Liontamer Posted June 21, 2023 Share Posted June 21, 2023 Your ReMixer name : Hemophiliac Your real name : Chris Roman Your email address : Your userid : 4838 Name of game(s) arranged : Parasite Eve Name of arrangement : Charred and Cauterized Name of individual song(s) arranged : Main theme, Missing Perspective Featuring Siolfor the Jackal Userid : 34171 Siolfor website : https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCUMdUmcR9O9d6u4k0lYZ3uw Honestly can't remember the exact impetus of this one. I think Siolfor and I were on voice chat on discord and he was mentioning something about people not writing heavy stuff for him. I probably thought to myself, "I should try that!" He also mentioned the Pixel Mixer's monthly contest was starting up and the theme was "Generation 5 consoles". I've been wanting to get involved with other VGM communities as well, so I took a shot. So here I am again with back-to-back submissions on Yoko Shimomura sources, I did not plan that. Also a neat coincidence that my last few tracks have all been in different time signatures (6/8, 4/4, 5/4). This one starts out in 3/4 and in the final section at the end goes into 4/4. This track was a blast to work on and i'm proud of it, I would not have thought I would be able to write in this style years ago. I'm particularly proud of the part writing for the drums. Drums were something that I really struggled to understand, and over the years have been building up my confidence in working with them. Siolfor really went along with everything and just kept saying to write more, i'm so grateful that he was willing to let me experiment and try things out. Thank you so much for recording the guitars and bass. Comments from Siolfor: "We'd been hanging out on voice chat in the OCR discord a lot recently so I've been getting to know Hemophiliac and Liontamer better. After talking about the current Pixel Mixers contest theme at the time(Generation 5 consoles) I remember getting a message from Hemo with a 20 second audio clip and the message "YOU IN?". Those 20 seconds sounded like a lot of fun for me, so I was. It was really cool seeing the track develop over the month, especially in real time when Hemo would share his screen as he worked. It's always fun when someone else writes guitars for me to play, especially when they don't play themselves. Thanks for having me on the track!" Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Liontamer Posted June 21, 2023 Author Share Posted June 21, 2023 The "Main Theme" section felt plodding, and I think it's something having to do with the rigid timing of the synths (definitely not Siolfor's guitar performance). That's not to say the arrangement doesn't get it done, particularly with effective dynamic contrast by way of the evolving textures. But I liked more energy emerging in the piece once things transitioned to "Missing Perspective" at 2:35. Parasite Eve's been loooooooooooooooooooooooooong overdue for some good coverage around here! YES Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MindWanderer Posted July 20, 2023 Share Posted July 20, 2023 Opens up with some synth-led metal. Does some weird things to the source tune which make it less melodic and cohesive. 1:54-2:17 especially sounds disjointed and rambling. The melody is from the source, but the timing is strange. At 2:18, there's a sudden tempo change, and a piano joins in, which quickly takes over. At 2:50 you have a piano arrangement with a completely different tempo and instrumentation; there's nothing but an awkward transition to tie this in with the synth rock that was the first 2/3 of the piece. This part is a great piano arrangement. The guitar and synths do join back in at 3:19, and this transition is pretty good, but then they go back to playing the first source as a sort of very short bookend The overall impression is one of two unrelated songs joined together in the middle and at the end with brief mashups. That said, the performances are certainly solid. Production is fine. It just feels to me like the arrangement doesn't know what it's doing from one minute to the next. The synth rock Main Theme and the piano Missing Perspective seem like two different songs stuck together; they're stuck together fairly well, but they still don't sound like they started off related at all. And then the timing of the first half is hard to follow. For this one, I'm going to have to go NO Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
prophetik music Posted August 8, 2023 Share Posted August 8, 2023 took a while to wrap my ears around the intro which does indeed feel quite disjointed. almost feels more in a slow triple meter vs. 3/4. there's a heavy, plodding feel to the guitars in this opening section, with a ton of space in the rhythm guitars. i don't particularly care for the lead synth, which combined with the very loud delay makes it hard to focus on where the beat is underneath it. the farther along in this opening section we get, the more i'm reminded of the very dramatic, lush style of peruvian tango music. obviously a dramatically different instrumentation throughout, but the slow 3 beat and wide instrumentation with tons of verb made me think of it. there are some odd timing artifacts at 2:02, 2:09, and 2:17 where it sounds like the track is missing a sixteenth note. at roughly 2:20 there's a significant shift in tone as the piano is more in the fore, then at 2:50 the tempo slows a bit but keeps the 16th note roughly the same while transitioning to a more piano-driven groove. this isn't the best transition i've ever heard but it's certainly not terrible. this is pretty straightforward and uses Missing Perspective as a base to jam a bit on, and then the track's done. i think this is a perfectly serviceable remix of these two themes. i think that the track is a bit less with jamming in Missing Perspective than it could have been using the Main Theme track as the basis for the solo section, but that isn't enough to demote it to a NO in my mind. the track doesn't have any mixing concerns and the overall product is certainly above our bar. YES Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DarkSim Posted November 25, 2023 Share Posted November 25, 2023 Fantastic guitar and piano parts in this - was the piano played live too? Plenty of source usage in here, so no issues there. The arrangement sounded fine for me, if a little rambling at times. The intro in particular took a while to find its feet. I think part of this is the production, though - there's a restraint to it that I feel holds it back somewhat. The kick in particular sounds quite flat (in terms of energy), and I had a look at it and it seems like there's a peak at 57Hz, and no other peaks above that. It gives it a muted sort of sound, and could benefit from some sort of layering, particularly when it's playing faster. Similarly, the rhythm guitar could stand to have a bit more width and higher frequency content to fill out the space some more. The piano from 2:37 has a lovely clarity to it. Perhaps that was an intentional decision, but I do find myself wishing some other parts were as clean as this. Nothing major holding it back though! YES Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chimpazilla Posted December 3, 2023 Share Posted December 3, 2023 Cubase and SPAN are telling me the peak max is 1.9db, so something has gone wrong with the final limiter in the mastering of this track. I don't hear any artifacts, though. This is a tough one. The guitar and piano performances are very good. I love the concept. I'm not in love with the lead synth because it doesn't quite fit with the rest of the instrumentation in my opinion. Overall, the track is produced well. The drums are on the tame side, and the kick is barely audible. There is something off about the energy of this arrangement for me. I agree with MW that the arrangement doesn't seem to know what it is doing as it moves along. I agree with DarkSim that it is rambling at times, and he also said there's a restraint feeling to the production. I feel like there's a restraint feeling to the arrangement as well, like reining a horse to walk when it really wants to run, if that explains it. None of my crits are dealbreaker for posting this mix on OCR, but I'm not as enthusiastic about it as would be ideal. YES Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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