Katawa Shoujo - Wiosna

[H36T]

Sorry for posting two tracks at once. I was hoping to get feedback on something I feel is more akin to the type of music I like to write as well. Still, I think for OC Remix this isn't liberal enough, but I think when I was looking at doing this, I didn't want to stray too far from the original, but add to it. Still, maybe there is something worth exploring that I haven't opened my mind to. With that being said, I think I'm ready for some honest feedback instead of being stuck in my head lol. Thank you for your time and I appreciate any help. 

As a side note, I'm also somewhat of a newbie when it comes to mixing as well so if there is something that is offensive sounding, by all means feel free to critique!

 

Source music

My arrangement
https://drive.google.com/file/d/11sE7p7KYl-NlTCV-86fmJBs3PJiATI7H/view?usp=sharing

 

 

Edited December 2, 2020 by HarlemHeat360
Added source

[Souperion]

I don't know the source, but this is a sweet piece. The slightly muted piano creates a lovely, warm atmosphere. I particularly enjoyed the woodwinds. I'm hard pressed to find things to critique, but if you spend any amount of time in the workshop, you'll learn that's pretty common for me. Still. You made something good here, keep it up.

[H36T]

12 hours ago, Souperion said:

I don't know the source, but this is a sweet piece. The slightly muted piano creates a lovely, warm atmosphere. I particularly enjoyed the woodwinds. I'm hard pressed to find things to critique, but if you spend any amount of time in the workshop, you'll learn that's pretty common for me. Still. You made something good here, keep it up.

Thank you for the feedback. I added the source music to the main post. The piano is Spitfire's soft piano which is definitely in my top 10 vsts. It isn't very versatile but it's extremely effective at what it does. I also liked the way the woodwinds turned out here. Honestly I haven't been able to produce a track where they sound as nice yet. Maybe I should try and expand on their use on this track if this is too conservative a take? 

Edit: After some consideration I really like this take, even in it's conservativeness. But I'd like an evaluation to see if even then it still needs something else. So I'm changing the tag to ready for review.

Edited November 20, 2020 by HarlemHeat360
Changed tag of thread and added a reason

[Souperion]

I like that Spitfire piano. It's nice to have specialty vsts for projects like these. What do you use for the rest of the orchestration?

Conservative pieces aren't necessarily a bad thing in evaluation, as far as I can tell. If you want to speed up the process, go to https://ocremix.org/community/topic/42695-what-is-evaluation-and-when-do-i-use-it/ and direct message one of the evaluators, and they'll probably get back to you in a week or so, good folk. If the verdict comes back as too conservative, I'm sure you could ornament it up nicely, slow pieces have lots of room for that. Good luck!

 

[H36T]

5 hours ago, Souperion said:

I like that Spitfire piano. It's nice to have specialty vsts for projects like these. What do you use for the rest of the orchestration?

Conservative pieces aren't necessarily a bad thing in evaluation, as far as I can tell. If you want to speed up the process, go to https://ocremix.org/community/topic/42695-what-is-evaluation-and-when-do-i-use-it/ and direct message one of the evaluators, and they'll probably get back to you in a week or so, good folk. If the verdict comes back as too conservative, I'm sure you could ornament it up nicely, slow pieces have lots of room for that. Good luck!

 

 

Thank you for your comment! I just wanted to wait a bit to give them time but I might message one soon.

 

As for the rest of the libraries used here, I think I stuck to two or three. The strings are definitely Spitfire Symphonic and the flute and oboe come from Nucleus. I believe the wind chimes and harp are from 8dio AGE but I'd have to check again because I have a few of those. 

[timaeus222]

MOD REVIEW

As far as the length goes, it's maybe okay. We've had really short ReMixes posted before, but they had to be sufficiently evolving and feel complete despite the length, and they also needed significant personalization that distinguishes from the original. The original was mostly piano and guitar, and you at least transformed it to piano and an orchestra, so I think that idea should be enough in terms of the written arrangement.

Generic mixing remarks:

- I like the tone of the piano in a vacuum, but at the start it seems to clash with the pizzicato bass you have a bit further in at 0:23. Try raising the lower bound of the reverb's Damping range to be above 200 Hz. Basically, this should decrease the amount of reverb that is applying to the bass frequencies of the piano (not the same as high passing the piano sound itself). That should let the low pizzicato breathe a bit more. At the same time, you may want to slightly decrease the reverb on the low pizzicato to increase the clarity between the two. Also worth high passing the piano around 40 Hz just to remove any unnecessary sub bass frequencies.

- There is actually a bit too much reverb going on overall in the high strings, so it's hard to distinguish the notes starting at 0:45. It also accidentally hides any lack of humanization that we'll talk about below. Despite the "instant playability" that Spitfire promises, you will still have to do some manual work to make them sound more realistic.  

Sequencing remarks:

There are a few things you'll want to humanize some more.

- The strings that come in at 0:45, as well as the oboe at 1:05 and the flute at 1:22 are behind because the articulations you are using are slow (a long Attack envelope). The piano is giving you the beat. Try shifting them about 0.15 secs to the right, and they should line up a bit better with the beat.

- The notes on the strings are bleeding together. It sounds kind of like what they would do right out of the box without any MIDI CC because there isn't a smooth transition between notes like you would hear if they played legato, portamento, etc.; instead they just mush together.

I think the "Performance legato" patches would do the job best here, but you'll have to use MIDI CC #11 to add some expression and make those legato lines evolve as the note plays so that it sounds more humanized. It'll take time to understand, but it's needed for this to sound realistic, especially on a 2 minute ReMix. Check this out if you haven't already.

Minor remarks:

The ending is quite loud compared to the rest. I would say to lower the velocities on the strings at 1:38 and on, and that should match the loudness of what came right before it. Adjust the piano velocities accordingly too after 1:38 if needed.

---

Overall, I think the major things to look out for are:

- Too much reverb on the strings, which bleeds the notes together. Piano has a bit too much low end on the reverb, so it clashes with the low pizzicato.

- Strings, oboe, and flute are behind/late. They also lack MIDI CC expression and a legato feel that should be there on a melodic sequence.

- Ending is loud compared to what came immediately before it, so lowering the strings' velocities there should help smooth it out.

I think as far as being conservative, it might be just personalized enough mainly because the original used guitar and you used an orchestra. This being a very short ReMix could hurt you though, but that being said, short ReMixes have been approved a few times before, so it's not impossible to see another.

END OF MOD REVIEW

Edited December 1, 2020 by timaeus222

[timaeus222]

[This is an automatically generated message]

I've reviewed your remix and have set it to Completed status, indicating that your remix has been reviewed.

If you feel like you still need to work on your track and want more feedback, you can change the prefix back to Work-in-Progress and we'll go through the review process again.

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Edited December 12, 2020 by timaeus222