*NO* Wonder Boy 3 "Vastentahtoisia muodonmuutoksia"

[Liontamer]

ReMixer & real name: Eino Keskitalo

e-mail: 

 

Names of games arranged: Wonder Boy III: The Dragon's Trap

Name of Arrangement: Vastentahtoisia muodonmuutoksia

Names of individual songs arranged: Vs. Dragon, The Dragon's Trap

Sources:

1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d5L4EIKljCM

2. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ScoAICcNJNY

 

MP3 link: 

FLAC link: 

 

Hello dear panel!

 

I'm continuing my journey of polishing up my old work in progress arrangements for submission. This one dates all the way back from 2009, from People's Remix Competition round 156! https://compo.thasauce.net/rounds/view/PRC156 It was always a fun track I was pretty pleased with. I recorded live bass, guitar and keyboard on top of a non-standard sequenced drum kit. The recording quality was bad, playing was out of time, and the keyboard sounded atrocious! Regardless, the result was a fun short jam, based on music from a game from my childhood, with lots of fond memories of friendship and family attached to it. And the game is still pretty great to play, and the music is still an example of eight bit gold.

 

For the polishing work, I mostly replaced the synth jamming with a couple of synth presets that come with Renoise. I did leave the original playing as a quiet layer in there. As far as the guitar goes, I "reamped" it to give it a lot more brightness, then pushed it to the background in the mix as it was both hissy and lacking in high frequencies. I also doctored the timing quite a bit and completely dropped it for some parts. It's there for colour and a bit of rhythm - I don't have a guitar to re-record at the moment. The bass playing however I was reasonably happy with - I just EQ'd it, fixed some of the worst timing issues (but not all, so it's organic and garage-y) and added a bit of distortion here and there.

 

I was actually pretty pleased and surprised I was able to "rescue" the track up to this level of quality! I hope it's good enough. I also hope you don't mind it being so short - to me, it doesn't need to be any longer. It's a good homage to a game I actually have played substantially! (That's the case for only less than half of my OCR tracks still.)

 

Big thanks to the Workshop hero Hemophiliac for a couple of listens and good comments, which pushed me to do a couple of extra rounds of mixing tweaks.. for example, one of the synths got some chorus effect automation added, which was a very nice additional touch to the track overall and gave it some variety that makes the overall impression nicer.

 

cheers

--Eino

 

Edited November 18, 2023 by Liontamer
closed decision

[Liontamer]

Hmmm… I’m currently undecided while leaning towards a borderline YES. Though some of the sounds felt dated, the composition is fairly energetic, and the source usage and transformation aren’t in question.

Somehow though, the textures felt too empty and like the proper components weren’t in place to drive this track forward. With the track not going past 2:15, it’s important to me that nearly everything is cohesive and clicking together. Would love to get other Js insights on whether this one didn’t sound fully baked just yet.

?

EDIT (10/10): Listening again, I'm gonna go NO on account of this not feeling filled in enough. For example, the bass guitar registers, but the part's so subdued, it might as well not be there. I'm sorry that I don't have any suggestions to at least offer something more constructive, but I'm humble enough to know that, if others agree with me, they're equipped to better articulate what's missing and how that could be addressed. If this didn't make it as it and he were open to revisiting this, I have full confidence in Eino's musicianship.

[prophetik music]

google says the name means "unwilling transformations", which is kind of ominous

the garagey sound is immediately audible. the intro sounds like it's been unwillingly transformed from The Dragon's Trap, with a subsequent dose of Vs. Dragon. the track shifts towards a more standard melodic structure at 0:39, and noodles through a few variations of the sustained melodic stuff from both. organ at 1:26 is a neat synth tone, full of the movement i've come to expect from eino's leads. there's an outro that starts at about 1:54, and then it's done.

i agree with larry that there was an initial impression of this track missing something. most of the sound palette is based around the 75-200hz range, which is why it sounds very dull and dense. most of the track, there's a lead, bass, and drums audible only, because the guitar is both hard right and very quiet (or missing). the intro feels fuller since it's got the guitar going the whole time, but even then it still feels a little weird because that guitar is hard-panned to the right alongside the snare and crash (with the tambourine all the way to the left). 

however, i'll note that on subsequent listens i did start to pick up more density in the writing. while the bass/drums/synth parts are always pretty audible, the other parts that drop in and out are both interesting and more present than i initially noticed. and i find the garagey EQing pleasing, it's certainly nonstandard but it is a funky track and sounds fun.

i think this is a pass actually. it took me a bit to get there, but i can dig it.

 

 

YES

[MindWanderer]

"Unwilling transformations" is the whole theme of Dragon's Trap, so that makes perfect sense!

I agree that it's a really strange soundscape. It's very mid-bass-heavy, with only a piercing triangle and tambourine occupying the high end. There's a cymbal, but it seems slightly filtered, and and the drums sound heavily filtered. There are lots of parts, but they're crowded into a small frequency range, despite being expertly EQ'ed, ducked, and panned around each other. So it does feel hollow and incomplete.

The length of it also contributes to that feeling of being incomplete. The end sounds like it's supposed to be a drop into a climax or solo, something to bring up the energy level, but then it's just over. 

So yeah, "not fully baked" is a good description for how I feel about this. I'm coming down on the side of

NO

[Emunator]

Eino's music has always had that rough, garage band-y quality to it, and this is no exception. It's a thin line to straddle though, because it can easily fall on the side of "rough around the edges by design" and "unpolished and incomplete." In this case, I think the mixing issues could be forgiven if the arrangement was a little more fleshed out and ambitious, but as it stands, there's not a lot of dynamics within the arrangement, and it fizzles out right when it feels like things are about to pick up. I think this needs a ramp up in energy to drive this piece home - right now, it feels more like an unfocused jam session that isn't bringing a ton to the table.

NO

[DarkSim]

Neat source tunes, and the way you've combined them is really clever. They work well together with "Dragon's Trap" providing verse/bridge sections, and "Vs Dragon" the chorus. That said, I was fully expecting the chorus section at 1:10 to come in again at 2:10, but the track ended!

Not a fan of the mixing on this one - you can sort of tell that you've tried to rescue an old project because things are all over the place. It probably sounds a whole lot better than it used to, but with fresh ears then there are still a few issues that need addressing. The hard-left panned tambourine and toms stick out above the rest of the mix, as do the other toms and very unusual snare choice that's mid-right panned. The snare sound doesn't sound at all fitting for the style, and could benefit from some tuning. It's more like a tom at the moment. The bass is muffled, as is much of the guitar. I do really like the synths on show here, particularly the one from 0:06, and there's a really cool resonance effect on another one around 0:40. The whole ensemble feels disconnected though, and would benefit massively from re-recording the guitar and bass parts to get those higher frequencies in from the start, rather than trying to make them sound brighter in production.

As for the arrangement, you should definitely get another chorus in there, maybe even after a solo. The transition back into it would be glorious! You've got a lot of stuttering rhythmns in this piece, so to go back into the much straighter "Vs Dragon" section would help give the listener something to bob their head to that the other sections don't quite give them.

Looking forward to hearing what you do with this one if you decide to revisit it again.

NO