*NO* Legend of Zelda Wind Waker "Giant Flying Sand Worm"

[Chimpazilla]

Hi, thanks for everything you do!

 

Contact information:

• ReMixer name: MelodicImmersion
• Real name: Paul
• Email: 
• SoundCloud: https://soundcloud.com/paul-devito-270647719
• YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC5sDfv940zBF6stqk7aCNPQ
• UserID: 38216

Submission Information:

• Game arranged: The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker
• Arrangement: "Giant Flying Sand Worm"
• Song arranged: "Molgera"
• Original song: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wlF0-Qs2xkI&ab_channel=Magnus619666

 

In short, this is Molgera's theme from Wind Waker arranged with a full orchestra to sound as EPIC as possible!

 

This arrangement was originally made for the OST Composing Jam: Pastime II, a "game jam" all about making music inspired by favorite games and anime, hosted by the benevolent Lone Rabbit. 

 

Learn more about the jam here: https://ostcompjam.alonerabbit.com/

Follow Lone Rabbit on Twitter: https://twitter.com/LoneRabbit9

 

Molgera's theme from Wind Waker is my favorite song from the series and one of my favorite game tracks of all time, so it was an absolute honor to cover it! 

 

I'm a fan of Epic music and it's my go to style as a composer. I've always felt that Molgera's theme has the potential to hit way harder and bigger, especially as tiny Toon Link toughs it out with the most intimidating boss in the game. 

 

At the time I wrote this, it had only been a few months since I began getting more serious about the quality of my mixing and mastering. If my mix is lacking in any way, I'd love to know so I can improve.

 

But most importantly, enjoy!

 

Thanks again,

Paul
 

Edited January 15, 2023 by Liontamer
closed decision

[DarkSim]

Yeah that source tune definitely could use some beefing up - and you're on the right track with your remix!

Starts out with the dramatic, yet strange-sounding orchestral... tubs? I hear a timpani at 0:38 for emphasis, but something about that tub sound is muddying the mixing a fair bit, which is a shame as it's playing for the majority of the track. Looking at it in my DAW, I can see there's a fundamental peak at 45Hz - do you really need that much sub-bass content in the percussion that's playing throughout the track? I'd suggest swapping that sample out for one with less sub-bass content to clean the mixing up a lot. Use the sub bass for emphasis in the same way you use the timpani.

The melodies are presented well with the orchestration, albeit pretty much verbatim. There's not a great deal of experimentation melodically, although I enjoyed the cinematic backing a great deal, with the choir adding suitable epicness.

Arrangement is disappointingly repetitive, with the same minute of material being rehashed 3 times before a fadeout, meaning by the time the track finishes I've essentially heard the same thing 4 and a half times. There are some minor variations in intensity/instrumentation each time the minute-long loop repeats, but nothing that makes each one stand out. Try and use this opportunity to tell the story of the battle with Molgera. Imagine the fight progressing through phases, perhaps with Link pausing for breath between those phases, allowing for a short break section, before the final killing blow and a big finish. This is where the skill of an arranger comes into play.

It's a solid start, but definitely needs significant reworking in the arrangement department. Mixing is also suffering thanks to the sub-bass content present for the majority of the track. Hopefully removing that will open up breathing room to let the other instruments have their space, and allow you to crank up the master volume some more, as it's a bit quiet right now.

Hope to hear this one again after a rework!

NO

[MindWanderer]

DarkSim nails this one.  You have some great ideas here, but ultimately this is a sound upgrade and not the kind of transformative rearrangement we look for, plus this has several production issues that need to be resolved.

I don't have anything to add to the above.  I recommend taking your work over to our workshop forums before submitting next time.  You're clearly on the right track here with orchestration, but structure and EQ would benefit from a round or two of input.

NO

[Liontamer]

Production-wise, I didn't have any significant issues with this; a more developed, substantive arrangement with this level of production would easily pass.

Opens up super close in structure to the original, just adapted for orchestration. Leads and percussion sound very similar, and the tempo's the same, so more could be done to stand apart from the original. It comes off feeling like a MIDI transcription of the original was used as the base, then ornamented with some additional parts, but it ultimately doesn't feel particularly interpretive. Yeah, just texturally, this is beefed up, but it's too much of a cover structure without enough factors to distinguish it enough from the source tune.

3:13 sounds like a copy-pasta of 2:11 with the strings & choir brightened up some; more additive part-writing is there at 3:26, and I do notice the density's increased, but in execution it just feels like the volume's turned up rather than anything meaningful developing compositionally, since the lead instrumentation looping just continues ad nauseum. There are a lot of avenues for varying this up, whether that's changing up the leads, dropping some parts out, altering the rhythms or tempo, adding original sections or transitions.

The goal here seems to be making a sound-upgraded orchestration, and there's nothing wrong with that in a vacuum. For OC ReMix, we're looking for arrangements that showcase more aspects of interpretation than this, just something to note for the future, Paul. I hope you're willing to submit something else and also tap into some more techniques of musical interpretation.

NO