*NO* Final Fantasy 8 "No Shuffle, No Boogie" *PROJECT*

[Liontamer]

Your ReMixer name: Lucas Guimaraes

Your real name: Lucas Guimaraes
Your website: https://twitter.com/Thirdkoopa - knew nothing better to link for this
Your userid (number, not name) on our forums, found by viewing your forum profile: http://ocremix.org/community/profile/33965-thirdkoopa/
Name of game(s) arranged: Final Fantasy VIII
Name of arrangement: No Shuffle No Boogie
Name of individual song(s) arranged: Shuffle or Boogie (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=84xfVKnb-UA)

 

Other collaborators:
Sir Telias: Piano
I did the Arrangement

Everyone kept joking "What about a last minute Piano arrangement?!" to throw in a week before the deadline. So I decided: what if I took a song so short and flipped it upside down. Sir Telias was incredibly on-board with the idea, so we got to work as fast as we could. Here you go. Shuffle or Boogie. But with No Shuffle or Boogie. Glad this made it onto the album, and hopefully it can become a mixpost now or in the future!

(Source breakdown is from most of the source. Will be willing to provide one further if need be)

 

Edited August 12, 2023 by Emunator

[MindWanderer]

We certainly don't need timestamps; it uses the source extensively.

Interesting choice to use mostly the very high end of the piano. It sounds like you may have cut some of the harmonics out of the bass, as well. The result is a soundscape that's very mid-light.

I'm not a pianist, but this sounds pretty challenging to play. Lots of rapid, rapidly-changing notes. I can hear you having trouble pressing the keys with enough force, with several notes being too quiet or even missed altogether, and timing is slow on occasion.

There are a handful of notes that sound flat to me: 1:41 and 1:47 stand out the most to me because they're exposed.

0:46-1:16 is a very strange section, with rapid key changes and just some weird writing. The transitions into and out of this section are abrupt as well. 2:10-2:21 is another section that starts and stops abruptly, and 2:32 also marks a sudden transition.

There's lots of little things that are holding this back for me.  I'm not sold on the composition as a whole, and I think the performance is holding it back a bit as well.

NO

[prophetik music]

the first part of the arrangement is primarily a specific representation of the boogie riff in the right hand, with open fifths in the left hand. there's variation in how the left hand plays those fifths, but that doesn't change for about 1:17, after which the left hand switches to a common bass/chord pattern for a short period before going back to the fifths. the right hand sounds mostly like what i'd call noodling - as in, what i do when i sit down at the piano to goof around before dinner (important note: i am not a pianist outside of a few semesters of class piano in college). there's no particular direction in what's going on, there's not really a ton of arrangement of the themes as we'd expect in a piano remix outside of just playing them one after another, and it's honestly not played at a high level either. i like the way you push and pull the tempo at a macro level, but the constant timing issues at the micro level are distracting just as much as the (i believe unintentional) significant variances in velocity from note to note.

i think the recording of the piano sounds fine - it sounds like a direct-in from a digital piano rather than the midi being captured, right? i'd assume if you have the midi data that you'd fix the missed notes that occasionally occur. the tone is fine, and the bass isn't too loud which can happen when the hands are so far apart.

piano remixes are probably the single most difficult genre to get onto the site. the lack of variety in synth choice, ensemble involvement, tonal variation, or breadth of soundscape means that the focus is exclusively on the performance quality and on the quality of the arrangement. this arrangement is unfortunately uninspiring and the performance quality isn't at the level we'd expect a performer to be at. ultimately, recording the midi data of this (to get the push-pull timing you display) and then correction of velocity, incorrect timing elements, and pitches would be a good idea. beyond that, i'd encourage you to expand your exploration of the two primary themes of this track beyond just an initial riff-based reinterpretation, especially in the left hand.

 

 

NO

 

[Emunator]

Quick co-sign on this. Solo piano is extremely hard to pull off in a consistently compelling way - there needs to be something special to the arrangement, performance, or sound design, and unfortunately I feel like there are parts of this that just fundamentally don't hold up in any of those categories. The arrangement, as Brad mentioned, is meandering on a macro scale and doesn't seem to have a very deliberate dynamic curve in mind, and frequently jumps between ideas that don't flow together cleanly. The performance is unfortunately sloppy, especially during the first minutes where everything is played staccato. This writing also leaves the soundscape feeling barren at many points, which just highlights the timing issues more. I felt like this was at its most successful during the last 45 seconds, when the left hand was playing more lush chords and the rhythms felt tighter.

I really admire the ambition here, and I have no doubt that y'all could get a piano remix up to the bar, but I think I agree with my fellow judges that this particular arrangement isn't it

NO

[Liontamer]

I'll just throw on a quick co-sign. I disagree completely with the arrangement feeling meandering; I'm 100% fine with the structure here. The arrangement isn't the problem; the artificial-sounding articulations of the sampled piano are the main thing holding this back, and it leaves the performance, which had its own issues articulated by the others, not sounding full or expressive; rather, it sounds thin and mechanical. This was a big problem I had with Rexy's early stuff in the community, so maybe you could ask her what she modified with her setup; I'm certainly open for a revised version with a more realistic piano sample. We actually don't need uber-realistic piano to pass the panel, but it generally can't get my vote, because it falls below where I perceive the quality bar for production.

NO (resubmit)