*NO* Golden Sun "Isaac's Only Shot"

[Rexy]

THIS IS FROM THE ALBUM PROJECT "Golden Sun: A World Reignited" - Figured it was worth noting

• Your ReMixer name: Lucas Guimaraes
• Your real name: Lucas Guimaraes
• Your website: https://twitter.com/Thirdkoopa - knew nothing better to link for this
• Your userid (number, not name) on our forums, found by viewing your forum profile: http://ocremix.org/community/profile/33965-thirdkoopa/
• Name of game(s) arranged: Golden Sun
• Name of arrangement: Isaac's Only Shot
• Name of individual song(s) arranged: Battle! Isaac

Feat: Gamer of the Winds, GuitarSVD, tibone, and StormSkuggan

• I did an explanation for a track that has a similar story, Mercurial Mechanisms. There? I remember collaborating with Eladar pretty clearly. Here? I haven't got a clue. Weirdest part? Of all the songs from Golden Sun: A World Reignited, this is the one that I had the most to do with. I even did the final mix!  I can't even remember mixing this. I've switched computers since then, and I've tried opening it, but no luck. I think this shows sometimes that hard work can pay off. Or, that when going through finishing up graduate school while multiple hectic deadlines are coming up, that it's very easy to forget something. I always still love getting to unveil a bit of the 'magic' behind these covers. Even when I was young, I found fascination in it. I picked up this track, and boy am I happy that I did. I listened to the mix and even thought "Wow, this is better than I Remembered it" - I don't know if any other artists feel this, but whenever I feel down, I look at my old work. I'm always reminded of how far I've got, and that my journey is nowhere near over.

Edited June 21, 2023 by Rexy

[prophetik music]

lol, a 109mb wav file for 3' 31"...that is high bitrate, wow.

some great classical guitar to start it off, and then we're into rock mode. the band sound is solid and fun to listen to. i thought the snare had too little head tone (it's very treble-y) and the kick is hard to hear when the bass is playing. there's some more breaks with the acoustic guitar, and back to the big band sound for a bit (weird note at 1:20), and then there's a significant tempo dropoff.

the middle section with the flute is a nice break but it spends a lot of time with at least one instrument being out of time, confusingly. there's a big band section after that again, and the guitar solo just straight up sounds like it's in the wrong key for a while. there's a lot of use of a sharped 4 and a flat 7 which just sounds strange to me. it's lots of notes and fun to listen to but it sounds like it is in an adjacent key (maybe a fourth down?), and it's out of tune to boot (notably at 2:11, 2:21, 2:32, and especially 2:43). 

from there there's a big blow through the melody once last time and an ending.

from an arrangement perspective there's not much time spent on stuff that isn't original, so that's fine. from a mastering perspective there's some little things that persisted that i wasn't into, like the kick being hard to hear in the bigger sections and the snare being so artificially high in the sound spectrum. i found the solo guitar in the second half to be pretty off-putting as well as the middle break being out of time consistently between instruments.

a lot of little things add up to make this not quite there. another mastering pass (if possible?) and some little cleanups would help a lot.

 

 

NO

[MindWanderer]

I provided a lot of feedback for this one while it was in the WIP process.  I left it still with some reservations about the timbre of the guitars in particular, and I wasn't able to give specific enough advice for Lucas to be able to improve it.  And yeah, there are some weird notes that I wasn't able to articulate well enough either, where the instruments don't sound like they're in the same key.

Unfortunately, I'm still in the position of being able to tell that it's not quite right at the moment but being out of recommendations for how to fix it.  Funny thing is, Lucas has improved quite a bit on his own even in the two years since he put this together (has it really been only two years?!), and I bet if he approached the project files just on his own with fresh ears, he could do a better job.  That's assuming he still has them.

I still think it's in the gray area of being passable for an album but not for a mixpost.  I hope the files for this still exist and that the issues can still be hammered out.

NO

[Liontamer]

2 NOs from a Lucas track, eh? Hmm, proph and MindWanderer are pretty tough; let's see if I agree.

I dig the acoustic guitar opening. Synth lead at :28 definitely feels out of place, and the soundscape for this metal section until 1:06 feels both thin and imbalanced; both the guitar and lead synth have energy but lack a depth to the sound. It's not poor, just not ideal. I'm also getting tired of the drums pretty quickly, but they have energy, so I'll live. 

Change-up of the energy at 1:27 was interesting. The woodwind at 1:35 was panned too far to the right, which was definitely bothering me on headphones; good performance though. The drum rhythm was odd until 2:00, but I wrapped my head around it and it adds character.

Yeah, the overall execution isn't the smoothest, but I'm not hearing anything broken about the arrangement, just some production deficiencies and some unorthdox notes/moments that are worth noting. But they don't pull down an otherwise spirited and creative collab to a point where I feel this needs another version. The bar ain't THAT high, this is a pass for me.

YES

[Chimpazilla]

Where's the bass?  The lack of lows on this mix gives it almost a punk feel, oddly I'm not finding this to bother me too much.  The flute is an interesting choice, and I hear why prophetik said that section sounds like the timing's off.  I think it's the bass?  Almost sounds like the bass is trying to play a swing pattern.  As for the section with the lead guitar playing down, I can only assume that was a stylistic choice.  I could nitpick this mix even more, but it's still a fun listen and the arrangement and performances are good.  Overall I feel like this mix is trying not to take itself too seriously. I'm with Larry on letting this one pass.

YES

[DarkSim]

Definitely a fitting genre for battle music! The energy is super high, definitely feels light in the bass, but there's a lot going on, so perhaps more bass would make it too busy. Chimpazilla's right on the money with the punk feel, particularly with the guitar tones. It's got that young, raw timbre to it that punk has - but also some flute and synth, so who knows what specific sub-genre this one falls into!

I like the acoustic breaks, and the flute is handled really well, although there's definitely some strange timing in that section. I think the snare being so close to the beat in that particular swing pattern makes it sound slightly odd, but when things tighten up again afterwards, it gets back on track. Listening back to that flute section, I'd say it's an interesting compositional decision, and although it might sound odd on the first couple of listens, it's not a big enough deal that I'd say it warrants fixing.

I enjoyed the use of that simple saw synth as a complement to the lead guitar. There's some attention paid to the pitchbends and vibrato, to stop the synth sounding too static, and the interplay between the synth and the guitar after the solo was really nice.

Arrangement wise I liked it a lot - source usage was easily apparent, and the structure didn't feel repetitive at all. Energetic synth-flute-punk-metal? It's a yes from me!

YES

[Emunator]

Love the arrangement here, there's a lot of variety that you've brought to the table without sounding incoherent. Production-wise, things are a little bit rough. Jack and Kris insightfully brought up the punk rock comparison, which definitely fits the style and tone of the guitars and overall lo-fi production, but I found the drums to be a weak link both in terms of realism and tone. The snare particularly is feeling severely anemic, revisiting the EQ curve to give it a little more body and perhaps adding some saturation would resolve that. Overall, the mixing feels like it's lacking that aggressive "bite" that I want from an upbeat rock arrangement, especially for the first minute of the arrangement. A little tasteful saturation/distortion would go a long way here. 

I feel like the strength in the arrangement and instrumentation wins out over the production at the end of the day. It's not my strongest YES, but there's a lot to like here!

YES (borderline)

[XPRTNovice]

Right away at 0:01 I am hearing the producers hand in a big way in the compression on the lead guitars; I hear them pumping and breathing in a distracting way, even though the performance is good. You don't need it there; the guitars are alone and unafraid and well played, and I don't think you need to squash them. Let them sing!

Overall though, I am missing a huge part of the sound spectrum. This track sounds very mid-heavy in almost all the places; I don't get a lot of support from the bass and the kick drum to round out the mix, and the rhythm guitars are also pretty heavy in the mid freqs. This makes the lead synth, although well-played, sound even more intense because we already have so much going on.

The flute needs some automation when it comes in at 1:40 - we only get half the phrases because the flute dips down into its lower register and ther. And then at 1:55 we start to get some really messy playing in there; the performance needs to be cleaned up. 

My ear is really fatigued by 2:15 because I really feel like I've just been listening to mid&high for most of the piece. 

The timing at 2:40 falls apart at my ear as well between the guitars and drums. That performance needs to be cleaned up IMO.

Arrangement is really cool, there are really fun ideas, and we've got some really good talented performances in there, but the combination of timing/performance issues in those spots and me missing half the frequency spectrum is going to no this one for me.  

NO

[DarkeSword]

This sounds so thin. Everything is squashed into the middle. This should sound bigger than it does.

Performances are alright. The middle section gets messy with timing though. I'm getting some weird intonation issues at the end with the guitar too. Can't put my finger on it.

This needs another pass on the mix and some cleaned up performances. It's a NO resub from me.

[Gario]

The source is great and it's there, so it's a good start. A rockin' arrangement is a great place to take this, so another point in it's favor. The arrangement works pretty well, and the instruments while simple are a good combination throughout, and it has solid moments with the acoustic guitar to help break things up so it doesn't get stale - all great things about this arrangement.

The issue I have with this is the overdrive rhythm guitar has no breadth. Everything is panned center, which gives it no life or body. Many guitarists work around this issue by performing the rhythm twice and panning each performance to the left and right, and I suggest giving that a shot for this arrangement as well since this really needs more thickness to the arrangement. This also leaves a nice space for your lead guitar to pierce through, which while the clarity of the lead isn't a problem in the mix it wouldn't hurt to make it clearer.

The lead could also use some tightening up in the performance. There are moments where the lead slides into notes but doesn't quite make it there, like at 2:11 where the note it lands on sounds very flat. There are also minor moments throughout the lead where it doesn't quite sound like it lands on beat, like at 2:53 - 2:55 where the lead sounds like it lags the rest of the music by a fraction of a second. These things are not a big deal isolated, but they do all add up throughout the performance.

The acoustic guitar sounds fantastic, by the way, I really liked that performance and recording.

It's got all the things necessary to be great, but it has some tuning up to do before I could put it on the site. Make that rhythm guitar thicker, and clean up that lead guitar performance. It'll have a place saved for it on the front page until then.

NO

[Rexy]

I concur with my fellow judges about the rawness behind the mixdown and the arrangement.  It's at the point where while the melodies got used with no problem whatsoever, the chords and some melodic intonation got simplified in favor of delivering energy and enthusiasm from the performers.  We also got an excellent progression - lovely acoustic guitar into raw punk, a flute breakdown, a solo, and the recap.

The mixdown is a peculiar one, which I noticed from a spectrum analysis has a lot of low-mids for that punk feel - which would explain Kris's answer as to what happened to the bass.  Because of this, the kick drum feels hidden among everything else - so if there's a way for you to make an EQ notch in any of your other instruments to make room for the kick, that could work out.  Similarly, Greg was right on the money with the lack of space on the rhythm guitars, so a second performance for texture would enhance it big time.

Thinking back to the arrangement, I felt concerned about some of those chord changes and their tone when measured up against the lead - particularly when going through the A section's first half (0:27-0:35), where the complex melody tonally struggles against the idea of one chord per bar.  However, that was nothing compared to the guitar solo at 2:10, which sounded like the melody would aim for notation based on 7ths or keep going as far away from the scale's root as possible.  The more significant issue with the recording was that a lot of the notation was way behind the beat and made it appear sloppy - so I am in favor of a re-record to at least tighten its placement.

It's in the gray area of being passable for the album's release, yet needs some tweaks before going onto the front page - a more transparent part of the stage for the kick, a re-do of the guitar solo, and some extra production TLC onto the rhythm part.  I don't know if you're still in touch with your performers, but it would be great if you could figure out a solution to get this onto the front page.  Keep at it.

NO (resubmit)