Emunator Posted December 18, 2021 Share Posted December 18, 2021 (edited) This is a remix of Mara and Nara's theme from the fourth chapter of Dragon Warrior 4. I also made this on my phone using Caustic 3 and Caustic mastering. I've been working a lot of overtime, so breaks at work are when I have time for anything like this:) I think I have gotten a better grasp of making music fooling around with the app. Thanks ahead of time for your consideration! Edited August 10, 2022 by prophetik music Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
prophetik music Posted January 17, 2022 Share Posted January 17, 2022 (edited) great fat beat right off the bat. it's a very short intro, and then the melody's in right away in some fun contrasting leads. there's a break at 0:48, with some noodling with arps and heavily filtered leads, and then we're back at it. i love the distorted bass with the lfo on it, that's a great sound. there's more fooling with the melody on this second half, which is nice. there's a very short outro, and then the track's done at the 2:20 mark. this is real short, honestly - there's some arrangement expansion, but it sounds like it's a 3+ minute song that's been condensed down a lot (we usually see the opposite!). each section comes and goes very quickly, and there's not really time to breathe between each section except between about 1:15 and 1:30. The intro and outro are both quite short. from a mastering perspective, there's a lot in the low mids to my ears, and i think it's hot enough there that it's pretty tiring on the ears quickly. i like the beef of the bass instrument across the board, but there's some real pressure there (for example, the fundamental of the bass part around 1:30) that feels oppressive quickly. i'm actually not sure how to vote on this one. it checks the boxes, but i feel like there's caveats at every spot. ? 8/10 edit: yeah, this just isn't there. mastering is too dense, it's too loud, arrangement is too tight, the ending isn't really there. some more attention will help so much on this. and a real DAW will make a huge difference. NO Edited August 10, 2022 by prophetik music Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MindWanderer Posted February 3, 2022 Share Posted February 3, 2022 I'm a little on the fence about this one as well. It's a fun arrangement, but there are oddities about it that hint at being developed by a less than full-fledged tool. It's a weird mix of synths, some of which are meaty, but others are pretty bland and not really up to modern standards. And then there's the sample of the Chinese zither for some reason. The vanilla saws often used for the leads are a particular weak point. I don't feel like it's too short, but I do feel like the ending was pretty abrupt. There's no real build-up, just a transition and then an ending. The mastering seems passable for me, so good job getting that done on a mobile tool. As much as I want to accept something made with Caustic on principle---and I know it's good enough to make a passable mix---I think the simple, old-school lead synths are letting this down. I think it would have been a slam-dunk in 2002, and it's still impressive for having been made on a phone, but that doesn't earn any points in the judging process. Keep at it, though; I know you can make this work, and you're most of the way there. NO (resubmit) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DarkSim Posted June 4, 2022 Share Posted June 4, 2022 There was a time about 6 months after I started producing music when one of my friends had a listen to the stuff I'd made on GarageBand and said "You're holding yourself back by using that - just get Ableton and you'll improve massively". I took his advice and never looked back. I feel like I'm about to give you some similar advice! There are some really awesome sounds in this - particularly the basses - but typically synth bass sounds don't have many effects on them, so I'm not surprised those are the best sounding synths on show here. The other synths and percussion sound very 90s, which isn't necessarily a bad thing of course, it's just I'm guessing you're approaching the limits of what Caustic 3 is offering (I'll admit I've never used it), and to get much more out of this would require a disproportionate amount of time compared to what you'd need to invest in FruityLoops, Live, or whatever your DAW of choice might be. It's certainly commendable that you can make a composition sound this good on a mobile app, but it's that extra fidelity that's missing from this that is so much easier to get from a dedicated DAW. Things like automation, delay and reverb, and overall complexity of sound design will become fairly trivial to implement in a full DAW - all of which are just falling short in this piece. I understand if you're comfortable using your phone to make music, and you've clearly got a great knack for it and must have a decent workflow by now on Caustic 3, but I do implore you to give a different DAW a try and see how you like it. You may be surprised at how much better your compositions will sound immediately. NO Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chimpazilla Posted August 8, 2022 Share Posted August 8, 2022 This mix sounds surprisingly good for having been made on a phone, I wouldn't have thought that was possible. The arrangement is short yet effective. But ultimately I agree with my fellow judges on every point they made. The production just sounds a bit too rough. The elements need a good EQ treatment to remove lows from everything that isn't kick or bass. Some sidechaining of all the elements in varying amounts would clear up the soundscape quite a bit and get the arrangement grooving a bit better, reduce the load on your master limiter, and the drums will punch through better. You've done a lot with some very vanilla sounds. The track overall is mastered very loud and SPAN shows me it is clipping like crazy. I attribute this primarily to less than optimal EQ treatment throughout the track, this is a very common issue. If you're this talented on a phone app, you're gonna be crushing it with a DAW. Get yourself a DAW and do this (with this theme or another one) again, and please let us hear it! NO Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts