*NO* Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask "Great Bay Awakening"

[Emunator]

RebeccaETripp
Rebecca Tripp

https://www.youtube.com/@RebeccaETripp/videos
ID: 48262
Game(s): Majora's Mask
Song Title: Great Bay Awakening

Songs Remixed: Great Bay

[Liontamer]

Man, that's a cool source; never heard it before, but one of the more foreboding Zelda themes for sure. Interesting to hear Rebecca adapt this in her reserved yet evolving style, which you knew would be darker when applied to this theme. Nice instrumentation choices and an enjoyable sound design & texture tour!

YES

[MindWanderer]

An atmospheric take that would almost be a sound upgrade if it weren't such a transformation from "impending violence" to "mysteriously threatening." I would have preferred something that stood on its own as a song, with an ending and more of a defined progression, but it checks all our official boxes.

YES

[prophetik music]

extremely quiet again.

starts with sfx, choir, and percussion. the 3-note arp is present right away, and there's some glissandi in the glock that are interestingly arrayed against the rest of the soundscape. both the 3-note and 5-note arp don't appear to be in traditional instruments, which is a little disconcerting given the overall realism of the other parts - certainly intentional. the track features a lot of stereo separation, which is also kind of disconcerting. it's clearly being used as a compositional technique,

the rest of the track continues to vary between choir chord stacks, a few similar synths doing the different arp patterns present in the original, and some percussive elements. there's some orchestral tremelos that occasionally pop up, but as a whole this doesn't really go anywhere or do anything, similar to the original. i agree with MW that this is very, very close to being just an audio upgrade. certainly parts are in different places than the original, but i don't hear transformative arrangement here. the same or similar synths doing similar things at roughly the same time relative to each other in the same tempo of the original with similar percussion and similar sfx doesn't do enough to differentiate itself. 

separately, from a mastering perspective, this is comically quiet, beyond even RET's normal super-quiet stuff. Her continued inability to understand the difference between volume and timbre when discussing dynamics is a significant downside of her music. It's simply unable to be listened to alongside other tracks of similar style or instrumentation without constant volume shifts.

even if this was mastered appropriately, i'd argue the arrangement isn't particularly there. cutting and pasting similar synths doing similar things in slightly different places than the original isn't enough for me.

 

 

NO

[Chimpazilla]

This is another one of those amazing source tunes that is super hard to remix due to lack of any real motif (other than random arps coming in and out of the soundscape).  That said, this arrangement does a great job of representing those arps!  The feeling of foreboding is very present in the arrangement and instrumentation.

There is a huge amount of hard-panning here, which I am really not a fan of.  Always makes me wonder if my ears are broken.

The arrangement is mostly a very empty soundscape.  There are cool sounds happening and I appreciate the white space employed here but I feel there are lost opportunities for even more instrument variation, sfx, surprises and ear candy.  Not a dealbreaker, just a wishlist item for me.

The mixing is adequate although there is occasional 20Hz rumble stealing headroom.  The mastering is very quiet and the track spends the bulk of its length 6db below peak.  This won't matter for YouTube as they compress/normalize everything, but downloads will cause people to have to turn up the volume.

I like this ambient take on the source theme.  There's nothing super memorable happening here, but it is certainly a cool listen.

YES

[Emunator]

This is an interesting case - I absolutely think the minimalist arrangement approach is valid, and there's some really cool synthetic textures at play. I love the sound design and palette that you've created here, but I'm identifying some balance issues that are a showstopper for me.

The frequency balance is curious here. Chimpazilla correctly picked up that there's some inexplicable 20-30hz rumble but then almost never anything in the 30-60hz and very little going on from 60-100hz, so the low end feels almost completely ignored here. Conversely, there's resonant frequencies that build up heavily at specific points around the 400-800hz range that feel downright painful on headphones. This is compounded with the fact that many of the instruments are panned hard to the sides.

There are definitely examples on OCR of ambient tracks with a better frequency balance out there that still feel minimalist, but still maintain a better balance in the frequency range. This can often be addressed at the arrangement level, simply by adding a sub/drone in the low end, or some backing pads/textures throughout the rest of the spectrum that hold a static note throughout certain sections and only exist to add back some frequencies in areas that are deficient. This will help prevent your most prominent instruments from feeling too sharp or painful on the ears and give them something to blend into.

On a side note, the percussion also feels lifeless. There's not a lot of texture or nuance to it, and when it's this exposed and dry, you really notice the lack of velocity dynamics or round robin samples and every percussive hit sounds nearly identical and ultimately unrealistic.

If you wanted to revisit this, I would encourage you to download a program like SPAN, which is a free frequency analyzer that helps you see the balance of your mix at different points. I'm certainly not saying every frequency band needs to be perfectly balanced with one another, but a visual reference can help you pick up on potential problems with an arrangement and guide you to possible solutions.

NO

[XPRTNovice]

I really like the idea behind this but there are a couple of things that are making me give this a NO. 

First, the hardpanning. If we're going to make a soundscape, but only use 10% of the field, we're not really making an ambient track. Instead I get the feeling like I'm a little paranoid because nothing is in my center perception. There's TONS of room here to expand and try new and different things, which leads me to point number two. 

The interpretation. I don't feel like we really intepreted this at all; most of what we've got is in the same key, tempo, and flavor as the original, with better sound files. While I don't necessarily need you to tell me a story in a piece like this, I do need to feel like this is a new take. In this case, while I really do ENJOY listening to this take, I don't feel like it's substantially interpreted enough to hit above the bar. 

NO

 

[Gario]

This is a tough one to arrange, and for the most part I think Rebecca did a good job expanding what she had to work with. The source arps when they're in the arrangement are played straight a little too much in this, so it kinda makes the arrangement sound almost repetitive while not actually being repetitive, but all things considered the arrangement kept my interest going throughout with the variety in swells and harmonies toyed with.

Even for an ambient track it's too quiet, and there's really one spike in the left ear that's taking away most of the space one would have to work with raising levels (the space between 1:38 - 1:42, specifically), so if this gets tossed back I'd suggest working that swell's dynamic down so you have more sonic space to play with - no reason for it to get that loud on one ear anyway, it makes the arrangement sound needlessly imbalanced at that part.

The panning doesn't bother me as much as it does others, there's plenty of overall sound that keeps the track sounding balanced enough to my ears, and while I don't think it's for everyone I think this does exactly what it was supposed to as an ambient arrangement. I think it'd be fine on the front page as is.

YES

[Rexy]

I agree about the source being challenging to arrange, but when broken down, it's primarily different rhythmic patterns placed in a set structure.  Rather than Michael Hudak's method of taking said patterns and making something completely different, what you did was keep the structure of the BGM and do some subtractive arrangement with your choices of pads and other percussion - then, from 2:20, you began to develop these rhythmic ideas and continue along to the end.  It's rare for you to do things like that, as I had often heard you shape up the source and then go into comping for the end - so I am all for it.

I don't particularly mind the dynamics of the instrumentation, given that more of the textural attention was on using volume envelopes to shape them, similar to the original.  But I did indeed hear the frequency shaping that Wes and Kris brought up.  I'm not so worried about the panning, as I can see it as more of an arrangement technique.  Still, the rumble and artifacts from one of your synths (0:52, 1:49, 3:13, 4:46), combined with resonants appearing on the mid-ranges (1:18, 2:21, 2:38, 3:50), tell me that they've been leveled too loud to the point of mild distortion or that there are too many things going on in their space that would need some further separation whether it be panning or tweaking different EQs for their own separate space.  That irk is only on headphones, though, so it's a fix that's nice to have rather than have addressed as a resubmission.

Regardless, more boxes tick for me rather than get left blank.  Irrespective of the outcome, I hope the feedback you keep receiving for each mix will transition into building up future material.  Cool stuff.

YES (borderline)

[DarkSim]

I'm not against this ambient/minimalist approach, but when using so few instruments at one time, there's really nowhere to hide with the production. The left-panned bass notes sound buzzy and some of the glassier synths have a lot of resonance which can be uncomfortable, especially given the overall low volume of the track. There's audible popping at 1:11-1:12 which I only notice because there's only the arp playing at that point so nothing masks it. Lots of sounds seem to have excessive high-cut filters on (possibly contributing to the resonance issue as well) which give them a dull timbre. There are some brighter glissandos in there which do sound nice, but I wish you could employ more complex timbres in the other sounds whilst still retaining most of the frequency range. Having a minimalist soundscape with hard panning and such aggressive high-cut narrows things down so much, not giving the listener's ears much to work with, that it can sound ponderous.

The three 'chorus' sections are at 1:25, 2:40 and 3:43, each one richer than the last, which is a decent way to go about building the drama for the finish, however the ambient nature of the intervening sections is so low-energy, and the choruses aren't telegraphed, which makes it difficult to notice those intricacies in the choruses. By the time 3:43 comes along to give us what sounds like the titular Awakening, it seems to fall back to sleep almost immediately, and we're back to the low-energy bubbling to finish. That's probably intentional, however it doesn't work for me.

Fix up the production details, and overall master (of course), and the arrangement might hold its own, but as it is, there's not quite enough to get this over the line.

NO

[DarkeSword]

Feeling like this is more of a sound upgrade. Doesn't sound bad but certainly has a BGM quality to its arrangement. Feel like the energy levels don't really go anywhere here. The choir sections add a little but overall I feel like this is too close to what the source is already doing.

It's a NO from me.

[Flexstyle]

Woof. All down to me now, eh? What a first day back on the job!

After listening through this one carefully, here's where I'm going to land: this is not different enough from the source tune to make a difference to the average listener. It's a sound upgrade, as some have stated, and while it's an enjoyable one (my AirPods Pros didn't show the frequency issues some were pointing out), it's not DOING anything other than what the source tune did: be minimal, foreboding, and ominous. OCR, as I understand it, requires a level of interpretation and embellishment that isn't obvious enough in this case for me to want to pass it through. I'd love to hear someone take a crack at this source tune with, say, using those dueling arpeggios as part of a build to an industrial-dubstep-metal song, or something along those lines. Or, y'know, whatever. What do I know, I'm just the basshead around here .

If Rebecca (or another artist in the future) were to handle the source in a way where you can separate out the various musical elements and then rebuild them, and do it in a way that allows for a discernible ebb and flow of musical energy, that would be wonderful to see. For now, my verdict on this one is....

NO