*NO* Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom "Emanations from the Garden"

[Liontamer]

RebeccaETripp
Rebecca Tripp
https://www.youtube.com/@RebeccaETripp/videos
ID: 48262
Game(s): Tears of the Kingdom
Song Title: Emanations from the Garden

Songs Remixed: Sky Islands

Here’s a link: 

 

I don’t know if this is really OCR material or not, to be honest.  I just love the idea of us all adding some TotK tracks to the ranks, though!

 

 

[MindWanderer]

It's as pretty as any RET mix, but I'm not hearing the connections to the source. The main identifiable theme is the opening 3-note stanza, and this arrangement changes that to the point of being unrecognizable without knowing in advance what it was supposed to be a remix of. There's not enough of the rest to hold it together. So I have to say

NO

[Chimpazilla]

I'm pretty sure Sky Islands theme was inspired by the Skyward Sword Lanayru Desert theme, at least that's what I hear every time I'm in the Sky Islands.  Just sayin.  *plots dual-source remix*

I'm afraid I am in agreement with MW.  As lovely as this is, and it truly is lovely, the source connections are just too tenuous and there is a lot of variation on the source motifs that take this arrangement away from the TotK source song.  I did a proper timestamp, Larry-style, since I know this source so well, and even counting the extreme variations (both melodically and rhythmically) on the source motifs, I counted 101 seconds of source on a 324 second arrangement for a total of 31% source.

I love it though!  I hear some bells that make me think a Blupee is rushing by me after I've just (sadly) impaled yet another Bubbulfrog.

On the mixing side, everything is mixed well enough but the wind ambience should have the inaudible low mud EQd out of it as SPAN is showing me too much activity below 40Hz with occasional spikes at 20Hz, yikes!  There goes that mastering headroom.

Regardless, I really love this one and I feel so relaxed now.

NO

 

[prophetik music]

boy, what a pretty piece. it's too bad i can barely hear any connection to the original. there's so much patience in the approach and so many instances of letting the music dictate the tempo and instrumentation instead of the other way around.

there are certainly a lot of three-note patterns in this, unfortunately the majority of them aren't following the rough shape of the motif that is kind of the defining element of the original, making it hard to correlate elements. i think MW's point - that it's unrecognizable without knowing what the original is - is valid. it's certainly not required that the track's style or melodic representation be 1:1 with the original, but it should be pretty clear what you're going for. unfortunately that's not the case here.

 

 

NO

[Liontamer]

I'll add in an extra vote, just to throw in my timestamps of what I could quickly recognize. The track was 5:22-long, so I needed to identify at least 161 seconds of overt source usage to consider it dominant in the arrangement:

:23-:36, :48-:57, 1:50-2:00, 2:04-2:20, 2:48-2:59, 3:03-3:08.75, 3:59-4:16, 4:27.5-4:35 = 89.25 seconds

The original writing that's not arranging the source fits well, and it's possible we're short-changing you on other areas where you're directly referencing the source, so I'm happy to get more timestamps from you, Rebecca, and be corrected if we're not properly recognizing and acknowledging the arranged segments.

For a track that's so brief, it's surprisngly abstract to try to do something with it. The safest best would be to stay melodically conversative, and invoke the melodic fragments more, which could be done in a number of ways. What's here sounds nice, it's just appearing to be light on invoking the source tune. That may mean tweaking it would compromise the vision; though this theme is so brief, I actually think the flexibility is there to use it enough to ensure it meets the arrangement standards here. Lovely regardless!

NO (resubmit)