Liontamer Posted June 2, 2023 Share Posted June 2, 2023 (edited) Hello! My name is Jon Paul Sapsford, and I'm a musician from Chicago and I love doing video game remixes. You have recently featured the duo I am a part of, Error 47, and our remix of the Gabriel Knight theme (though, I need to give credit where credit's due, that was 99.9% Troels' doing. He had an absolute vision with that one. I just put a little polish on it). A while back we all put together the first (of soon to be 3) King's Chill album, and my synthwave take on Girl in the Tower from King's Quest 6 was lucky enough to be the closer to the album. I enjoy listening to this track quite a bit and am very proud of how it turned out, so I figured I'd see if you all would enjoy it as well. Thank you for your consideration and all that you do for great video game music! Download track link: Remixer name: Jon Paul Sapsford Remix title: Girl in the Tower (King's Chill Remix) Style: Synthwave Album Link: https://spacequesthistorian.bandcamp.com/album/kings-chill-vol-1-vibin-makes-the-soul-go-higher Email address: Youtube channel: https://www.youtube.com/studiorion Direct youtube link: Name of game arranged: King's Quest 6 Name of song arranged: Girl in the Tower Original Composer: Mark Seibert Source tune with vocals: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=69M2iiI__XQ Source tune instrumental: Edited August 25, 2023 by Liontamer closed decision Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MindWanderer Posted June 28, 2023 Share Posted June 28, 2023 Starts off with an exact reproduction of the original piano solo. It's clearly not sampled, but it's a piano solo played in the exact same way as the original piano solo. Not great for the first 32 seconds of a "remix." Then we get into the synthwave. The pads are huge, the reverb is huge. It's a wall of sound, and the lead is really quiet. You need to do a lot of leveling when the lead doesn't have as much frequency presence as everything else, and that wasn't done here. It also seems to be pretty repetitive. It's hard for me to pick out in Clementine, because it's also pretty static; everything in my visualizer is an even color of green (verses) or orange (choruses), but as near as I can tell it's mostly 3 loops of the same thing, with extra sub-loops in the first and third verses. The pads, arps, and drums are unchanged for the duration of the piece, and the only change in the sound palette after the intro is that the lead goes up an octave during the verses. So, the two things this mostly needs are: more dynamic content to keep the listener interested, both between the loops so the whole thing isn't repetitive, and within loops so that it's not set in a static groove for too long; and cleaner production so that each part, especially the leads, can be heard clearly. NO Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
prophetik music Posted July 25, 2023 Share Posted July 25, 2023 agree with MW that the intro is cribbed straight from the original. it's well-played, but it's nothing new. also agree that the initial band sound is really loud. the soundscape has a lot of noise in it from what i can hear - there's a sweepy static pad that's occupying a lot of the audio range, and combined with a wide bass instrument and what sounds like zero panning it's a very dense soundscape. the very loud drums don't help. my trick for checking levels is to turn the volume way down until i can only hear one thing, and if it's not the lead then something's wrong. doing that here shows drums, then turning it up a bit allows the pads to creep through before the lead does. so there's some audio reprioritization that needs to occur. beyond that, there's a ton of sub-40hz content that's causing my ears to feel pressured from how dense the remix is, and there's little above 1khz to help it sparkle. the mix is dull, dense, loud, and imbalanced. from an arrangement perspective, this isn't a particularly crafted remix either. there's a lot of repetition between parts, the backing instruments are static throughout and do not change or get replaced based on the shape of the track, and there's no dynamics whatsoever. the drums are the same throughout, the arp is the same throughout, the bass pad is the same throughout, the lead is the same throughout...that's not a positive. even if i thought that the initial band sound was cohesive and solid - which i don't, as much because of how loud everything is as anything - the lack of delta over time is a problem since it's almost four minutes solid of just loud. the track needs, at least, a break in the middle, and way more attention paid to what's going on in each instrument instead of just painting in the same patterns over and over again. right now it's boring, which is the worst thing you can say about a ballad. this needs attention throughout. a more interesting and crafted soundscape that's better balanced and is playing more interesting and crafted parts will dramatically change the quality of the remix. right now it's not postable. even fixing one element - arrangement, mastering, implementation - wouldn't be enough to get it over the bar in my opinion. NO Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Liontamer Posted August 25, 2023 Author Share Posted August 25, 2023 Opens up with a conservative, but beautiful sound upgrade. Whoa, changes up at :31 into synthwave-type stuff, but the mixing's very muddy, coupled with a piercing lead line. It'll sound like I don't understand the genre convention with this mixing; I'm with this arrangement style, but the sound is too indistinct, IMO. At 1:36, a countermelodic synth gets added in that's bouncing around the stereo field, but it's mixed in such a way that it barely registers; I'm mainly picking up on it because I was in active listening, waiting for something about the textures to change up; I could see a casual listener not noticing that supporting part was there, not noticing a meaningful difference. Same with the different countermelody from 1:55-2:27, which registers more but was still functionally buried here. At 2:27, we got a cut-and-paste of 1:36's section; 2:47 repeated 1:55, 3:50 repeated 2:27. I was waiting for something to change up the dynamics of the piece and wasn't getting it. Right now, the groove gets established, the genre adaptation is there, and then there aren't any new/major ideas introduced after 1:55; the groove coasts along, the patterns don't change up. Once you get to 1:55, you've heard the entirely of the ideas; this approach does mimic the repeating structure of the original song, so it's not inherently wrong. It should go without saying that all VGM arrangements aren't required to be hugely interpretive (or made with OCR in mind), and can be appreciated for what they are. At OCR, we're looking for a further level of development and personalization beyond the genre adaptation though. I really enjoyed the concept of beefing this theme up in a chillwave style, Jon Paul. It's a strong source tune choice and a strong cover. I did say at the start that the mixing sounded too muddy; while I would like to hear that adjusted some for a less washed out sound, I could still approve a super interpretive and developed arrangement with the mixing done this way. IMO, some combination of refining the mixing and developing more writing ideas and variations for dynamic contrast for the arrangement side would make this more likely to be approved for OCR's arrangement standards. If you're open to revisiting this, see what more you can do, otherwise, I'm definitely hoping you'll continue submitting arrangements and adding more of your musical personality and interpretation into them. NO (resubmit) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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