"A Night At The Old Site" Celeste - Resurrections Orchestral ReMix (WIP)

[Allusionist]

Hello!

I've been working on this orchestral cover of "Resurrections" from Celeste for a while now, and I think I've reached a point where I can't improve it further without feedback from others. So I'd really appreciate yours! Is this OCR material - and if not, what can I do to fix that?

You may notice that the original Resurrections is over 9 minutes long with a lot of frankly unnecessary repeats. I've trimmed out several repeats and brought the tune down to a more manageable six and a half minutes. Other than that, the remix generally plays it as straight as it can. That may be a weakness, or it may be a strength, I'm not sure yet. What do you think?

I'm especially interested in feedback on the orchestration/arrangement, mixing, and production, though I'll take any advice you have on how to improve.

For reference, this is made with BBCSO Core plus some additional drums.

[Dj Orange]

A few comments after a couple listens.

The original piece owes a lot of its drama to contrasts.  Your arrangement has a pattern of contrasting loud/soft sections.  However I think you could take it a bit further.  For example the soft section from 3:10 - 3:50 could be softer. 

Try adding more dynamics (loud / soft variation) within the sections.  This is a bit more tricky. I can't tell you exactly where - you'll have to feel it out.  A good place to start would be the strings.  The volume is very even throughout.  I noticed one drop in volume at around 5:35 (which is a nice tension-release) but then it stays even for a while.  Especially during the loud parts, when one voice gets loud (horns at 5min.), consider making the other voices (strings, etc.) a bit quieter, to give them more space.

The cymbal crashes in the beginning could be a bit more subtle.  Since they're the only percussion in the first 2 minutes of the arrangement, it draws a lot of attention, and imho raises the temperature a bit too quickly.

Drums are a bit repetitive overall.  It can work but I think you could put some more flourishes / lines in there.

 

 

 

Edited February 19, 2021 by Dj Orange

[I Think]

• Strongly agree with Dj Orange's comments.
• I think the instruments generally sound pretty nice in terms of timbre (maybe the trumpet around 3:40 feels a bit off somehow). I personally dislike the use of drumset-style drumming, but that might be an unpopular opinion.
• Humanization:
  • There are a lot of ostinatos, which in an orchestral arrangement feels like a great big lost opportunity, and really reinforces the fact that you're listening to a synthetic performance. The basson-overlapped-into-high-winds produces a really cool effect at the start, but gets really repetitive really quickly without some more variation thrown in (despite the harmonic changes). Dynamics, articulation, instrumentation, and silences are all knobs I'd like to try tweaking!
  • I think some attention to phrasing, particularly via dynamics (e.g. simply introduce a little bit of a swell towards the late middle of each phrase, ease off a little at the end) could be of significant help to the humanization and to dynamic contrast.
• I do quite like the overall shape of what you've got here. The overall structure and texture feel pretty good to me!