*NO* Betrayal at Krondor "The Spyglass and the Spider"

[Emunator]

Remixer name: MaxStack

Game: Betrayal At Krondor

System: DOS

Name of arrangement: The Spyglass And The Spider

Original Name: Gorath's Demise

The game is already on the website.

 

I've been wanting to enhance this track forever since I last heard it while playing the game in the 90s. Now I can and I did, hope you like my additions :)

 

Edited May 9, 2023 by prophetik music

[MindWanderer]

The original is minimalist acoustic guitar over a simple bass drone, so there's certainly a lot to "enhance." The remix starts similarly (though much wetter) but quickly adds violin. That's pretty much the only addition, but it's an impactful one. The part-writing is a great deal more complex than the original. It does extend the material to just over 2 minutes, but it does so without looping.

It's just the three parts, but they cover the sound spectrum. The reverb is way over the top, but it helps to disguise the samples. I think it does enough.

YES

Edit 5/8: proph raises a good point about source usage. The guitar does depart from the source material more than I initially noticed after the first minute or so. The second half does extend the violin motifs, but largely abandons the source ones. So I'm flipping my vote.

NO

Edited May 8, 2023 by MindWanderer

[prophetik music]

right off the bat, the delay and reverb is significant. it's imo way too much and so i don't think this can pass as-is. so i'll be proceeding from a conditional at best (turning down the send to the delay and reverb).

the guitar parts in the intro appear to be mostly the same parts - noodling around a few specific chords in a roughly ascending pattern. the violin does serve to flesh out the melodic parts, and i appreciate how out of time the part is. the original's beauty mostly comes from the free style, so having this be similar is good.

roughly around 1:20, there's a shift into a major key which is (to my ears) the first major change in the arrangement. adding more noodles and articulation in the guitar part isn't really more than what you might see in a cover, although the violin part over top is certainly new and adds a lot. from there, the chord structure roughly reiterates what was said before, and noodles towards a (surprisingly chromatic and not 100% on key) ii-V-i resolution.

elephant in the room - there is not a lot of original to go on for this one, and what's there is so freely realized that you'd have to approach it in a motivic (ie. using motifs) fashion to really tie it together. the entire violin part is fully new and does not have an analogous option in the original audio, so that means that i'd need to see clear ties to the original in the acoustic's part. with that in mind - it's hard to relate more than the riff in the first 25 seconds or so of the remix to be clearly arranged from the original, with the significant stretch being maybe 47seconds total of the entire work. i am not willing to define the remix for this song as "this particular arpeggiation pattern on any chord", which i think is what'd be needed to really call this a remix of the extremely short and atmospheric original.

so, i think it's neat, and an interesting attempt to remix a very difficult-to-arrange source. i don't think it's technically overly proficient, both due to the not-great vin soundfont and the extremely overpowering delay and verb effects on the acoustic guitar. more concerningly, though, i don't think this has enough original - or even inspiration from the original - to really qualify as a remix on our site. we often see tracks that sound strongly inspired by an original but with too much new material to truly be a remix as we define it, and i think that's the case here.

i can't pass this as-is. i don't agree that it ties back to the original enough, and that's on top of the mastering being rough.

 

 

NO

[Chimpazilla]

This is going to be a very difficult source to remix as the short source melody is so loose and noodly. The guitar lead in the source is less of a motif-driven lead and more riffing on a chord structure.  There isn't much to grab onto to make meaningful variations of without losing the plot completely. 

The remix starts out copying that noodly writing pretty well albeit in a different key.  The violin is a nice addition and the drone bass sounds good.  I think the delay could be dialed back a bit but I don't think it is as big an issue as prophetik thinks it is.  To keep things clean I would recommend making sure your reverbs and delays are low-cut to avoid the lowest frequencies.  After about 0:46 I cannot make any connection to the source song.  The arrangement sounds very smooth and cohesive, but just doesn't include enough actual source material.  This would be very hard to do with a source like this so I can appreciate the attempt.

NO

[prophetik music]

since this is officially NO'd, i'll say that i'd encourage you to look at other remixes of very atmospheric originals to find methods to handle something like this if you chose to rework this track. i have two remixes of melody-lite or melody-less originals (the face temple theme from Link's Awakening, and the stone track from Witcher 3) that may be an example for how to adapt something so atmospheric. realistically, though, i think that a remix for this track that is both source-heavy and not source-adjacent and is still enough arrangement to pass would be quite difficult. but we did an entire album on Hurry!, so i guess anything's possible.