Liontamer Posted August 1, 2023 Share Posted August 1, 2023 (edited) Hello OCR. I tried submitting in the past (we're talking 17 years ago here) and my stuff was judged not good enough. In retrospect, it wasn't. I like to think that I've gained some experience since. Since then, I've been doing my own thing on my Youtube channel and I've gained quite the little following, considering I'm pretty focused on the same franchise (Phantasy Star). Time and again, people have been telling me "Man, you need to submit your stuff to OCR". So let's try this again, maybe we'll connect this time. If we do, I'll have some 15 more pieces to submit for your archives. If it doesn't work, well, at least we'll have tried. Here's my second latest. (My latest is 23 mins long so I don't think you want to evaluate that) Contact Information Your ReMixer name: Aeroprism Your real name: Sébastien Your email address: Your website(s): www.nekoprism.com Your userid: aeroprism Submission Information Name of game(s) arranged: Phantasy Star 4 Name of arrangement: One last time Name of individual song(s) arranged: "End of the Millennium" (mainly) and "Age of Fables" (support) Additional information about game including composer, system, etc: Pretty sure you got all this covered by now. If not: System is Sega Genesis, Composers are Izuho Numata (End of the Millennium) and Masaki Nakagaki (Age of Fables). Link to the original soundtrack (if it is not one of the sound archives already available on the site): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_kwXB_S5oYc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2r4Ms3eE-k0 Your own comments about the mix: PS4 is turning 30 years old this year, considering I'm intensely involved in the PS fandom, I wanted to celebrate and make something special, so I remixed the intro and somewhere along the way, inspiration led to emotions and this lovely piece came to life. I personally love it very, very much. I wish you an excellent day, I look forward to your experienced feedback. -Aeroprism Edited August 31, 2023 by Liontamer closed decision Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MindWanderer Posted August 21, 2023 Share Posted August 21, 2023 Well, I wasn't here 17 years ago, so I can't comment on how much you've improved, but production quality is pretty good, and there are a lot of good arrangement ideas. Where I have a concern is that development is very slow. The intro is a full two minutes long, with changes to the soundscape introduced glacially. The rest proceeds about the same pace, looping through the source material about once a minute and making notable changes once every couple of loops. You don't need to play an entire loop with one sound palette for the listener to get the idea, and that's especially so when the differences between two loops aren't massive, and you don't need to play through an entire loop verbatim every time. You have spans of several minutes where the drum loops or piano arps are unchanged, which causes a lot of listener fatigue. And then after all that, the ending is quite abrupt. Overall I think that's the main issue here. If you can condense this down so that you can present more ideas in a shorter period of time, and maybe mix up the composition so that it's not full loop after full loop, I think it will do wonders for listener engagement. NO Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
prophetik music Posted August 31, 2023 Share Posted August 31, 2023 (edited) very clanky piano for the intro, doing lots of block chords. synth lead that comes in is pretty bland and not particularly pleasant to listen to. the left hand of the initial piano really keeps hammering for a while, and it is not a great sound - it crushes most of what else is going on when it hits, not that there's much there. this goes on for almost two minutes and i'm already really tired of the theme. the soaring elements of the melodic line that are so interesting are really flattened by the synth choices and the hammering of the keys. we get a very significant shift in style with rhythmic synths and percussion coming in at about 1:46. the drums are pretty loud initially, but fit in later - consider taking some time to volumize what you're playing so that the fills aren't huge and the initial groove isn't so loud compared to what's going on in the melody line. i'm at three minutes and each time the first loop of melodic material ends, it starts over again immediately following the next measure. there's no breaks to the material or pauses or dynamic contrast added, just an immediate shift between the A and B material. consider giving your listeners some breaks between what you're saying so that they can absorb it before diving into the same melodic content in the same instruments at the same tempo and the same dynamic level for the fifth time when we haven't even gotten halfway through the piece. we get some age of fables at 3:47, which is a nice shift. again there's no hesitation before diving into the next set of themes, which i really do think is a mistake. this section uses similar percussion, dynamics, and lead tones as the first section, which also is a concern given that we're 4-5 minutes into the track and it's been a lot of the same. my ears are certainly getting tired of the same thing for such a long time, and there's another two minutes in the track. around the 6:00 mark, you start to reduce the textural elements playing, which is a good choice to allow the track to naturally shift somewhere else from an instrumentation perspective. unfortunately, the next minute or so is just the same progression over and over with little difference, and then suddenly it shifts to an ending that resolves a 7+ minute piece in about six seconds. and it's done. i would strongly encourage you to consider cutting half of the piece's repetition out. this is, maybe, a 3.5-4 minute pat of butter scraped over 7+ minutes of bread. there simply isn't enough unique content here to last 7 minutes without repeating yourself ad nauseum, which is what you've done. i'd also ask you to consider doubling - truly, doubling - the number of unique synths, percs, whatever that you're using throughout. the amount of same-ness is not a positive, and my ear was tired of the same six synths by the three minute mark. lastly, re-evaluate the song structure and identify more clear areas to provide breaks - both in the dynamic content, and in the melodic content. the track is roughly the same volume throughout after the intro right now and that's not a great song structure. beyond that, it's worth it to have breaks in the melodic material that you're continually throwing at the listener. rather than repeating each melody line ten times in a song, use it maybe three or four times total, and make those three or four times more awesome - make the listener want to re-listen to the entire song rather than just hearing it once and saying "that's good for a while". reducing the overall usage will make the track much more approachable and listenable. NO Edited August 31, 2023 by prophetik music My LOTR reference was miserably misquoted Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Liontamer Posted August 31, 2023 Author Share Posted August 31, 2023 Despite being from 17 years ago, I'm sorry for the exclusively negative comments I gave you way back; quite the banner example of how not to give feedback; zircon's was so thorough that I'm confident I let his heavy lifting excuse my frustration at the level of arrangement interpretation not being there. Even for a cover, I'm sure there was something positive I should have highlighted to offer you encouragement, since it was a great source tune choice. I'm glad you didn't let my douchey feedback stop your musical journey. Ever since being introduced to the soundtracks by Quinn Fox and djpretzel's arrangements, I'm always happy to hear OG-Phantasy Star stuff get treatment, so it's a cool creative focus, and unique relative to what others are doing in the scene. Though I've known PS4's intro theme since being a newcomer OCR fan, I've never heard "The Age of Fables" until now, so we'll see what we've got. Right from the opening, the piano sample sticks out; there's some body to it, but it's so blocky and sounds very unrealistic. The synth handling the melody at :13 sounded extremely vanilla and defaulty. I disagreed with MW's assessment that the production quality was good; the samples, as they're currently used, aren't getting it done, and unfortunately make this less energetic and driving than the original song. On the plus side, the countermelody that was briefly there from :40-:54 had a very nice yet understated tone to it; very low-key but a strong part in terms of improving the texture. At 1:06, the texture was filling out more, and I do realize that there's 7+ minutes on the clock, but the relatively empty texture isn't working. At 1:46, some defaulty-sounding warbling synths at least add some energy, even if the sound isn't sophisticated. The drum sampling and drum writing at 2:00 were very underwhelming; lots of volume, and certainly writing flourishes there, yet it still sounds extremely plodding and metronome-like because of the snare ("one-TWO-one-TWO"). Skip around almost anywhere from 2:00-6:14 and you'll see how long the beat pattern plods on; it needs a more interesting pattern as well as more variation in how it's presented. Riding this out until about 3:15, the texture is still very simplistic and empty despite everything going on. Because the sequencing/timing feels so blocky and there's not adequate warmth to any sounds or some sort of padding to help glue it together, you hear every individual part firing off, but the overall flow and synnergy isn't there. The brief transition writing to "The Age of Fables" three seconds before 3:46 felt like a bare mininum idea to stitch the two themes together. It'll sound like I'm saying you need to drastically overhaul the mood of the piece; the change in source tunes was a good opportunity to, for example, slow down the tempo, change the instrumentation, drop out the beats, or briefly change the genre. It could have served as more of a break in the established mood, which would then refresh it if you went back to it. Even with the lead-in to the "The Age of Fables", there could be allusions to that melody in the background while "The end of millennium" was still in the foreground. Right now, it's the same kind of vanilla synths, blocky piano, and plodding beats, but no meaningful change in the dynamics or textures, so there's no reset. I'll quote MW again, because he said it very well: "You don't need to play an entire loop with one sound palette for the listener to get the idea, and that's especially so when the differences between two loops aren't massive, and you don't need to play through an entire loop verbatim every time. You have spans of several minutes where the drum loops or piano arps are unchanged, which causes a lot of listener fatigue." 4:48 finally began to interplay the two themes together; that could come much earlier. Very repetitive feeling to things, with a dropoff finally happening at 5:56; agreed with the others that these sections go on too long without evolving. 6:24 iced the main beats and started the final section for a big flourish, or so I would have thought. The ending at 7:04 wasn't bad, but it was relatively abrupt, including the final fadeout. prophetik really dove into what's not clicking here and spoke to various way to handle it; I didn't read his vote before making mine, yet we're simpatico on what's not working here. I appreciate these source tunes, and the effort is there to expand them. TL;DR - the sound design needs drastic improvement, the timing needs humanization, the core beat pattern shouldn't plod and coast, and the lack of dynamic contrast can't justify the indulgent track length. It would take lots of effort to revise this in a way where it could pass; you can do it, it would just take a lot of personal growth and an aggressive approach to soliticing critiques and improving the sound design (which doesn't require pricey software/gear). Though I can't give you hyper-targeted, actionable advice (NOT a musician here), the OCR community is a wonderful place to run your ideas by people and get detailed feedback, which is often difficult to get from YouTube and even pro-audio communities. I'm glad you're in our Discord and joining the Game Set Mash!! compo, Sébastien. Stick around here and extract everything you can! Surrounding yourself with other experienced artists can help break you out of some habits and obtain valuable outside critique and recommendations on how to improve the cohesiveness and interest of your concepts. I'm looking forward to your next submission and hope you'll continue on with us. NO Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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