OCR04184 - *YES* Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild "Run"

[Rexy]

Remixer (and real) name - Michael Hudak
Game arranged - TLoZ: Breath of the Wild 
Song arranged - "Riding (Day)"
Arrangement title - "Run"
Link to original - 

 

The riding music in BotW is genius, I think. It's a perfect musical blend of organic and mechanical elements (which obviously compliments the game's story); you have a very human piano playing a part that sounds like a transcribed version of sample-and-hold retro computer/patch bay music.  I wanted to take that idea further and create something that was obviously computer music, but made from scraped together pieces of very organic, earthy sounds. Salvage art, maybe. Field recordings for Hyrule Field?

 

I took the root/5th/octave left hand chords in the original song, played them sustained with Spitfire's Soft Piano with slight reverb, then clipped only the tail ends of the data. I lined them up on the grid (without fading into the envelopes to keep those pleasant little pops) to act as a foundation loop. I took the super fast flutter notes, listened to them 30 times slowed down to make sure they were right, then lined them up in the same way on top of the bass chords. All of those quick runs from the first 35 seconds of the original are used in my track. The original also has a syncopation where most of the time there's only one note played at once, but of course there's a great harmonic richness to everything when there are multiple layers playing at once. 

 

That richness was exaggerated even more when I boosted everything by 20-30 db, which pulls up the undertones. This also drags out the white noise of the sampling room of...whoever at Spitfire made these samples. This gives everything a dusty, nostalgic vibe (rather than just use vinyl noise plugins yet again), and I could also use this higher frequency information about halfway through my song to act as a kind of amp distortion, or even have them act almost as cymbals. Actual paino-y piano shows up for a solo, (with a tiny bit of Zelda's theme, taken from the source), then some birds. Hyrule Field recordings? Some reference tracks I used for this were "Take Time" by The Books, and "Siisx" by Ryuichi Sakamoto + Alva Noto. 

 

I have to say that this is one of my favorite songs I've ever made. I would've never guessed that it would evolved to what I did from the tiny loop I started with. Mastering it took literal days, though. There's not a lot of stuff over 3k, and so the process of getting this thing somewhat loud without major mixing compromises (in the low mids, especially), was laborious. It's still on the quiet side, but at this point I'm just as proud of how loud I was able to actually get it - while keeping the dynamic qualities - as the arrangement itself. Anyhow, thanks, as always, for the judges for their valuable time. 

[Emunator]

I LOVE THIS. The original source tune was intriguing to me, but always felt more or less neutral from an emotional standpoint. With your remix you managed to bring out some absolutely beautiful harmonies and create this rich chord progression that feels familiar and comfortable, and yet entirely recontextualized. When the un-processed piano comes through at 1:43, it's absolutely sublime; like a ray of sunshine hitting just the right angle during golden hour. Despite being built from essentially just a piano and various noise samples, you've managed to paint such a vivid, lush picture full of so much color and emotion. 

I strongly agree that this is one of your best works, and one that I will be coming back to a lot in the future!

YES

[Chimpazilla]

Michael your creativity continues to amaze me.  What a unique take on this source, you achieved what you set out to do perfectly.  I adore this glitchy style and you've really mastered the artform of it.  I agree with Wes, when the organic piano comes into the scene, the contrast is glorious.  At 1:01, the "secret" sound totally seals the deal for me.  I love this!

YES

[Rexy]

With the staccato notes in the original, I can see why you thought the composition could've been on an early synthesizer x)

Nevertheless, with you mentioning Sakamoto as a point of reference, there's no surprise that you went into a writing direction that your Persona 3 mixpost introduced the concept.  Everything is in time, and the timbres for your instruments remain as lush as ever for the genre adaptation.  The synthetic piano's tone is on the bass-heavy side, but no chopped note or effect sticks out, and it complements the more treble-based presentation of the organic piano later on - so that isn't a big deal.

And let's not let the composition get washed out either.  The source translated itself surprisingly well for 4/4, so that alone is an excellent start in my book.  And for a considerable bulk of the track, the composition bounces back and forth between interpreting the piano arps in the source and moments of intentional glitching while interpreting the staccato left hand.  The right-hand use has various note voicings like in the original, plus effective use of double-time starting from 1:04.  Meanwhile, the left has more of a focus on thickened harmonies to support it.  The slower natural piano at 1:43 is a neat original touch and has a more realistic contrast to the electronic backdrop.  I also agree with Kris on the secret jingle easter egg at 1:01 - it took me back on first listen, and it's still charming to hear on repeat.

This track sounds like a complete package to me and continues this bizarre goal of seeing how musique concrete can have a home on OCR.  Great job, Michael, and never change yourself!

YES

[Jivemaster]

Glitchy. Things do take a while to get going here. The glitch effect here is quite melodic, but similar to other tracks of this type, there is a lot of reliance on a major loop (or at least, the perception of one) with other elements spliced in. This makes the arrangement feel more uneventful to the listener than what it probably is in the sequencer. The production side is reasonable, I would mention here the clicks we get from the rapid cuts can become irritating over time. I’m unsure if there’s an attack control available on your tool of choice but it would be worthwhile exploring that to alleviate this. Despite all this, the execution is well done and my judge family here seems fine with it. Perhaps I’m getting too old for this sh*t.

YES