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*NO* Final Fantasy 6 "Espers"


Emunator
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Hello OCRemix,
 
After my last submission getting approved (A Scent of Lavender), I decided to submit another song from my album, because reading about the judge's opinion was really interesting for me. I think I'll submit my other songs as well (in two weeks, that's the rule !).
 
Contact Information
ReMixer name : Black SeeD
Email 
Userid : 37884
 
Submission Information
Game arranged : Final Fantasy 6
Name of arrangement : Espers
 
Comments :
Hello again everyone !
This is the second track of my album of remixed video game tracks in an atmospheric black metal way (you can find the whole album here : Black SeeD - Farplane of Memories (2021)).
The goal of this track and the album in general was to work with songs on which I felt that I could emphasize melancholic themes with my favorite music genre. 
 
For this song, the theme is easily recognisable throughout the whole song. It's already catchy enough by itself, so I tried to emphasize it even more in my style, make it more "bouncy" while trying to keep the melancholy of it.
 
I hope you'll like it !
 
Thanks a lot !
Black SeeD
Edited by Liontamer
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image.thumb.png.06a31eec6ed0d4d4fc13df594c48e40f.png

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great intro. very nice atmosphere.

the first playthrough of the melodic content is as expected - super mega ultra powered up drum smash time with the guitars playing it through in a pretty straightforward manner. i can't really hear the bass here, but that's fine since the kick is annihilating everything below 100hz anyways.

there's a clear shift at 1:24 to a more cover-style approach - again featuring the guitar going through the original without much personalization. this goes through the melody twice and adds in the original counterpoint, then goes through the B section twice and back to the A material in the same way that it was handled before. this is all super linear and there really hasn't been any arrangement or adaptation at this point. at 3:20 it's right back to the B section again in the same way it was done before. and then the A is back in the same rock feel, etc, this is five minutes of music and essentially everything's been the same every time it came up after the first =(

there's finally a shift at 5:05 - we get some new material based around the A's chord progression and a more heroic lead part. there's a significant drop after this at 5:27 for over a minute. this starts with some original material, then some nice arpeggiated guitar parts around 5:50 with the original chord progression but no direct melodic material. the snare here especially sounds pretty machine-gun. the verby lead guitar sounds great, though, and the build at the end is great.

at 6:55 we're back to what we heard at 5:05 (hard to tell if it's different) for a few run-throughs, then we get the rock version of the A material. one last blow-through of the A section with some quadrakick and there's an extended chord to finish it.

this is, like, 70% repeated material over and over again. i like the initial adaptation and ideas, and i like the break section, but there's so much stuff repeated exactly as it was done before. even just adding different countermelodies or personalizing the melody, chords, or instrumentation a bit would have made a huge difference. it's certainly mastered cleanly and clearly, but it is way too repetitive even for the style for me to pass it.

 

 

NO

 

 

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  • prophetik music changed the title to 2022/12/29 - (1N) Final Fantasy 6 "Espers"

Sees proph's screenshot

Lowers volume of music player

I can't say I agree with the position that it's mastered cleanly. From 0:28-1:24 I can barely make out even the lead, and I have only the slightest suggestion there's any kind of bass or harmony or anything. All I'm getting is drums.

It's better after that until 2:08, but I'm still hearing mostly drums. I can make out the harmony now, but not bass or anything else.  Then it alternates between the two styles until 5:27. That section is pretty minimal; not objectionable until 6:33, when the guitar comes in, which is absolutely awash with reverb to the point where it becomes muddy and indistinguishable almost immediately.

I get that black metal isn't typically "cleanly" produced. There's a garage-y, wall-of-sound quality to it. But it should still be clearer than this, IMHO.

I often use Clementine's "temperature" visualization to spot unusual balance and patterns. Here's what it shows for this track: image.png.56e0564306562ac677dda75f01ee1a18.png Black represents (relative) quiet, white represents use of the full spectrum of sound, other colors represent partial presence in lows/mids/highs. This whole thing is either white or very pale colors. Generally, only a climactic section, if any, should look like that. (For contrast, here's your previous mixpost image.png.86d67eaebf54138ec71b4df376e38d10.pngand another very busy metal track by the late great PirateCrab image.png.2b00261570fd7726df3e6333576e121e.png.) 

Regardless, the amount of repetition is unambiguously enough reason for a NO vote, as proph described.

NO

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  • MindWanderer changed the title to 2022/12/29 - (2N) Final Fantasy 6 "Espers"

This is really in your face pretty much the entire time, with a wall of noise. I don't get the sense that the instruments are mixed appropriately either from a spacial perspective or a volume perspective; it's like I'm listening to a metal track in mono, and that wall of sound just crushes you until 1:30. After that, it gets a bit better because we have some drop outs in instrumentation, but it crowds again by the time 2:00 rolls around and really doesn't stop. Stylistically, I get that this type of metal is by definition a little dirty, but this really just kind of comes across as a wall of sound to me that makes it hard to listen to, and certainly not for 8 full minutes of what seems to be quite a bit of repetition. 

 

NO

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  • XPRTNovice changed the title to 2022/12/29 - (3N) Final Fantasy 6 "Espers"

Usually when we have a posted mixer get straight NOs across the board, I like to sanity check things just to be sure. As soon as the melody kicked in at :30, I thought this was too muddy and overcrowded; I definitey couldn't get behind a track mixed like this all the way; the parts are just too indistinct. Yeah, I heard the main verse at 1:25, and it's a little clearer, but basically mixed like this the whole way through; the melody doesn't cut through, the drums take up all of the space. By 4 minutes in, I also agree that the arrangement was just recycling the Terra theme over and over and I would have loved to have heard other arrangement/interpretation ideas.

At 5:27, there was finally a dropoff and new writing; though I still felt the balance of parts was misguided/off, mixing like this would have worked better. But at 6:57, the same machine gun drumming and crowded soundscape came back for the finish, essentially sounding like a rehash of what came before.

It'll seem like I just don't get the genre, and I know, for example, Emunator has stuck up for tracks/genres with unorthdox mixing in the past. I just don't believe this approach works as properly balanced mixing, even accounting for stylistic authenticity; the overall musicianship is clearly there, but the production on this is too messy. It's completely unclear what the listener should (or even can) focus on.

NO

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  • Liontamer changed the title to *NO* Final Fantasy 6 "Espers"
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