Emunator Posted September 11, 2022 Share Posted September 11, 2022 (edited) Remixer Name: APZX Real Name: Austin Simons Email Address: UserID: 21463 Game Arranged: Terranigma Name of Arrangement: Departing for the Unknown Arrangement Link: Track Arranged: Flight https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tQYTn4k7FFw Notes: First up, I do not know why this track has not been on OCR yet. It is such a lovely bit of music. Adventurous melodic lines, sparse arrangement, and in 3/4. Maybe that last one is why it is not remixed much. The track is sort of at odds with itself in that regard. I'd be willing to bet that a good lot of people would try and translate this piece into some form of EDM. It would be at this point that you find out that the melody phrases and lead lines really do not line up that well for 8 bar chunks or even 4 bar chunks. That means you either need to build the arrangement around the roughly 6 bar chunks or either try to extend or shorten the phrases & leads to have things fit together neatly. Hmmmm, maybe I answered my question there...anyway! Second, this is really in tribute to a small group of individuals. There is a small but dedicated group of folks keeping the Meat 'n Potatoes and People's Remix Competition alive and kicking. I am not going to say any names directly, but you know who you are Honestly, I wish that in general more people participated in these. My last submission to OCR was more or less from the Meat 'n Potatoes competition. The purpose of these competitions is to spur creativity and try remixing that you would probably not have considered before. Granted I have tried to remix this track before, just never successfully. Further, these competitions get you to work on your production skills. The quick turnaround forces you to be lean and mean with how you work. The only pressure is to offer up your unique take on the track in question and submit it on time. That is all. So, come on folks. Get in there and join in the fun! With all of that out of the way. Time to talk some shop. What I aimed to do here was take the original which is in 3/4 and tweak it so it'd fit into 4/4. I am also a bit of a Trance head. Thus, the introduction is most definitely inspired by that background. However, unlike a lot of those old Trance intros this one is much shorter. While I myself am a sucker for those 2 minute or even 2/3 length of the track intros. I can understand how that could be viewed as padding or entirely unnecessary. The term I'd personally use is brevity. Moving along in the track and this is honestly where most of the work has been done. I opted to increase the length of the phrases and leads to fit into 8 bar chunks. Some of it comes from increasing a few key notes length here and there. Some of it comes from reworking the actual lines a bit with my own original writing in there. The main thing I tried to do here was make it such that anything I did add was not against the grain and would sound like it came from the original. However, I did try my best to keep the recognizable and key movements in there. The conceptual idea at play here was that I aimed to try and keep the feeling that this track invokes in me. That is the piece is about setting off into an adventure, but more than that it is setting off into the unknown. Further, not only setting off towards the unknown, but openly embracing whatever it is out there without worry as to what it may ultimately be. Because it is the journey that matters much more than the destination. Edited May 8, 2023 by Liontamer closed decision Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MindWanderer Posted September 28, 2022 Share Posted September 28, 2022 It's a perfectly servicable, simple EDM take on this track. Nothing revoiutionary, but it does everything it needs to do. Lots of tasteful transitional effects, the synths are robust, the soundscape fills the space. The one thing I'm not crazy about is that at about 2:47, it gets noodly and aimless until it fades out. It feels like you ran out of ideas almost a minute before the end of the piece. I don't think it sinks the piece, but it does make me not super excited about it. YES Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
prophetik music Posted February 27, 2023 Share Posted February 27, 2023 initial fade-in is not my favorite, but the initial hit of everything sounds great, and i like the timbale fill. there's a solid minute before the melody really hits, and the entire build to that is nicely done. the first presentation of melodic content survives the transition to 4/4 fairly well, albeit with some significant off-beat stuff in the melody which initially is somewhat confusing until you hear it with a beat. there's some squiggly stuff in the chord structure around 2:00 that i think is primarily due to long fades on synths. the body of the piece gets pretty muddy there too. in fact, i'd say that about 2:00 through 2:25 is a bit of a bear trap, there's not much coming out that's not somewhat mangled by all the long delays and chord shifts. the lead synth literally never stops playing notes, so maybe giving it a chance to breathe once and a while would be good. it's also so loud that even the tail of notes is louder than the pads and some of the kit, so it's hard to really hear what's going on. at about 2:47 it really falls off the rails. it's just similar-sounding synths in different octaves, noodling and doing some really strange stuff, there's no phrasing or cohesive structure like there was in the intro, and then it fades out. the basic idea is neat, and sounds pretty good. the initial presentation of the build is cool. the first run-through of the melody is a bit weird timing-wise, like i said, but sounds good. after that it gets less and less cohesive. i'm all about stretching boundaries, but EDM's got four on the floor in 4 or 8 bar sections for a reason - the consistency helps tie the work together. there is essentially no phrasing after about the two minute mark here outside of one or two fills, and it just wiggles around until it fades out. i don't think this is cohesive enough. give me some more consistently-phrased melodic content with fills that are intentional, and fewer run-on phrases. toning down the tail length on the lead's verb and reducing the overall volume would help a lot too. NO Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Liontamer Posted April 22, 2023 Share Posted April 22, 2023 The time signature change throws me off, but the source usage is there from the melody coming in at 1:01 with only some brief breaks, then used as an anchor undearth most of the noodling at the end, so it's there. Opens with an EDM groove with a good gradual build; bit of a generic sound, but nice phasing line at :07, and more transition SFX at :15 with twinking stuff afterward and a sustained synth line until :40, brought back at :45. All good building blocks to lead to the melody at 1:01. Melody comes in at 1:01 with some pretty generic synths, and there's not enough difference in the tone of the one handling the melody vs. the ornamentation. They're not pleaseantly mixed either. Notionally, I can hear how the interplay's supposed to work, but it's not fully clicking because of how the lines are mixed; maybe some selective EQing would help them compliment one another rather than compete. At 1:31, the energy initially feels great, and the bassline thumps before things get messy with the textures again. It was brief, but I liked the percussion thrown into the background at 1:30 (first used at :06), but the soundscape is so washed out though that that percussion part barely registers at all, so when it's used more, it all just gets swallowed up in mud until 1:46. It might even still be going on later, but instead of contributing its unique sound to the texture, it's steamrolled. Even the bassline, which I can hear throughout, is obscured more than it needs to be. Kick beat brought in at 1:47 sounded flimsy. The leads continue bleeding/mudding with the ornamentation from 1:47-on (but particularly 2:10-2:25); there's too much mud from 1:58-on, getting even more swamped at 2:10, it all sounds too loud and too busy, and it's difficult to orient until the other line is reintroduced at 2:26. The sound design does have strong moments, for example, the transition at 2:24 was very, very cool; great drum writing for a smooth transition into the new pattern, very cool and bold sweeping SFX, and the bassline comes through way more (until the scoundscape fills back up around 2:41 and it's then lost). From 2:56 until the end, the lead writing sounds like it's noodling with no clear direction; it's not melodious or pleasant, unfortunately, it's just unfocused. I do hear the source tune adapted quitely underneath, but it's definitely not guiding the way melodically, so you'll have to figure out how you want to refocus this. Maybe you stay more grounded with the source melody taking the lead again, though it certainly doesn't have to be that. I definitely like having this flush with swirling pads, delays, and lush effects, so you don't have to aggressively go the other way and dry it out, but this does need some mud traded for clarity. The noodling's gotta be rewritten to be melodious or least given more of direction with proper resolution, and the soundscape has to be tamed and rebalanced so that parts occupy the proper space. Looking forward to some more production-minded suggestions on how to tighten this up, but loads of positives and potential here, Austin, and a solid base! NO (resubmit) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DarkSim Posted May 2, 2023 Share Posted May 2, 2023 Interesting source tune, and I like how you've approached translating the time signature to work with trance. Intro sounds great. The sound design is a bit vanilla, but the pumping bass and filtered arp with delay on it set up a good atmosphere. Rad timbale licks... check Cool break at 1:05, very airy and the synth choice works well for it. Some light sidechaining might have been useful here, to help the listener keep time without a kick to anchor them. Not sure what those 4 trumpet notes are doing 2:06-2:08, they sound really out of place with the whole soundscape and mix. Things get quite busy with the delay and reverb until a reset at 2:27, before we get noodle soup and then a fade out, with the track seemingly unfinished/unresolved. It's a mix of two halves for me. The first 2 minutes or so tell a good story with a coherent structure. The last half feels like you were rushing a bit to finish it for the compo. I'd say revisit this one and put the same care into the back half as the first, with attention paid to the structure, builds, payoffs and a better ending. Not there just yet, but I would like to hear it back again. NO (resubmit) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chimpazilla Posted May 8, 2023 Share Posted May 8, 2023 I'm writing this without reading anyone else's words first. Fade in, not my favorite but it fades in quickly. I'm not sure what part of the source is referenced by this arp playing all the way until 1:00. Synth at 1:00 sounds somewhat vanilla. The melodic lead writing beginning at 1:00 sounds hard to follow without a beat. I'm not sure how well this writing translates from 3/4 to 4/4. There are some sour notes in the section 2:01-2:09, I believe the notes are being played by the pad. This is a very full soundscape and at the busiest parts things sound rather mushy and unfocused. I recommend very carefully EQing all lows out of everything that isn't kick or bass, and make sure your reverbs aren't playing in the low frequencies. Most of the melodic writing doesn't make much sense to me. The source is written in 3/4, and the melody makes sense in that context. This adaptation to 4/4 does not do a good enough job at maintaining a workable melodic contour, and it ends up sounding melodically random and noodly. Final fade out happens during a busy writing section with no resolution to the ideas. A proper ending would be preferable, or at least a fadeout after many elements have stopped playing and only the kick and bass still playing, for example. NO Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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