*NO* Falcon Patrol 2 "Orchestral Mix"

[Chimpazilla]

needs real title if pass - Chimpa

Dear Jury!
 I am Nadin Varga, 17 years old student of composition and I would like to submit a musical composition.

Game details: Falcon Patrol II

Commodore 64

Original C64 music: Dave Lee

The game was published by Virgin Games in 1984.

The arrangement was made for the 2022 Arok Party competition. I uploaded the remix to my youtube channel, here you can listen to the original music before the arrangment:

https://youtu.be/4JImL9ZuF1M

 

The music was made with CuBase.

Thanks for the opportunity.

 Nadin Varga

Edited February 7, 2023 by Liontamer
closed decision

[Chimpazilla]

Initial impressions:  This is an impressive orchestration done by a young student.  The arrangement is conservative but includes some great variations on the chord structure and writing personalization.  Instrumentation isn't all that realistic and mastering is quiet. 

Edited February 3, 2023 by Chimpazilla

[prophetik music]

instrumentation quality isn't good enough to pass. there's certainly enough here to at least talk through arrangement and technical aspects.

intro is pretty straightforward, maybe not as idiomatic to the horn (?) as it could be. there's some nice reinforcing of backing parts once the rest of the bandcomes in. don't fall into the trap that every instrument should be playing simultaneously! it's ok to let some parts stay out as you craft the backing parts.

there's some nice harmonies at 0:52, great soaring line. there's a shift at 1:04 that eventually ends on an adjacent minor. i like this shift, but would have liked to see more during that transitional period that allowed the arrangement to have some dynamic contrast. an extended transition that lasted maybe 30 seconds would give the subsequent big blow in minor some contrast.

there's some extra rhythmic elements in the low brass around 1:24 that i loved. there's another big build after this to a very heroic theme. at this point we're most of the way through the track with the trumpets leading the charge for nearly the whole thing. this is where dynamic contrast really helps a lot with giving the listener new things to listen to. if one of the previous instances of melodic content was in the winds with less backing brass, the trumpets here would be a welcome return to the original lead instruments, instead of yet another instance of the same thing being played.

at 2:00 we get the melodic content in major again, and that sounds great. there's some noodling to get us to the ending, and an abrupt but not unexpected ending.

overall you've got some great arrangement ideas going on here! the next step is branching out in the instrumentation you're using. there are a ton of free options out there that will give you much more realistic instrument samples, and in turn will improve your overall product a lot. you could also consider working with someone who has a working set of samples and ask them to help realize your orchestration.

 

 

NO

[MindWanderer]

In addition to the above comments about sample quality, I found this arrangement to be too repetitive.  It's tough to take such a short source tune and turn it into something more substantial, but it can be done: you can transform it in different ways (instrumentation, key, or just riffing on the notes), or interleave it with original writing or a different source.  In this 2:25 arrangement, we hear the main hook of the theme a whopping 8 times, and although 3 of those times are in a minor key, otherwise the changes are minimal.  I do hear some changes, but they're fairly subtle, and the sample quality hurts you again here.  You'll want to change things up more than this if you want to retain the listener's interest.

It's a fine first attempt, so don't be discouraged.  I encourage you to share any future revisions or other projects in our workshop forum to get more timely feedback than a full submission will get you.

NO

[DarkSim]

I'm glad to hear teenagers of today remixing tunes from the C64 era! And a cool source tune it is too.

Prophetik has given some great feedback about the orchestration. I too felt it was too heavy in the brass, and could have used a switch or two between sections. The sample quality also isn't great, so it sounds a bit unnatural and MIDI-like.

The arrangement does repeat the main theme quite a lot, however I like the way it progresses, and the triumphant marching-band style works very well. Attention has definitely been paid to the dynamics of the arrangement, with the quiet opening ramping up to a big finale.

I think it's clear from your submission email and the track itself that you're still new to production. You've definitely got good compositional skills though, so keep working on the production side of things, try out new sample libraries, and see how you improve as you learn more about Cubase/any other tools you work with.

NO