*NO* Final Fantasy 2 "Rebels Like to Dance Too!"

[Rexy]

Hello all!
I would like to submit an EDM style remix of "Rebel Army" from Final Fantasy II. This remix originally started out as a slower tempo electro remix but I actually enjoyed it quite a bit when I started to mess around with tempos. After a year of re-arranging it, I finished it. A cool tidbit is how I went with a triplet bases timescale.
Enjoy!

-Brink-of-Time

Contact Information:

  Your ReMixer name: Brink-of-Time
  Your real name: David C Jacobson Jr.
  Your email address: 
  Your website: https://brink-of-time.bandcamp.com/
  Your userid: 3661


Submission Information:

  Name of game(s) arranged: Final Fantasy II
  Name of arrangement: Rebels Like to Dance Too!
  Name of individual song(s) arranged: Rebel Army
  Link to the original soundtrack:
 

 

Edited November 24, 2020 by prophetik music

[Jivemaster]

Air wolf vibes can be had in the initial bars. Things do take a while to get going, with mostly bass and a couple of backing synths. At 1.24, some thin strings start to enter as the bass gets more playful at 1:38. At 1:52 layers peel back and we’re left with one of the background synths playing for a bit, which starts getting into the theme (finally!). At 2:12 we finally hit the theme as things start to build up for full theme at 2:41. Soon after at 3:09 we return back to bass with backing synths. At 3:22 we hit some more theme territory, with a blippy version closing things out. 

Instrumentation sounds ok, although it’s fairly basic here, and while there are some parameter tweaks in places, I feel more could have been done to make things more interesting. The production side isn’t too bad, kick has a good thudd to it and most elements can be heard well (although being a fairly minimal track I would expect this). The main concern for me is that the arrangement takes a long time treading similar territory before the theme starts to pull in, and it doesn’t stick around long when it’s there, which is a shame because it makes up some of the better portions of the mix. Coupled with the basic instrumentation, I don’t feel there’s quite enough to get this through. There are some good ideas here but still feels like it’s in draft and should be built out more.

NO

Edited September 15, 2020 by Jivemaster

[Rexy]

This track has a fun progression for being this Basshunter-inspired waltz dance thing.  You've got the opening build, the breaks, and the theme making an entrance at the climax, which is pretty much what I expect for the genre.  However, it fell in a crucial pitfall in source use not being dominant - so much so that it doesn't make its first appearance until 1:37, and that's only the chords for the second half of the A section.

Here's what I found in terms of source:

• 1:37-1:51 - Chords for the second half of the A section at half-speed.
• 2:12-2:32 - Starts with the second half of the A section, then went through the whole thing straight.
• 2:40-3:08 - A section in full, twice.
• 3:21-4:17 - Resumes with the A section melody, getting played around and brought into half time.  At 3:50, the speed returns to normal for the high-pass filter ending.

That placed your source quota at barely 45%, making it very clutch.  Within that interpretation, the chords hardly got changed up, the melody got played with only once, and 20 seconds of that run-time got based on chords alone.  I understand you - there's not a lot in this source material to work with, but it's still possible to enhance it in a dance setting.  You could cut off the melody's first four notes and use it as a repeating rhythm pattern during the intro, find ways to fit in other FF2 sources if inspired to do so, or even change up the chords while letting the melody remain unaltered on top.  Experiment and see what works.

The mixdown is clear enough to identify parts, and the noise and EQ sweeps you've added on occasion do enough to shape the track.  Though, aside from the climax at 2:04, the overall EQ shaping lacked mid and high frequencies.  Something like that can get rectified by either tweaking the EQ of the instruments you already have or a more advised idea of adding more instrument layers to beef it up.  And as Joel also brought up, envelope shaping across your instruments is extremely minimal otherwise, letting your parts sound more bare-bones than they had any right to be.  Your synths all have parameters that can get manipulated with careful tracking, just like what you did with the EQ at the end.  See if you can check them out and find ways to integrate them.

It's not often that I hear dance tracks with this kind of time signature, and I'm all for seeing something like this on OCR down the line.  But it's still got a way to go before it can head up there.  It'll be nice to hear a revision that does more with source integration, adds a thicker palette, and adds more envelope based engagement.  Whatever you do, please keep going!

NO (resubmit)

[prophetik music]

rexy's right that this doesn't have enough source. which is a shame, a little more source representation would have been enough to easily pass this. beyond that, here's my thoughts.

initial presentation of the track is great. i love the triplet/french edm feel, and this is a good representation of it. i felt the first 55s or so were well paced, and didn't mind the progression to the first drop at 1:25. i do feel that it needed melodic content from the original track throughout this opening section - or, to be more precise, i need more thematic content in that early section. 1:37 is a good call out to the original but there needed to be a lot more content earlier on, which is definitely doable without sacrificing your nice opening additive progression.

the smooth string synths at 1:25 were nice. the borrowed chords at about 1:40 sounded a bit funky because of their long tail, but it was nice, and moved into the mono synth arpeggio section. i liked this as a contrast but it was about twice as long as it probably should have been. bringing in the sweep and the backing synths at 2:17 were great, and a great build into 2:41. easily the best part of the mix. if anything i wanted this to bang a little harder, but the nature of this song's odd chord progression worked well with the beat you had. i also appreciated that you stuck with few sustain synths through this section and saved them for the end. that was a nice design choice. 3:17's sustained melody was a nice payoff for the end of the track. the outro isn't unexpected and was well-handled, with a smooth letdown.

overall, this is a fun track that i enjoyed. my issue, like i said at the beginning, is that less than half of this is eminently tied to the original. there needs to be more representation of the source. i get that you don't want to get really complex with the chords since it's edm, but there's a ton of room to represent the melody and a countermelody without making the track sound one-dimensional. it'd be nice, for example, to hear some melody in the first minute and a half - even chunks of it, snippets here and there - to get a clearer picture of what track this will be ultimately.

don't be disappointed by a 3N vote here. this is on the cusp. fix the lack of source and it's an easy pass for me. great work overall.

 

 

NO