*NO* Jewel Master "Jewel Master Gold"

[Emunator]

• Your ReMixer name: Cosmonal
• Your real name: Eric João Ferraz Fraga
• Your email address:
• Your website: 
• Your userid: 38073
•  

Name of game(s) arranged: Jewel Master
Name of arrangement: Jewel Master Gold
Name of individual song(s) arranged: Jewel Master

Composer: Motoaki Takenouchi.System: Mega Drive/Sega Genesis

 

Your own comments about the mix: I love this song and was a challenge for myself to rearrange songs that I love. That was my inspiration.

 

 

Edited September 15, 2022 by prophetik music

[MindWanderer]

You're right, this is an awesome source track!  Thanks for sharing it.  It's a tough act to follow up on.

The first thing that leaps out to me about this arrangement is a lack of low-end.  The kick is deep and meaty, but the bass, while pitched lower than the original otherwise-identical synth, doesn't have as much low end to it.  There's not a ton of presence in the highs, either; most of your synths are crowded into the mids.  They're still pretty clear, but the soundscape is thinner than it needs to be.

Second, while there is a decent amount of original writing here, mostly it's a reinstrumentation of the original (except the aforementioned bass, which was kept from the source).  And I get that it's hard to reinvent such a long, complicated source without writing a 10-minute track.  But that is what we ask for.

I think I can live with the second issue, given how much is going on with this, and you do have some original writing and parts.  But the former needs addressing.  The bass just needs some EQ work, although the trebel could stand to be filled out by parts that aren't in this version.  I do hope to see this back, though; it's a great source track, a solid arrangement, and a good foundation.

NO (resubmit)

[DarkSim]

Great source tune, and it's clear you want to do it justice and pay tribute to the character of the original.

The choruses sound great, I do like that synth that plays the melody at 1:27, although it's fairly vanilla. The rest of the instrumentation sounds very 16-bit FM, much like the original source, and especially the bass sounds almost indistinguishable from the source. Did you use soundfonts for this? There's nothing wrong with that inherently, but there are a few occasions in this remix where it's crying out for some more interesting sound design to hold my attention, particularly the long sections where the bass is playing by itself. At 4:30 you add some background arps and a pad and it sounds a lot better.

However, that brings me to the next point - it's a long source, and an even longer remix! I was fully ready for it to end at 4:30, but then it keeps going, for almost 3 more minutes! I definitely think you could cut at least 2 minutes of material and not miss it.

At the end, I'm not sure why the bassline needs to come back in and then just fade out. The phasing pad around 6:48 would have been a perfect way to properly end it. I did appreciate some of the automated effects on the bass though to mix up the character of the sound a little more.

Production-wise, it does sound like a thin mix. I often found myself thinking that it could use an extra layer in there to fill out the soundscape some more. There's a lot of space available, and when the string-like pad comes in at 4:30 then the sound feels much fuller. Some tasteful pads would go a long way towards helping with this in other sections, as well as an overall mastering pass. Playing the remix and source one after another, you can hear the source fills out the soundscape a lot more evenly, despite being 16-bit.

This feels like one of those remixes that's torn between a cover and an original interpretation, and it's just leaning too far towards the source for me at the moment. When you retain so much of the original's character, it's hard to hear your own stamp on it. There's definitely some rearrangement going on, but for me it's not distinguishable enough. Think of opportunities you have to take ideas from the source and run with them yourself. There's a part at 3:50 in the source where there's some cool syncopation on the bassline. In your remix, at 2:05, it's much less syncopated, and as such doesn't sound as interesting.

To summarise, I'd say it needs condensing down into a really juicy track. Take all the best bits and get rid of any bars/repetitions that don't need to be there. Fill out the soundscape either by adding layers or adjusting the mastering. As it stands, it's a great tribute to a cool source tune, and it'd be nice to hear this one again!

NO

[prophetik music]

i love the genesis's bass synths, they're all so fat. great original track.

the first thing that jumps out to me is how thin this sounds. you've got a huge focus on the bass right off the bat (since that's the big thing in the original, too!), and it just sounds like FL default sounds with no EQ. there's no punch to the tone and it feels pretty loose. some real solid workshopping will take that from a time filler to being a highlight for the track.

i think darksim's comments around vanilla synth design and that it's far longer than it needs to be are 100% on the nose. there is a lot of source-similar material here, and IMO not enough arrangement to justify multiple restatements of the same (excellent) original melodic content. furthermore, the synths aren't stuff i want to listen to for seven minutes - they alternate between generic and not particularly satisfying, although you've got some fun wide-LFO stuff that is neat and used as sfx in a few places.

i think i am less high on this track than the rest of my peers. i think this has some bones, but it needs some significant workshopping. if this was a four-minute track that focused on the best bits (the slick bass riffs, the great melodic content, the driving beat), cut out the cruft and filler, figured out the ending better, and really worked on crafting synths vs. choosing presets and dropping them in, i think you could have something that was really fantastic. as it is, it's both twice as long and half as interesting as it could be.

 

 

NO