OCR04578 - *YES* Dark Souls "Dance of the Moth"

[Emunator]

Name: Michael Hudak

Website: https://michaelhudak.bandcamp.com/album/polar

Game: Dark Souls

Song Arranged: Dark Sun Gwyndolin (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wNvujJEQ864)

ReMix Title: Dance of the Moth 

Link to ReMix: 

 

I think the first 35 seconds of the source song is the most memorable section of music from the entire Souls series. It first plays when encountering the Moonlight Butterfly - a majestic early boss - in a dark forest (Dark Sun Gwyndolin appears later in the game, and I never even fought her in my play-through, so I don't associate this song with that character despite the official OST title). I wanted to focus on the kind of somber aesthetic that that Moonlight Butterfly encounter has with something resembling a dark electronic waltz. 

 

I ended up using a synth string sound that accounts for both the bass and mids, using the same chord progression as the original, just more arpeggiated in a kind of "Gothic string quartet" kind of style. No actual classic techno/EDM bass here. Close, middle, and far reverbs send effects on different instruments here, as per usual. Lots of modular runs sent to the far verb, something I did with my "Silent Disruptor" and "Blotto Grotto" ReMixes. Lead line is a filtered female voice, doubled with a whistle sound an octave higher to make things perhaps more ethereal. There are a lot of external LFOs here controlling all sorts of plugin parameters - modular drive rates, Q values in Fab Filter, pitchshifter wet/dry - that aren't baked into the track audio, meaning every time I exported the track to WAV, it sounded a little different. This version is the one I settled on. 

 

Source breakdown:

- I only used the first 51 seconds of the source, played through twice over, roughly. ReMix sits on the same F#m chord from 0:04 to 0:44, which is 0:00 to 0:16 in source. It then changes to C#7, then there are some chord modulations that slightly differ from the source, but the lead melody is still played overtop. 0:45 to 1:15 in ReMix = 0:18 to 0:35 in source.

- After a few back-and-forths it sits on F#m at 1:15 to 1:44 which is 0:36 to 0:51 in the source. The whole thing from 0:29 onward repeats again starting at 1:44, and that's a wrap (until that final guitar chord that I wanted to be a little disarming). 

 

The source tune has several other sections that I initially planned to incorporate, but I eventually decided to just focus on the drama from the driving nature of the first two sections and polish the sound design as much as possible instead of shoehorning more parts in. Short and sweet. Thanks a ton, as always.\

 

[prophetik music]

the clear writeup with source breakdown is helpful. thanks for the technical details.

intro percussion is heavily effected, as is the initial synth work. heavy emphasis on stutters is great and drives the piece forward. the conversion to a piece that's essentially in one (not truly a waltz, waltzes traditionally emphasize 1 and 3 and this is more 1 and 2, still interesting) is a great choice for the track. there is a ton of movement on every part as expected based on description. the lead instrument at 1:15 sounds distressingly out of time initially, and doesn't ever really settle into the beat until halfway through the section.

it indeed repeats a second time, but there's extra flourishes in here and the activity on each synth is notably different this time around, likely due to what michael mentioned about mapping his LFOs externally. the part at 2:30 is less audibly out of time without the beat under it, and the transition to just the kalimba is really neat. i wish the final chord could sustain more but that's the instrument.

i really didn't care for the timing issues around 1:15-1:25, but aside from that this is a fascinating approach to the original. taking something that sounds so medieval and transferring it into an electronic version of a similarly old style is great juxtaposition. i definitely believe you hit your goal with this one.

 

 

YES

[MindWanderer]

It indeed works really well. The instruments are pretty mechanical, but in such a synth-heavy arrangement, that works just fine. Great tone that transforms the original while keeping a lot of the same feel.

I'm not as keen on the loop. There are indeed changes to the additional elements, enough that they look very different in my visualizer, but those differences are mainly percussion. There's an extra layer to the vox, an added snare-like drum, the removal of the percussion at the end, and some changes to the SFX. If there are changes in the synths themselves, they're really subtle. It's a 1:15 loop out of 3:03, 41% of the total length. The first 46 seconds of it aren't exact copy-pasta, but to my ear the changes are mostly minor. However, the last 29 seconds of it removes the percussion entirely, and that's a more substantial change. 46 seconds is almost exactly 25%, which is about my limit.  I'm not crazy about it but I'll accept it.

Everything else is great, no problems.

YES

[Liontamer]

The track was 3:03-long, so I needed to make out the source tune being invoked for at least 91.5 seconds in the arrangement for the source material to be dominant.

Mostly voice references (:00-37 of source) - :18.5-:24, :25.5-:35.5, :36.5-:42.5, :43.75-:55.75, 1:29.75-1:57.5, 1:58.5-2:02, 2:06.5-2:15 = 75.25 seconds

4-note harp pattern (:18-:22 of source), .75 sec per instance - :07
6-note harp pattern (:01-:08 of source), .75 sec per instance - :09, :13, :15, :17
= 3.75 seconds

6-note pattern (:36-:44 of source), but different rhythm - 1:14.75-1:18.5, 1:22.5-1:24, 1:25.25-1:26, 2:29.5-2:33.5, 2:37.5-2:39, 2:44.75-2:48.5, 2:52.5-2:54, 2:55.25-2:56 = 17.5 seconds

Total: 96.5 seconds or 53.72% overt source usage

This was more liberal that I liked, at least in terms of me being able to readily ID the connections, but I broke the summamabitch down enough to where adding up all these tiny bits and pieces of recognizable source tune added up to more than 50% overt source usage, so I stoppppppped.

Love all the sound design here. Creative stuff, but liberal AF.

YES

[Chimpazilla]

Dark Souls is one of those OSTs with motif-light and more atmospheric tracks, so I'm super glad the guys above me did the heavy lifting.  And by "the guys" I mean Larry.  Thank you Larry.

Wow, this source is in 9/4 time signature.  The remix works perfectly as a more upbeat 6/8.  I love everything Michael does and this is no exception.  It feels like his musical ideas come out of a forbidden realm or dimension where crazy yet groovy angelic/demonic beings reside.  I always love Michael's use of glitching, stuttering, and obliterating of sounds, coupled with softer more organic sounds.  This mix is more tame than others in terms of heavy glitching.  The timbres used are so interesting and the piece maintains my interest totally as it goes along. The vocal motif is super creepy and ethereal and contrasts with the more electro/industrial sounds well.  Mixing is great.  The outro with the glassy synth crossfading into an non-humanized musicbox-sounding guitar is a weird, perfect finale to this piece.  

YES