OCR04488 - *YES* Paper Mario "Sing, Sing, Sing Your Heart Out" *PRIORITY*

[Liontamer]

Contact Information

• Your ReMixer name: minusworld, killaGraham
• Your real name: Grayson

Submission Information

• Name of game(s) arranged: Paper Mario
• Name of arrangement: Sing Sing Sing Your Heart Out
• Name of individual song(s) arranged: Ghost Gulping (Tubba Blubba's Theme)
• Your own comments about the mix, for example the inspiration behind it, how it was made, etc.
• This track was made for the Dwelling of Duels competition in August of 2022, where it placed 3rd out of 25. Submitting to DoD enables lots of experimentation for me, so for the August submission I (minusworld) wanted to try a swing metal arrangement. Tubba Blubba's theme from Paper Mario really fit the bill, though it was a bit of a challenge to turn the 45-second loop with only 2 distinct sections to speak of into a solid listening experience. I ended up with a simple ABACA structure, where the A and B sections come from the game and the C section is an original section with solos. I played the guitars and killaGraham played bass. The rest of the instruments are VSTs. Speaking of experimentation, I wanted to see how far I could push a virtual brass section with this track. It's certainly no substitute for real instruments, but I think it makes for a fun track regardless. The Brass VSTs used were Hollywood Pop Brass and Vir2 Mojo. The title of the arrangement is a reference to "Sing Sing Sing" popularized by Benny Goodman and to Tubba Blubba, who separates his heart from his body in order to become "invincible" in the game.

[Liontamer]

Sounds solid enough, and opens up sounding pretty clean on the mixing side, but then as soon as you had the track fill out more at :21, this was a mixing mess until :57 for a few moments until the beefed up textures returned at 1:05.

The chorused brass samples are too exposed when they lead, and I wish the brass, drums, and (to a much lesser extent) guitar weren't stumbling over each other in the same frequency range. We'll see what the musician Js think.

If the source files were gone, Grayson, I could still barely pass this, but it would be a YES (borderline) due to the iffy production holding this back, not the conservative but spirited arrangement. Would love to hear an improved mixing job on this, as I could see NOs and conditional YESs based on the current samples and mixing.

[MindWanderer]

Dee dee dee, ba ba ba da! I definitely got the influence.  It's a great swing arrangement, and a superb job of extending a simple source.

Production isn't perfect, with the guitar chugs overlapping with pretty much everything, but I don't hear an issue with the drums. 0:39-0:48 is pretty problematic, where the lead and bass are smack on top of each other, and 1:23-1:40 is real mid-heavy, but I think the rest is more than passable. I don't think realism on the brass is even remotely an issue; we've passed brass that sounds much worse than this.

I wouldn't be too sad if this got sent back to get the mixing cleaned up a little, but I think it's well above our bar as-is.

YES

[Chimpazilla]

I agree with Larry and MW that the mixing is on the muddy/smooshy side, and that's a shame but everything is audible.  What a fun piece, awesome performances, full of energy and personality.

YES

[prophetik music]

catchy opening, roughly what was expected but well-done. agree it's a messy mastering job that felt quite drum heavy to me.

there's a nice break at 0:57 and we're quickly back to the band sound. the solo brass samples are pretty rough and obviously fake, but the full band tones sound a lot better, and the backing parts for the solo were nice. a quick break, another shout chorus, and it's already over at under 2:20.

it doesn't sound clean, but it's a fun track that doesn't overstay. i'm good with this.

 

 

YES

[Liontamer]

I let Grayson know about the J's feedback, and he took a look at things, but wasn't sure the end result would be better. Here's his response from 5/3:

"Happy Wednesday! I made a brief 1-hour attempt at remixing, but I don't think I made an actual improvement, lol. I just tacked on new EQs and made cuts, but I think stacking EQs ended up causing some weird artifacting that I don't like? I'm not sure. I'm having a hard time trusting my ears lately. Mixing is hard with lack of sleep, lol.

I can send it to you if you like, but otherwise I think the original mix will do."

I said "no worries", so we'll post what we've passed as is. :-)