*NO* Final Fantasy 6 "The Last Esper"

[Emunator]

Your ReMixer name: Sarvoth
Your real name: Christopher Michael Todd
Your email address: 

Website (music): https://soundcloud.com/christopher-michael-todd/tracks

Forum User ID is: 37552

 

 

Additional info:

The game the remix comes from is Final Fantasy 6 from SNES. I call it "The Last Esper" but it is a remix of Terra's theme from FF6 in a metal-esque way. The original song and soundtrack of the game was done by the legendary Nobuo Uematsu. 

 

Comments about the mix:

What can I say? Like many others, I am just old enough to have grown up playing FF6. I was a 5th grader at the time the game came out and I played it for probably a couple of years, over and over, maxing out the characters to lvl 99, etc. The game's story profoundly resonated with me and the characters as well. I thought it was superbly written and I am in the camp that it is the best FF ever made. 

 

I have always wanted to remix this iconic song from the game. Many people I showed this to suggested I submit my song to you all. So here I am. The music on this track is 100 percent performed by me as a solo artist.

 

This is my first video game remix, but hopefully you cannot tell that.

 

Thank you for considering.

 

-Chris

 

 

Edited March 18, 2022 by Liontamer
closed decision

[MindWanderer]

It's not bad for a first attempt.  The performances are excellent, no complaints there.  However, it does seem like it's an early effort on your remixing journey.

What leaps out immediately is the production.  It's very dark and heavily filtered.  The bass is pretty quiet, but there's no treble at all to speak of; even the cymbals have been almost completely cut away.  The bulk of the sounds are smushed into a pretty narrow range in the mids, resulting in a thin soundscape with not much clarity.  It doesn't help that the instrumentation is very busy, with not only the usual metal instrument set, but some deeply resonant cinematic synths, which sound like they're pretty epic but I can barely make them out.

Arrangement-wise, it's very conservative.  The only original content is in the form of an intro, a bridge, a transition, and an outtro (0:00-0:23, 1:34-1:58, 2:25-2:30, and 3:18-end respectively), which together make up only 38% of the track.  The rest is pretty much a cover.  Furthermore, 2:30-3:18 is an abridged repeat of the first time through the source; I know it's not copy-pasta since each is performed separately, but the treatment is identical, and it's 20% of the track.  Either one of these issue by themselves isn't necessarily a dealbreaker, though they're borderline, but together they make for an arrangement that doesn't contain as many interpretive ideas as what we look for.

I might be giving the interpretation less credit than it's due because of how much I'm losing to the production issue, though.  I'd work on that first, because even with no changes to the arrangement, this will sound pretty sweet with more frequency spread and cleanliness.  Then we'll be in a better position to evaluate the transformation.

NO (resubmit)

[prophetik music]

classic track.

initial filtro needs some q. it was hard to tell what was going on there. once it comes in though, it's a big, dark, heavy soundscape. i can hear what you're going for, but MW's right - there's very little above maybe 2khz. additionally, the bass is pretty muddy since the guitars, bass, and kick are all living down there with nothing above to help them be differentiated. it's hard to really hear the bass (which when i can hear it seems like it's doing some interesting rhythmic stuff) since there's no finger tone, it's all cut out. in terms of the drums, there's a good amount of beater tone on the kick which is nice, the snare's pretty full-sounding, but the cymbals are essentially static. that's affected a lot by the lack of high-end.

from an arrangement side, this is pretty much a cover outside of the intro/outro. the melody's the same with very little personalization, the chords are pretty much the same, and i didn't hear much in the background that indicates new countermelodic content. the mastering might have been enough to get through with a really transformative arrangement but there's not one here that i can hear.

this needs some more work. the arrangement needs to be intentional and much more present - there needs to be more Sarvoth and less Uematsu in it - and the mastering needs a big lift in the high end in the least, likely all compression needs to be removed, a volume rebalance done, and the mids scooped, then put in a multiband to prevent the cymbals and other instruments from being crushed by the heavy low mid presence of everything. right now, it's hard finding high points that aren't present in the original already.

 

 

NO

[DarkSim]

Great energy in this one. My favourite part is the solo from 1:35-1:58, but the underlying mixing problems are holding this one back. So much is crammed into the mids that it's very difficult to pick out individual elements. 1:59-2:22 is better, as there are less instruments fighting for space - maybe pare back some of the backing so that the rest of the track is a bit more like this section, or use some of the tricks proph has suggested to give each component its own place in the mix.

Arrangement wise, there's not a great deal of original material relative to the length of the track, but what there is (particularly 1:35-1:58) is excellent. More of that please!

Really good effort for a first attempt. If you do decide to revisit this, don't be afraid to cut out some elements, or be quite drastic with EQ. Listen with a critical ear to existing music in the same genre, compare it to yours, and tweak your mix until it sounds as close as you can get it. There's a lot of potential here, but for now it's a

NO