Emunator Posted April 18, 2021 Share Posted April 18, 2021 (edited) Hello OC Remix, my name is Daniel Ruiz and my remixer name is Mithyka you can contact me at this same email address and here is my userID: 37288 Remix information: - Princess Tomato in the Salad Kingdom (NES) - Downtempo/lofi/trap - Level 1 I've been a fan of the channel for years so I thought I deviate from my usual productions and throw my hat in the OC Remix ring. It's a pretty obscure game but this song's melody has always intoxicated me so I wanted to give it a modern lofi treatment. Hope it's to the judges liking! Cheers! Source: Edited March 31, 2022 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 this is a great original track! i've never even heard of this game. lots of playing with time and downbeats, and a big scalar run which i love in chiptune tracks. sfx opening into the traditional slammed keys and kit sound of lofi. the melody's obvious right away, and i like the chopping done to it. the full melody comes in at 0:30, and sounds great. i like the addition of strings to the big ascending scalar run. beat and bass are good too and the vocal sample isn't obnoxious (i don't like vocal samples in downtempo and lofi but i get it's part of the style). there's a break at 1:23, and when the drums come back in they're doing something new, which is nice. at 1:47 we get a new runthrough of the melodic content, and there's some new synths and a countermelody being used, which is great. there's an outro around 2:40. this sounds great, has a lot of melodic content that's mixed up in different ways, and does a good job adapting the track to the genre. nice work. YES djpretzel 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
djpretzel Posted September 5, 2021 Share Posted September 5, 2021 I think @prophetik music covered the highlights - playful, syncopated, & textured take on a trap/lofi rendition of this theme. Melodically conservative, but there's enough personalization. It's a bummer, though - this melody could have been stretched out, spliced between multiple leads w/ tradeoffs, doubled-up with some harmony, etc. - SO MANY WAYS that would have worked SO nicely with this genre/treatment. Instead, the second go-round we DO get some additional layering of string-esque patch to differentiate, but I feel like there were a lot of missed opportunities to do more with the melody, both compositionally & from a production perspective. Also could have extended duration with a really minimal/sparse breakdown/buildup, something Tune In With Chewie has a few great examples of. Nevertheless, we're judging what's here, not what could have been, and I think this is substantive enough & applies its hybrid genre influence adeptly enough to earn my vote. YES Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MindWanderer Posted September 16, 2021 Share Posted September 16, 2021 (edited) Interesting! The textures are trap, but the arrangement is more like progressive trance, adding and switching around elements as the simple loops repeat. It's creative for sure. However, I'm not as sold on the amount of repetition as proph and djp. The source material is short and has a lot of repetitive components to it to begin with. There's a definite effort here to improve on that, with variations in the effects and layers, but ultimately it still comes across as very repetitive. In particular, I felt like the piano and vox wore out their welcomes, and I didn't feel like there was enough variety in the percussion, either. More importantly, while the second half isn't an exact copy of the first, I found I really had to listen carefully to pick up on the differences. I like the approach a lot, and there are some great sounds here. I just don't feel like there's more than a minute worth of ideas in this 3-minute arrangement. I think djp already provided you with some great ideas to add to this without padding it out, and I'd love to hear a revision with those thoughts in mind. NO (resubmit) Edited December 7, 2021 by MindWanderer Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Liontamer Posted October 29, 2021 Share Posted October 29, 2021 Oof. As soon as that sampled piano kicked in at :07 sounding so incredibly fake, this was at a huge deficit. Let's see if it can climb out. Yipes. I like the creativity of the beats, mixing (for the most part; sounds like the highs are muted), and overall sound design, but that fake piano sounds awful and that's the base of the track. It's a complete non-starter like this. Hearing the chorus loop again at 1:10 with a retread was also a downer. The layered string/piano combo at 1:23 just sounds so lacking. I'm not saying you need the organic-style instruments to sound more real or that money needs to be dropped on better samples or live collaborators, but changing the tone on those parts may be all you need to make the focus less about how robotic the samples sound. I agreed with MindWanderer in that there's care given to create textural variation, but the track ultimately still feels too repetitive when just listening to the core structure. That, coupled with the weak samples, drags this down to a NO, but it's a very promising arrangement. We'll see how the rest of the vote shakes out, but if this doesn't make it as it, beefing up or changing the piano & string samples and employing more melodic or instrumental variation with the leads would help make this an easier call. NO (resubmit) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Emunator Posted November 1, 2021 Author Share Posted November 1, 2021 Hate to say it, but I have to side with the two nay's above me. The foundational beats and sound design are really tight here, and the vocal chopping specifically reminds me of In Love With a Ghost, which is a favorite lo-fi artist of mine, and you executed that style well. However, I agree with Larry that the piano tone particularly takes me out of the experience. The sample is slammed super hard on the compression and has a bright, unrealistic tone and a lack of expression in the velocities that just doesn't fit with the rest of the soundscape. Sadly, since this feature is so integral to the arrangement, it does end up being a significant detriment to the overall presentation. The repetition was also a bit of a bummer, but I did find sufficient personalization in the beats and additional harmonies added to the second half of the song so that repetitiveness wasn't a dealbreaker issue. My main gripe is really just with the piano sample/EQ balance, which may seem nitpicky but ends up being significant enough simply due to how present it is in the mix. Hope to hear this again with some minor revisions if this doesn't pass as-is! NO (resubmit!) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DarkSim Posted November 28, 2021 Share Posted November 28, 2021 As someone who loves a quirky, previously unremixed game, this ReMix certainly caught my eye. I’ve got to commend you on your choice of source, as I doubt many people are familiar with this NES adventure game. I had to look up some gameplay on YouTube to see what it was about! Lofi has really carved out a niche for itself in recent years, especially with those YouTube channels for studying and relaxing, and to give this source the Lofi treatment is a great decision. The ReMix begins really well, with some overcompressed SFX, as befit the genre. The piano is really clean, perhaps too clean, for the lead melody, and those vocal synth effects also feel a little clean for the style. I wouldn’t have minded some notch filters in there to hollow out the sounds and give them a grittiness that’s a little more Lofi, but that could just be personal preference. The percussion is gitched and textured really well, and the bass is used sparingly and to nice effect. The bass synth itself has some interesting detail to it, with some automation work going into it which was appreciated. The melody is treated well, with some nice interplay between the piano, strings and later a pluck. At this point, I’ve only got minor criticisms of the piece, however I have one big problem with this track, and that’s repetition. On first listen, I couldn’t discern much difference between the second half and the first half of the track, so I dropped it into my DAW and copied the second half, inverted the phase, and overlaid it on top of the first. Through the power of destructive superposition, the differences, or lack of, were laid bare. Despite my praise of the rich texture of the percussion, there is almost zero variation between the 0:09-1:26 section and 1:26-2:43. The melody is augmented with a plucked synth, and some of the vocal synth has been removed in parts to keep the mix clean. There’s also a very quiet pad that is introduced, but really we’re talking around 45% of the material here is completely re-used. That’s way too much for me to pass it. By the end of the track, I was wishing for a longer break section, as the overcompression ended up starting to fatigue my ears. I’d desperately love to have a ReMix from Princess Tomato in the Salad Kingdom on OCR, so I hope you revisit this one and address some of the issues holding this back. For me, dialling down on the compression would be a must, as well as spending some time making the piano and vocal synth sound a bit more gritty/filtered. The second half needs more care put into it with respect to differentiating it from the first, and perhaps adding a longer break between the two would be a welcome addition. Hope to hear this one again! NO (resub) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chimpazilla Posted March 31, 2022 Share Posted March 31, 2022 As Larry pointed out, the piano sounds very fake and prominent, especially since it opens up the track and it is so exposed. Other than that, I think this track is interesting and well produced. It sounds really nice on my system. There are a lot of little details and I like the chopped vocals a lot. Unfortunately I have to side with the NOs here because after the first half my ears are ready to hear something new. Since the soundscape is so full and busy, the repetition of the same elements becomes exhausting. There is a missed opportunity to really open this track up and add some new sounds for a nice sonic thrill, but it never arrives. Even dropping some of the elements like the vocal or piano during the second half (potentially bringing them back in for the finale) would really open it up. But as it stands now, it's just too repetitive. I would love to hear this again, with the piano sample improved and with some new arrangement ideas or different sound elements in the second half . NO (resubmit) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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