*NO* Vantage Master "... purity"

[Liontamer]

Since the artist mentioned the original source and a later remake version, YouTubes for both are included, even though this just has the original version as the inspiration -LT

I initially wanted to just attach the file, but it's too big and the email bounced back, so I'm throwing it on my personal mega

 

Sean Tartaglia

 

https://vocesnaturalis.com/

 

Vantage Master

... purity

A Quiet Purity

Falcom Sound Team jdk (But it's definitely Masaru Nakajima 100%)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vEVcsgZhqe0

 

For the past few months I've been working on music for a strategy game project that may or may not ever see the light of day, and part of the vision was to include arrangements of tracks from games I love, including Fire Emblem, Super Robot Wars, and Vantage Master; however, stylistically and tonally, this arrangement didn't really quite fit the feel of the other tracks, so I decided to set it aside, and I figured it would be fine elsewhere.

 

I'm not a big jrpg fan anymore (too long), so most of my interest in Falcom is in earlier games, like Brandish and the early Ys games. However, as a forever fan of strategy games, and especially turn based hexagonal tile ones, I love Vantage Master. Part of it is the gameplay, but the other part is the whole Falcom package you get, with a lot of care and attention put towards the visuals and sound. Nakajima is part of that, next to Ishibashi he's part of why 90s Falcom is so good, and this is probably my favorite track in the game.

 

In the portable remake (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CAMiTKfy-Wo), Yukihiro Jindo gave this track far too much edge when I think it's much more a pensive track, though parts of his overall arrangement aren't bad. I think if it wasn't an arrangement of such an iconic piece of music (it's the first track on the OST release instead of the game's opening!) it would be a pretty good map theme. What I wanted to do was stretch it out a bit and give it much more atmosphere. Since the tone of the track is to light, I opted to use more dreamy and airier instrumentation, with a simple choir patch covering the ground, celesta floating around overhead, e piano with heavy delay to give the rhythms a bit more drive, and an organ reed stop saturated with flanger to give it a bit more of a haze. The original intention of the track was as music for a fog of war map, so the whole point of it is to sort of enhance that mystery and haze. There's also that other worldliness of vantage master itself, which is more of an atmospheric game, especially when compared to other strategy games.

 

When it comes to mixing and VSTs and computer music, I tend to be more interested in that more "artificial" sound of the 2000s than the newer samples we have now, so forgive me if the flugelhorn or strings come off as very... PS2. As a musician I'm most used to performing in churches and cathedrals (with stone floors, not carpet. It makes a difference.) so I also prefer everything being a bit wetter in terms of reverb. Mixing disparate elements can only go so far, but to my ear it's passable.

 

Edited August 29, 2023 by Liontamer
closed decision

[MindWanderer]

Starts off with a nice simple choir backing. At 0:35 a celesta joins, but it's kind of thin and thwacky, and seems to change key at random on occasion. At 1:12 we get a flute, which is extremely thin and doesn't always seem to be in the same key as everything else. 1:30 introduces a weird synth which is just kind of doing its own thing.

The rest of the remix is pretty much the same thing. Thin instruments, a thin soundscape, instruments that aren't in the same key and don't mesh with each other. No ending to speak of. I'm afraid we're looking for something richer and more cohesive.

NO

[prophetik music]

neat original, haven't ever heard it.

the opening chords are neat, but the artificial cut on the tremolo strings is an immediate turnoff. the bells at 0:35 do indeed have a tone of attack bass tone, and they're also heavily in the right ear. there's some neat stuff they're saying but there are indeed some notes that don't appear to be represented in the adjacent chords in the choir. 

the flute does a similar thing. the chords under it are at least initially in a minor (with some very interesting borrowed tones later that i don't believe are 100% intentional), and the flute melody is in what sounds like B major. a guitar (?) comes in at 1:35, and is also very clicky on the attack.

after some more reserved elements noodle, there's a very treble-heavy bell doing stuff at 2:17 that's just not clearly in any key again. it's also about two octaves above everything else so it's totally unrelated to anything happening around it.

there is a lot going on here that is problematic. the start is simply that everything's panned so heavily - this leads to a difficult-to-listen-to mix on headphones especially. the instruments themselves don't appear to be working together, but rather doing their own thing throughout pretty much across the board. most of them also have heavy bass thumps in their attacks, which leads to a clicky, punchy tone that is not pleasing. beyond that, most of them don't appear to be playing music in the same key, which leads to it overall being pretty incoherent. i didn't get much melodic material from the original at all in this.

i think this needs the drawing board. identify more clearly how you're going to relay the original's melodic and harmonic components that you're hoping to show, and craft a soundscape around that material that is both key-specific and intentional with your instrument choices. right now this is pretty far from the bar.

 

 

NO

[Liontamer]

Cool source tune choice, and I also liked the PSP arranged version. I hear the dated aspect of the sounds, and none of that would be a problem here given how cohesively they're used, so an arrangement in a similar vein of instrumentation realism (again, coupled with cohesive execution) would be fine, IMO. Back when Slightly Dark was a thing, this track may have been included in one of their winter/snow music compilations; there's certainly a touch of faint familiarity to it, at the very least.

Watch the end of the bow movements of the strings at :11 and :20, which was exposing the sample as too dry compared to the other parts. :39 felt dissonant, but it was brief. 1:12 was pretty clearly dissonant, and I'm definitely not understanding what's going on here as far as the energy and flow of the composition. 1:43 went for a more genteel sound, but dynamically, there wasn't huge intensity to 1:12's section before that, so the subtle contrast isn't effective, IMO. No idea what the line at 1:30's doing either; it doesn't have a bad tone, but there's no synnergy to what it's doing and how it fits into the rest of the texture.

Still quiet by 1:59's section; yeah, this approach is confusing, because it's been so quiet without enough dynamic contrast, then there's more dissonance/clashing from 2:17-2:36. 2:54-3:01's brief lead doubling was thin, exposed, and unfortunately felt like a flea playing a violin; there's too much of quality disparity there with how inorganic it sounded compared to everything else.

Not gonna lie, when I heard the light tapping start up at 3:14, I busted out laughing; it's legitimately a great sound, no issue there, but as far as this composition goes, there's working within a narrower dynamic curve, and then there's staying too narrow. Is there no substantial contrast employed here? Is there no arc? The closest analog I can think of is something like Quinn Fox's "Orange October", which has more dynamics: https://ocremix.org/remix/OCR00796. OK, the taps drop out at 3:41, and there's a quiet reprise of the theme. And then more dissonance around 4:04 with the glassy lead for the finish.

Like prophetik, I didn't get much melodic material from the original at all in this either. There's genuinely interesting sound design potential, Sean, and I actually wasn't bothered by the panning, but if sections of writing aren't in the same key without you realizing it, it's unfortunately a non-starter. These soft and subtle dynamics may click better when the writing's all in the same key, so if that can be done, I'd be down to hear another version.

NO