Emunator Posted April 17, 2021 Share Posted April 17, 2021 (edited) Contact Info: J-BHarmonized James High Soundcloud.com/jbharmonized 33741 Submission Info: Pokemon Black/White Version Tower of Break it Down Original Composer: Shota Kageyama, GAME FREAK https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V4u6ht7TtVo Edited September 5, 2021 by Liontamer closed decision Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
prophetik music Posted August 26, 2021 Share Posted August 26, 2021 track is very short, about 2:05 in total. opening is marcato strings, flowing into the melody in winds with harmonies in the strings. the background is pretty static. there are some crunchy notes in here (the quintal harmony in the brass (?) at 0:29, the ascending harmony has a wrong note in it right after that as well), and it's fairly simple backgrounds. there's a significant tonal shift and a really fun/funky breakdown of the background at about 0:54. it's much less blocks-of-sound here but i like a lot of the interesting sound design going on here, especially the sliding plectral instrument. this kinda just keeps repeating, though - at 1:27 i expected something to happen, and it kinda just keeps grooving along. there's a bit more at 1:44, but it feels just layered on top and not properly balanced into the rest of the mix. then the track ends with a flourish. from a mastering perspective, the middle has a much lower RMS than the rest of the track and it felt pretty light. also whatever instrument comes in at 1:44 is not really fit into the soundscape, but just put on top of it, so it sounds very crowded suddenly. this is a tale of two halves. the orchestral opening is pretty boring, honestly, and the non-chord tones don't sound intentional. the melody's very static and plodding with no real humanization in there, so it sounds pretty fake. the second part, with the drumkit and stuttered guitar parts, is way more cool and does some fun stuff. it definitely sounds underdeveloped though - even going through the melodic content again at 1:27 and then doing your section from 1:45ish out would have added enough content that i'd call it good. but as is, it's a tech demo that's barely two minutes long. this needs more content, and more attention to the orchestral opening section and the last 20 seconds. NO Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Emunator Posted September 4, 2021 Author Share Posted September 4, 2021 Damnnnn I love this source tune so much. Honestly one of my favorite Pokémon sources ever, it has a very Chrono Trigger/Yasunori Mitsuda feel to the arrangement. I was fairly ambivalent about the opening minute or so of your arrangement - the samples and sequencing aren't bad, but the adaptation lacked any personal touches or flourishes that really made the orchestration feel unique. I think part of the issue is that the part writing is very static, as Brad mentioned - there's just not a lot of dynamics to that part of the arrangement. I wouldn't necessarily consider it bad but I did feel underwhelmed, compared to the more dynamic, mysterious nature of the source tune. ... which made me all the more surprised by where you took this remix next! After listening fairly extensively on loop, I'm finding myself more and more enamored by the approach with each listen. The groove is simple but effective, and despite all of the instruments having a General MIDI soundfont-ish feel to them, you use them to great effect. The pitch bent guitar really shouldn't work this well, but it absolutely does. On a conceptual level, I can't say enough good things about this - incredibly creative, unexpected stuff. Mixing-wise, I think this could use a cleanup to give a bit more separation between instruments. Especially whenever your woodwind instruments are playing (for example, :18 or 1:45) the whole song sounds very muddy and lacks clarity. I had to actually listen a few times to realize there was even a lead melody at 1:45. Automating the volume of some of your backing instruments ever so slightly, or doing some selective EQ cuts where you have overlapping frequencies can help you clear this up. I also agree that the arrangement just doesn't feel totally complete at just over 2 minutes long. There's a distinct intro, middle, and ending, but neither of the two disparate ideas really feel like they're given enough time to fully develop. Just when I'm really starting to get into the second half of your arrangement, it ends. There's a few angles you could tackle this from, but I'd like to personally see some combination of: Mixing cleanup, more fleshed-out arrangement, and/or something to make the first minute of the song measure up to the creativity and execution of the second half. Any combination of those should put this over the bar in my book! NO (resubmit!) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
djpretzel Posted September 5, 2021 Share Posted September 5, 2021 Both @prophetik music & @Emunator have a ton of great feedback and I agree with most if not all of it. There are some neat instrumentation/production choices in the second half, but a clear melodic line never materializes, and in a sense it's tied too closely to the source - deviation would be necessary to give the piece more direction as a standalone arrangement, as opposed to something explicitly designed for looping while playing the game. Without a melodic identity, this ends up feeling like a chord progression in search of a lead. The intro orchestral is okay, but a little robotic - the subsequent funk is a lot more fun/colorful, but in both cases there's no central melodic voice, so it's two different progressions, in two different genres, back-to-back. I would advise trimming the intro and fleshing out the second, funkier, more engaging portion, and either utilizing a secondary source or getting creative with this source to provide a melodic voice that is, at the moment, somewhat absent. NO Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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