Liontamer Posted May 25, 2022 Share Posted May 25, 2022 (edited) Your ReMixer name - donut Your real name - Chris Erickson Your website - https://twitter.com/donut_doots Your userid - 37679 Collaborators: Sean R. Hanson - marimba, glockenspiel, chimes Deckels (Dan Eckels) - EWI (I played clarinet and soprano/tenor recorder) Submission Information Name of game(s) arranged - Hollow Knight Name of arrangement - Mystic Mycology Name of individual song(s) arranged - Fungal Wastes Composer - Christopher Larkin Link to the original soundtrack (if it is not one of the sound archives already available on the site) - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hyI7sYvH8pc Your own comments about the mix, for example the inspiration behind it, how it was made, etc - This was arranged for the Pixel Mixer's Voidheart album with the premise "what if not sad bugs, but cutie bugs?" for a more whimsical, otherworldly fae-touched feel. Edited July 7, 2022 by Emunator Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Liontamer Posted May 25, 2022 Author Share Posted May 25, 2022 As soon as this started, I knew the arrangement had the potential to be a winner, as the tone and tempo's completely different than the original. The woodwind lead at :57 was cut-and-pasted at 2:33, which was disappointing; an additional rendition of it with different performance dynamics would have been nice, but there's at least another woodwind providing interplay with it the second time around, so it's a measure of variation. The very ending at 3:20 was flatter than a plateful of piss, i.e. not much of a resolution, but we'll live as the overall presentation was so capably put together. Sweet instrumentation and you folks personalized the source tune well. On the production side though, it's very disappointing to hear the hiss of the recording for the woodwinds audibly jump in at :25, then out at :42, which sounds pretty bootleg and sloppy. No one listened to this on headphones? At least this is a learning experience where you can attempt to reduce hiss on the relevant parts and see how well you can mitigate the issue. More audible start/stop hiss at 1:32, 1:38, 1:42, 2:01, 2:23, 2:25, 2:27, 2:29, 2:31, 2:34, it just keep going on and on throughout. This all messes up the track's immersion and needlessly exposes the multitracking when this is presented to feel like a singular live recording. If hiss can't be eliminated, it's actually better for a track if the hiss is ever-present; at least then, it only really draws attention to itself once, as opposed to here where it comes and goes frequently. A few hits of this here and there would be permissible; we're a hobbyist community with high standards but aim not to make the perfect the enemy of the good. However, the constant back and forth of the hisses added up to dropping this down enough on the production level, IMO. You need to mitigate or eliminate this. Part of that also involves trimming the beginning and end of parts where the hiss is introduced; at 2:01 for example, the hiss arrives half a second before the part does; again, needlessly sloppy I've been doing this for close to 18 years and don't think I've had to reject more than one or two tracks because of hiss, but we're here to innovate, baby; we're in rarified air! I would go YES (conditional), but a fix of this nature might not actually be so easy, so I have to go NO (resubmit) for now. Any of the musician Js giving targeted advice and recommendations on how to address this recording hiss would be extremely appreciated here. Don't conflate the critique for disliking the track. The arrangement and performances are an easy pass, the one production issue of hiss constantly dropping in and out is what's holding it back. Nothing needs to be changed with the arrangement, just a post-production cleanup, so I sincerely hope we see this posted in some form. Chris, Sean, Dan, nice work! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
prophetik music Posted May 25, 2022 Share Posted May 25, 2022 (edited) several db headroom. marimba is a great starting instrument. the choice of recorders is a great one - very evocative sound. the clarinet is pretty out of tune around the top of the lower octave, when the air column is at its shortest, but you've got a nice singing tone in the upper register. the arrangement is also really fun overall, even with repetitive elements like the mallets and chimes being used so prominently. i thought the ending was fine, certainly not enough to hold it back. i agree that overall i'd have preferred more dynamic shaping to the work, a louder final version, and some pitch fixing in terms of general critiques. the ambient hiss is certainly notable, but it almost sounds like reverb that's not well-implemented to me, or an aggressive compressor/noise gate setup. if it's ambient hiss, i'd suggest filtering it out with a low-pass filter with the freq set really high. if it's some level of reverb/room sound, i'd suggest removing it entirely and using a different method to generate room sound for those bells and the winds where i heard it. if it's being heavily compressor to normalize the volume of the recording with a hard gate to remove the hiss that results from ambient being boosted, i'd just cut that entirely and find another way to get the volume normalized. in short, it's weird and anything you can do to remove it is a good idea. i want to know what's the deal with that hiss. if it's mechanical and we can remove it, this is not perfect but fine by me. if it's not removable - that is, it's due to the recording technique - i'd say this isn't there. NO Edited May 25, 2022 by prophetik music Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Emunator Posted July 7, 2022 Share Posted July 7, 2022 Oh, this is an absolute delight! The instrumentation sounds so organic and full of life, it evokes a feeling of a million little bugs skittering about in a hidden underground society in the most lovely way. I have no major gripes about the arrangement or performances, but the hiss is quite noticeable, especially since it cuts in and out on certain instruments. I’m confident that, if you’re able to isolate what instrument is contributing to this effect and apply some de-noising, this would be all the better for it. 99% there, but the hiss is distracting and needs to be resolved so that, at the VERY least, it’s not cutting in and out periodically. Get that sorted, and we’re in business! NO (you better resub this!) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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