*NO* Mario & Luigi: Bowser's Inside Story "Nostalgic Stroll Through Town" *PRIORITY*

[Emunator]

Danny K Music

Daniel Kamstra
User ID: 38518
 

Danny K Music - YouTube

Submission Info
Game: Mario and Luigi: Bowser's Inside Story (Nintendo DS)
Title: Nostalgic Stroll Through Town
Song Used: Mario & Luigi: Bowser's Inside Story- Toad Town - YouTube

 

Composer: Yoko Shimomura

 

Inspiration

This was one of the first DS games I owned and fell in love with the game almost instantly with its colourful cast of characters, some of my favourites being Fawful, Midbus and Bowser, the comedy and the gameplay that took the Paper Mario formula and kicked up the intensity. And how can I forget the soundtrack with some iconic songs such as "The Grand Finale" and "Tough Guy Alert!"

Toad Town is, in my opinion, such an underappreciated song in the game. It fits the concept of a safe area nicely with the simple melody, minimal instruments and calm atmosphere. I wanted to try and capture something a little different with my rendition and rather than make something with a similar atmosphere, I wanted to make it more nostalgic (for lack of a better term) as that's how I feel seeing and playing this game and listening to the OST. Brings me back to a much simpler time indeed!

[Liontamer]

Thanks a lot for submitting this. Piano definitely sounds very rigid with the timing. OK, further orchestration comes in at :18 and it's all very mechanical timing. From :30-:55, I'd argue the supporting piano writing shouldn't be the loudest stuff. All of the string articulations were extremely mechanical, with artificial-sounding note changes and no decays (example of an in-your-face offender: strings from 2:05-2:08) .

The way the textures constantly changed was definitely a huge positive in terms of showcasing how you want the track to shift and evolve throughout, so I'd say your general arrangement approach is good. However, the production side doesn't realize the arrangement's potential. The timing and articulations of everything lack decent humanization, and some parts are too loud while others are too soft (e.g. strings from 1:43-2:08) which pulls the listener's focus away from your melodic treatment.

Lots of sequencing & production TLC needed to get this into a passable state re: our standards, so this won't be the one that gets there. That said, your arrangement was already at a solid enough level, so the potential is clearly there and I hope you keep at it with your music. If this is an older piece, would love to hear some newer ones, but whether or not that's the case, I'd recommend using our Workshop forums and Discord channel to solicit more feedback for your work to continue your growth. Keep at it, Daniel!

NO

[MindWanderer]

Yeah, unfortunately, while this would be perfectly servicable as, say, a sound upgrade to 6th-gen console quality, the humanization is lacking, and balance levels are erratic.  There's an overall drop in volume at 1:19, and the strings have a wide range in overall loudness that's definitely digital volume control and not velocity.

As Larry said, the arrangement is just fine, this just needs work on the articulations to sound less mechanical, and then some minor loudness tweaks to finish it off.

NO

[prophetik music]

rubber stamping this.

some notes about the piano. there is a lot of heavy left-hand blocks (the bottom of your chords). avoid doing 1-5-1 blocks in the left hand in general, as that tends to sound very heavy and dense. beyond that, it's obvious it's either heavily quantized to be rigid, or it's clicked in. i'd suggest adding some level of nuance to the more repetitive parts to help it not feel so rigid. variances in volume are the best way to do this, and some more flex in faster runs helps too.

the strings throughout sound pretty fake. there's also not really much room verb applied to them, as opposed to the piano which has tons of verb, so they sound extra exposed.

the instrumentation is holding this back. less mechanical-feeling, less heavy blocks, less repeated notes at the same velocity, etc.

 

 

NO