*NO* Pokémon Gold Version "Beacon of Hope"

[Rexy]

Hello, a new submission for OCR. (less than 10 years between them, this time ).

 

Stuff:

Your ReMixer name: tibone

Your real name: Juliano Flores

Your email address: 

Your website: http://www.classicgames.com.br

 

Name of game(s) arranged: Pokémon Gold/Silver

Name of arrangement: Beacon of Hope

Name of individual song(s) arranged: Olivine Lighthouse

 

Artists involved:

tibone

 

About the song:

I created this arrangement for the Pixel-Mixers Pokémon Gen 2 album "Catch This", i started with the idea of avoiding the obviously eastern/arabic feel of the original track and trying to make it something very different. First part i arranged was actually the classical guitar part that comes later on, I know it kinda feels like a mish-mash of genres at first, but i tried to make it work by spilling a bit of elements from one genre to the next. 

 

Hopefully you'll enjoy it too. 

 

Cheers!

 

--

Juliano "tibonev" F.
 

Edited May 4, 2022 by Liontamer
closed decision

[prophetik music]

initial groove is fun, feels very acoustic rock. there's not much in terms of compression on the track that i can hear and it's pretty drum-heavy. the melodic content is competently performed but the guitar tone could really use some verb - it feels pretty dry. i liked the lower counterpoint however it sounds just slightly behind the beat.

there's a significant and unprepared transition to a new groove at 1:04, and the strummed guitar seems very out of time through parts of that. it goes back to roughly where we started in terms of band sound at 1:30, and there's some more exploration at 1:47 which is nice. there's a third section at about 2:05 that's featuring a classic guitar sound, which is a fun change. the solo in the electric has some sour notes. then we're back to the electro groove to finish it out in a very abrupt ending that features the strummed guitar hanging on a bit longer than everything else.

this feels pretty disjointed overall. i think you've got some fun ideas here - the initial acoustirock sound is nice and sounds really early-aughts to me, the electro beat is an interesting counterpoint, and the classical section has a nice sound of its own. i think that you need to spend some time making the parts more cohesive - that is, rather than switching to an idea for 30 seconds, then going to a new style, then going to a new style soon afterwards, focus on really developing an idea, and then making a transition that feels both rational (ie. why am i going here) and smooth (ie. not sudden and dramatic shifts). beyond that, there's some mastering attention that's needed - the drums are too loud and overall the track needs compression to avoid how quiet it feels throughout.

this is a fun start! i think it needs some additional workshopping to make it onto OCR.

 

 

NO

[MindWanderer]

I like the sound of this a lot, sort of neo-grunge.  It reminds me a lot of some recent dark/horror games, struggling to put a finger on which ones it's bringing to mind specifically.  Transistor, a little bit.

I don't have any issues with the tone or transitions.  They both sound exactly like what I would expect from the genre.  Balance and loudness both seemed fine to me.

There is room for improvement structurally, though.  The repeated section from 1:30-1:47 is simpler than the original from 0:30-0:47, with the effect of making it sound more repetitive than it really is.  Similarly, with 2:40-end repeating 1:04-1:22, because it just cuts off at the end of a repetition, it feels less satisfying and more incomplete, more part of a loop that wasn't properly closed out.

That ending in particular is a real bummer, but overall I like this.

YES

[DarkSim]

I’ve been trying to review this track all week and listening at least once every day. It’s a tough one! On the one hand there are some nice elements to it - the electric guitar has a great tone, particularly the intro chords. They sound really nice both without, and then with, the distortion on them. The drum samples are decent, and sequenced well, and the whole ‘band’ sounds like some teenagers having a jam in their garage.

On the other, the arrangement is almost incidental - there’s no clear direction and it does just sound like different sections put together. The ending is the worst example of this - it’s a repeated section from 1:05-1:22, without anything to close out the song, or even allude to the song finishing at all! The electric guitar gets quite loose in places, but I can get behind that if there’s a good melody or hook to keep me interested, but unfortunately with this source and arrangement, nothing really shines in terms of melody. It’s mostly due to the source tune, however even though the melody isn’t particularly catchy, the arrangement could have been used to highlight the source better by swelling up to some chorus sections, then using the breaks to lower the energy again. As it is, the track’s dynamics are very flat, which makes it feel like it’s all one continuous flow.

The classical guitar section sounded OK, although by using the same drum kit sounds as the electric guitar, it felt too similar. Also, whether it was the recording or the mixing, it sounded like the classical guitar had too much of the high-end filtered out. I appreciated the lead guitar melody/solo change-up at 1:48, although that did repeat itself immediately, which was a shame. There was an opportunity there to get a little more creative and bring something more memorable to the track.

Overall I feel like it’s still a work in progress, especially with that ending. The track is called ‘Beacon of Hope’, which I get is from the ‘Lighthouse’ source, but it doesn’t sound too much like a hopeful track at the moment. If you do revisit it, try and use some more dynamics and arrangement techniques to highlight sections, and really build to an ending that evokes hopefulness and light.

NO

[XPRTNovice]

What a fun source, and a fun take on it! 

Right away, the drums come out to me as needing some production help. I agree with Prophetik in that there doesn't seem to be much in there, from a lack of reverb, to a lack of compression, to just being sort of too forward in the mix and not meshing with the rest of it. I hear the kick and snare right up in my face, but I barely hear the cymbal work. The performance of them is actually quite good IMO, and has some nice variation, but needs help production wise to make all that good work not go to waste (like when you're following the samba beat of the acoustic guitar at 2:30 ish, which was super cool). 

The guitar leads that come in at :35 don't sound like they're in synch timing wise, though they lock in after a few seconds, and the mixing makes me lose track of which is playing what. My real beef is there are a LOT  of guitars happening here, and they need to be set apart somehow so they don't confuse each other. This problem is persistent throughout the piece; having so many guitars can be effective, but if you're gonna do that you need to have a surgeon's precision when you're mixing them, which isn't happening here. The result is something that sounds muddy and confusing, with the listener unable to focus on any one thing, so they focus on nothing. 

The guitar melody at 1:20 gets lost - it's way too far back in the mix and gets eaten up by the arp guitar. Again, a production issue, but also an arrangement issue from an instrumentation standpoint. Those two guitars sound very similar, so having them compete for brainspace is disadvantageous to your objective. 

Arrangement wise, I think it's fine, but could benefit from some variations. This felt a little more like the structure of a jazz head (i.e. you play the melody a bit, then noodle, then play the melody a bit, then noodle) than a cohesive story, but the noodling was just sort of a repetition of the melody on a different guitar. 

NO

[Liontamer]

Lots of light crackling from 1:04-1:21, mostly heard on the beats from 1:12-1:21, and it didn't sound purposeful. Strumming in the background from 2:22-2:39 is out of tune. The ending is indeed sudden, but the last guitar note trails off, so while it might not satisfy everyone, this is an acceptable resolution to me. Aside from that, I actually though the structure was fine and fit an interesting and unconventional sound; once you listen through to it several times, the textural changes feel pretty chill and smooth. IMO, this evolving style doesn't need to change, and I would have gone YES if this were just about enjoyability.

As far as DarkSim saying the track wasn't bright/hopeful enough given Juliano's title, why allow the arrangement title to influence your perception of the track? If it were called "Olivine Ennui", maybe you wouldn't question the permissibility of the tone and energy. The title's not relevant.

However, and here's the wrinkle... I was coming up pretty light in terms of hearing the "Olivine Lighthouse" theme referenced in this piece, so I'm either overlooking something major or I'm the only one paying attention to the source usage. I'll list what I had and would appreciate another J verifying or debunking what I heard.

The track was 2:57-long, so I needed to hear the source tune in play for at least 88.5 seconds for the source material to be dominant in the arrangement.

:28-1:04, 1:30-1:46.5, 1:47.5-1:48.25, 2:22.5-2:38 = 68.75 seconds or 38.84% overt source usage

Unless there's something major I'm missing or another source tune also being invoked, I don't see how I could pass this due to a lack of source usage. I'll reserve judgement until someone else clarifies their POV on source usage.

But other than the off-key background strumming from 2:22-2:39, the performance and structure of this was fine and I think the arguments that it was too disjointed are both off-base and closed-minded. Spin it some more, this is transformative, this is cohesively structured and presented, this is fine. But I need me some more "Olivine" identified in this to get on board.

EDIT (5/3): Seems like no one's able to ID more source usage, so I'll also side with the NO votes (but happy to revise my thoughts if there's more identification of source usage that we overlooked). I hope, tibone, that you'd be willing to revisit this one; I dug it!

Edited May 4, 2022 by Liontamer
updated vote from ? to NO

[Chimpazilla]

This is a light, dreamy mix which is pleasant to hear.  I think the performances are good generally, the slightly off-kilter writing fits the mood of the source tune well.  I agree with XPRT that the leads are often mixed too far into the soundscape while strum guitars are too dominant on the sides.  None of the mixing is dealbreaker for me though.  I do agree with Larry that the source is under-represented for an OCR mix.  I think this would be a fairly easy fix by putting the source melody into the sourceless sections subtly using a bell or some other backing timbre.  The ending of the track is disappointing as it just drops off with no proper ending.  I agree with DarkSim that the arrangement could have been better utilized to control the energy with full sections and softer breakdowns.  I would love to have all these issues addressed, but the most important one for me is the lack of overt source use, 38.84% just isn't enough for us.

NO (resubmit)