls]

Hey DarkSim, thanks again for all the feedback. I genuinely appreciate it. I added back the Spanish guitars, but kept the strings, did some humanizing to them a little bit and a little rearrangement/reorchestration. I didn't change much else from the original, The spot you mentioned at 1:50 happens to be my favorite spot haha  But I hope you like where it's headed.

[DarkSim]

Ohhh, this is brilliant! Great tension in the intro, the guitar and strings give it a sort of Godfather vibe. I love it, and that part at 1:50 doesn't bother me any more (it's still quite a long intro but I'll let you off).

There's just one tiny detail that made me think there was a knock at my door whilst listening in headphones - I think it's something to do with the attack on your piano. It's there for a while before 3:25 but I really noticed it from that point. Maybe try rolling off the low end of the reverb on that attack a little bit more. Anyway, that's about all I could find to improve it, so I'll say awesome job, and try setting it to 'ready for review' for someone else to give you some feedback before submitting.

Cool to see you improving so much - this is a lot better than your Marble Zone remix!

[Jolly//Pls]

I have yet again did some minor stuff to the song. Mainly added the main synth that plays in the original into the intro to breathe some of the original into this remix. Lowered my limiter a tiny bit and lowered the bass overall by 2 dB. Hope y'all enjoy. "Hybrid Orchestral Trap"?