*NO* Final Fantasy 9 "Blue Blood and Red Roses"

[Rexy]

RebeccaETripp
Rebecca Tripp

http://www.crystalechosound.com/
ID: 48262
Game(s): FF9
Song Title: Blue Blood and Red Roses

Songs Remixed: Jesters of the Moon
 

Edited July 18, 2021 by Emunator

[Liontamer]

The arrangement is conservative but reasonably personalized in its presentation. The instrumentation lacks body/depth/realism, so I would have liked more effects in place to not expose the samples; an arguement could be made that what's here is serviceable, but with a more intimate sound like this, it would have been a stronger product to mitigate those issues, particularly the piano if nothing else. Good adaptation to the new instrumentation, but it's really dancing on my borderline of being passable on production, and I could justify a NO (resubmit) on the piano alone. No strong issues if this passes as is, but I feel this needs one more pass at the production/mixing to give the piano a less mechanical sound and thereby lift up and place the overall piece on more solid ground.

[prophetik music]

yeah, the lack of room verb or body on the piano is really obvious right off the bat. there's some wrong notes in it too that can't be attributed to the style - like the second note at 0:34. this kind of burlesque playing loves purposefully incorrect notes but they've gotta be leaned into. clashing notes in the background are just wrong, not quirky.

i'm at 1:20 and i still can't shake that this is the background and half the instruments are missing. i like the idea of an approach that's less a large ensemble and more a small group, but it feels very empty throughout.

the ending is odd. it sounds like the instruments start to fade out, but there's a clearly defined ending that actually wraps it pretty good. i don't know if the dynamic shifts are intentional.

there's some interesting ideas that can come from small-ensemble work like this, but this still feels very disjointed and like it's missing too much to string it together. a key component of small ensemble writing is that all parts need to be equal contributors, or at least roughly equal, and that doesn't feel like the case here. as a result it sounds like piano and random sfx instead. the keys sound odd, but the arrangement needs more to tie it together beyond the (admittedly pretty good outside of the unsupported wrong notes) piano writing.

 

 

NO

[Emunator]

I will say that the piano sounds sequenced better than some of the previous submissions I've heard from you, so the improvement is definitely noticeable! This does feel locked to the grid to a certain degree, but almost in a "player piano" sort of way, so I won't hold that against this track too much.

The lack of reverb and dryness of the arrangement overall is probably my biggest complaint, but Brad made a really insightful point about the lack of cohesion between the ensemble that I strongly agree with too. There just doesn't feel like there's a whole lot going on here and it never seems to coalesce into a full-bodied ensemble sound. It's a great concept but I just don't feel like it ever properly clicked together.

NO