Liontamer Posted August 22, 2023 Share Posted August 22, 2023 Contact Information: Your ReMixer Name: The Vodoú Queen (ft. Zack Parrish, Aeroprism/Sébastien & Xaleph/Matt Sabol) Your Real Name: Angélique Vodoú Your Email Address: Your Website: https://thevodouqueen.newgrounds.com/ Your User ID # on our forums: 37001 Submission Information: Name of Game(s) Arranged: Final Fantasy IV (SNES) & Final Fantasy VII (PS1) Name of Arrangement: "Mechanical Delights (NeverEnding Love Mix)" Name of Individual Song(s) Arranged: 'Within the Giant' & 'Crazy Motorcycle Chase' Additional information about game including composer, system, etc. (if it has not yet been added to the site): 1. FINAL FANTASY IV OST; Track 42 - Within the Giant; Artist(s): Nobuo Uematsu; Release Date: June 14, 1991; Label: Square Co./NTT Publishing 2. FINAL FANTASY VII OST; Track 22 (Disc 1) - The Chase / Crazy Motorcycle; Artist(s): Nobuo Uematsu, Minoru Akao; Release Date: February 10, 1997; Label: DigiCube Link to the original soundtrack (if it is not one of the sound archives already available on the site): 1. https://finalfantasy.fandom.com/wiki/Original_soundtracks_of_Final_Fantasy_IV 2. https://finalfantasy.fandom.com/wiki/Final_Fantasy_VII:_Original_Soundtrack Your own comments about the mix, for example the inspiration behind it, how it was made, etc.: ---- Contributions: The Vodoú Queen -- arrangement, synths, electronica drums, vocals, SFX, mixing, mastering, production Aeroprism -- arrangement Zack Parrish -- lead guitar & metal drums Xaleph -- harmonic guitar & rhythm guitar COLLABORATORS [FEAT.]: Zack Parrish = *Live Lead (Clean & Overdriven) Guitars, *Live Rhythm Guitars, *High-Octane Metal Drums (for 'Crazy Motorcycle' Interlude), *Snares, *Additional Arrangement Material for Key Change / Outro Sections, *MIDI Clean-Up & Post-Production Guidance / Assistance / Corrections, *Mastering Limiter ADDITIONAL ACCOLADES & CONTRIBUTIONS: Aeroprism / Seb -- for some of the original arrangement and composition of the pads and bass-structure. Both have been heavily modified and I know he doesn't feel like this piece "represents his [part of the] work" anymore, due to the number of changes and iterations to the tracks, but his collaboration with me during GSM, Round 1 was essential, inspirational, and I appreciate both his efforts and his patience whilst making the beats. Xaleph / Matt -- for his takes of the distorted and rhythmic guitars for the CM Section in the original incarnation of this remix, during GSM, and also for his advice with mixing and producing. He did those original recordings in such a short amount of time for me, when it was down to the wire before final submission, and his enthusiasm is always infectious. I admire his production skills and versatility with various forms of EDM and Heavy Metal. Also, shout-out to the GSM 1 FF SNES crew/gang. Go Team LockeNES! WOO! ♥ And to our opponents, as well, Team PSX--for keeping us on our toes and forcing us to step-up our game. ...In the end, I learned it wasn't about the polls and statistics, but the friends and journey made along the way. Also-also, super ecstatic and glad that I finally got to do a remix of one of my favorite songs from my favorite Final Fantasy game, IV. # <\\: WELCOME TO EBLAN INDUSTRIES, TERMINAL NUMBER: 190791. . . PLEASE HOLD ON TIGHT. FASTEN YOUR SEATBELTS, AND KEEP ALL APPENDAGES INSIDE THE VEHICLE AT ALL TIMES. THANK YOU FOR CHOOSING US AS YOUR TRANSPORT TODAY. . . ...WE HOPE YOU ENJOY THE я1đ3. ://> Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Liontamer Posted August 25, 2023 Author Share Posted August 25, 2023 From VQ today: Quote Hello. I apologise if the song is already being considered or looked at by the judges, but is it OK to pull my 4v7 submission for now? ...It's not permanently but at the moment it feels like I've sent it in prematurely due to some feedback and discourse I've been getting surrounding it, so it might be more prudent of me to re-examine it before the NO/possible resubmit and tweak it and resub it again at some point in the near-future. So it's on hold for now. EDIT (12/21): New version's up top from the new submissions system. Good to go! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
prophetik music Posted January 12 Share Posted January 12 starts out with some sfx and some crazy motorcycle sounding arps, with the first real hit starting at 0:29. there's not a ton of bass body in this section but there's some really fun stuff going on in the higher ranges with some of the sparkly synths. Into the Giant is the melodic content here, with some purposefully glitched out tones. we finally get the beat at 1:11 with a clearer melodic synth. the beat comes and goes, which i thought was a little confusing, and there's a few funky notes at 1:37 in the backing tempo-synced stuff. the B side of the melodic content continues after this section. we get a glitchy transition alarm section, and then we're in crazy motorcycle. this was a fairly abrupt transition. heavier guitar sounds great, and i love the stutter effects on it especially. lead guitar sounds just a touch ahead of the beat - maybe this stem was dropped in a bit ahead? - and the beat-no beat-beat-no beat pattern continues here and kind of saps energy as it happens. there's a ton going on behind the lead guitars and 2:58 is probably one of my favorite parts of the piece - i love the density of what's going on with that screaming guitar over the top. more sfx (the one sounds like a chainsaw, although i know it's a motorcycle...funny visual either way). there's an extended build with Into the Giant building up to a big, consistent, end to end run-through the melodic material which is great, and then it goes up to another level with the guitar lead at the end. bringing back the guitar really ties the two major sections together, this was a great choice. the ending is sudden though and not particularly prepared - that's a downer, this was really trucking and then suddenly's done without even a downbeat. from an overall perspective, i thought the arrangement is really solid overall and i feel the track is mixed well. there's not many times i think to myself that something's out of balance or getting buried in the mix, which is pretty great considering how much is going on throughout. i definitely think this is above our bar. nice work. YES Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MindWanderer Posted January 12 Share Posted January 12 A surprisingly odd remix. It's quite quiet, even though there's hardly any headroom and it's clearly been through a leveling process. Part of the reason it feels so quiet is that the synth leads are pretty quiet, especially the saw, which is having to fight for space. The arps, kicks, snares, and hats are stomping all over the leads. But it's also quiet in an absolute sense, and I had to turn my volume up nearly to maximum to make it all out clearly. Fake ending at 2:11, with a complete restart and swap to the other source; though it takes only another 25 seconds to tie Within the Giant back in, it does so with a mostly different sound palette. Some really weird harmonies in there, too; if proph hadn't weighed in first, I would have tagged him to explain what was going on here, but it sounds unpleasant nevertheless. Very loud SFX in this section. 2:58 on is really busy, and it's hard to make out anything but the lead guitar. That fades out to another almost fake ending, and we tie back into the first part with the vocoded flight attendant. That's only about 30 seconds, and then yet another fake ending and non-transition, this time oddly to a section that's not all that different from what came before. It begins to fade out yet again before abruptly pumping the volume back up, to its loudest yet, at 4:40, with so much going on that even the electric guitar is slightly smothered. And finally, it just ends, with no resolution. I'm afraid I have reservations about both the production and the arrangement here. There are so many awkward transitions, most of which are completely unnecessary, given how similar the sections before and after are. The changes in volume seem capricious, and combine with the mixing issues to make it hard to make out. The section with The Chase just doesn't work for me, because it sounds like Within the Giant is just playing on top of it without consideration to harmony. There are a ton of good ideas and some fun sections. The guitar work is good, and the guitar solo especially is a highlight (although, again, it's brought down by production issues, the clashing bass line, and the fade-out mid-ending). I'd love to hear a version of this that's cleaned up and tightened. NO (resubmit) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Flexstyle Posted February 10 Share Posted February 10 Ya really love Glitch, eh? Lots of dfault dblue sound processing going on here lol. Not a criticism or a kudos, just an observation. Anyways on to the real review: I'm not really hearing anything glaring, harmony- and melodics-wise, and I can pick out source tune laced throughout, so those are both passing for me. Very ambitious arrangement, and definitely on the "we might have bitten off more than we can chew" side of things. I think it actually does work overall -- the stop-start-stop beat stuff doesn't lose the momentum to my ears, I can hear what you're going for throughout. No instrumental performance issues that stand out, either -- seems like some good clean takes on those guitars. Mix-wise, I can always hear the lead instrument and supporting instruments clearly, even if they are mostly in the same EQ spectrum, but they're not totally drowning each other out. A more mature arrangement wouldn't try and cram all these instruments together at the same time, and would have more space carved out for each individual piece, both in the arrangement and in the mix. However, the song tells a story, it's always moving somewhere new and interesting (love that), and the production issues, such as they are, aren't enough to hold it back in my book. I say let this one through to the front page! YES Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chimpazilla Posted February 10 Share Posted February 10 I'm afraid I'm in complete agreement with MindWanderer on this one. While the arrangement of the themes is quite creative and good, the production is problematic. There are so many elements playing most of the time, and they occupy a similar frequency range and a lot of them have heavy distortion, which is causing this to sound like a wall of fuzzy mush to my ears. Leads are often quiet and buried within this soup of sounds. Other Js have said this track is mixed well, and perhaps it is, but it is hard to tell due to the huge number of elements playing, the similarity of the frequency-range of the sounds, and all this distortion. Many of the synth timbres used sound quite simple and vanilla to me. The guitar work sounds great. The vocal clips are a cool idea to add to the story being told in the track, but I don't think they are processed very well. The clips sound like they were put through a cheap voice-changer app, and they are bone dry. The claps are so basic, and I can barely hear the kicks until 1:11 at which point the kicks whomp in super hard. There is cool glitching throughout the piece that is almost totally buried. From 1:11-2:11 and again from 2:29-3:12, and again from 4:05-5:27, some of the backing arps and countermelodic patterns sound disharmonious to me as they do for MW. It's just too much going on melodically as well as frequency-wise. I know personally how easy it can be to overstuff an arrangement with ideas. There are too many here and they are clashing. I am feeling like this track lacks cohesion; it really sounds like several different personalities are in the mix but not blended well. The arrangement feels quite long, fatiguing, and odd, with false endings and restarts, weak transitions, and no real resolving outro. The whole thing lacks focus for me and feels like a soup with too many ingredients. The master does sound quiet, but Cubase is showing me a ceiling of -1db and RMS of -11.5, both of which are fine. Sorry to come down so hard on this. I do think the arrangement itself is mostly solid. I suggest paring back the amount of melodic ideas in each section, keep the things in each section that go together the best and ditch the rest, let leads cut through and shine in each section, cut out things that are clashing, reduce distortions on everything but one or two elements at any given point, EQ so things don't compete so much, and smooth transitions whenever possible. NO (resubmit) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
XPRTNovice Posted February 12 Share Posted February 12 I think this arrangement is clean, interpreted well with obvious source usage, and holds my interest for the duration of the piece. Really enjoy the guitar solo at 2:30 and beyond. While there are a lot of elements going on at once, and it occasionally does sound a little wall-of-sound, I don't think it's sufficiently problematic to warrant a NO from me. I think the master is too soft, but it's not a dealbreaker. That wall-of-sound would be my only concern if I wanted you to take it back and work on it though, and I don't think it would take too much effort to spread this soundscape out. Cutting EQs and panning a little differently would make for a more overall balanced sound, and would actually probably help your mastering problem as well. So, while I might encourage going back and doing that, I think it's above the bar without it. YES Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Emunator Posted February 12 Share Posted February 12 I find myself siding with the YES's on this - there's ample amounts of creativity on display here and the execution is pretty strong for what it is. I find that the main flaws with this track are the same issues that I've expressed with other VQ subs lately, where a good round of editing and culling would likely result in a stronger product, but I don't think that trying to finesse the EQ/balance/mixing would really result in a stronger product. From my vantage, the issues underlying this are more to do with the arrangement and writing phase of the process - it's not that any of the ideas present are bad, but you have too many of them vying for attention and that's introducing complications to the mixing process that can't always be solved with mixing tools. I already feel like this track is teetering on the verge of being completely overcooked, but as it stands, you pulled it out of the oven just in time to still have something edible and actually enjoyable. There's lessons to be learned from this to make a better cake next time around, but it's hard for me to honestly say that you don't have a pretty good cake on your hands if we're just looking at what's in front of us :) Onward and upward from here, I say! YES Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Liontamer Posted February 12 Author Share Posted February 12 Not sure why the "Within the Giant" melody at :43 was pushed down, and I was going to complain about it, but then it had a nice contrast with its brighter, more upfront placement at 1:12, so I'm glad the intentional contrast was there. Soundscape when the beats were in play was muddy and cramped; things would sound clearer when the beats dropped out, so maybe it's something about the beats and bass kicks. Changeup in "Crazy Motorcycle" at 2:14 was kind of abrupt, but I see how there was a transition to it, so I'll live. Then more crunch and clutter at 2:29 (none of it due to the lead guitar, just the backing chugs). Cooler texture at 3:11 after things opened back up, then some really lame claps & beats from 3:26-3:40 that sounded too lossy and felt stapled on top, same as they did at :28. 4:40-4:57 had something panned mostly in the left ear that sounded like fluttering popping; very odd. Would love another mixing pass at this, because it's still lacks clarity/sharpness IMO, as well as some instrumentation tweaks, but the arrangement carries it vs. the production/mixing. Very cool combination of the themes, the ambitiousness definitely shows through. YES Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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