*NO* Donkey Kong Country "Rhythm of the Waves"

[Liontamer]

Remixer: LXE
Name: Alexis Gelinas

Email: 
Website: instagram.com/lexadex_yo

38753

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• Donkey Kong Country
• Rhythm of the Waves 
• Aquatic Ambience
• I was inspired by the Djole drum song, and senegalese drumming in general. I used west african instruments like the kora and marimba and kalimba to flesh out the melody and a synth pad to give everything body. I really wanted to give this arrangement a different treatment than the styles I usually hear and I felt like these instruments would bring a new life to it. 

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Alexis Gelinas

Edited October 16, 2023 by Liontamer
closed decision

[prophetik music]

interesting idea for this. kalimba is uniquely suited to the original's approach. i like the hybrid electro/organic approach too. combining traditionally electronic elements like the spit snare, hard volume cuts, and the synth bass with super-organic instruments like a kora and kalimba is great.

there are a few obvious loops in the percussion that were overused (the timbale loop at 0:56 for example). the iconic arpeggio is only used occasionally, which is a fine idea to have it weave in and out, but there's not much nuance in how it's used (similar to the aforementioned loop). either it's playing or not, with no dynamics around how it's brought in and out. it's like flipping a switch or pressing a button to get something to play. it doesn't help that the timbale loop has more verb than the very low-reverb rest of the track, so it sounds distinctly like it's in a different space.

the melody finally comes in at 1:45, and at this point the background's been the same for almost two minutes. it's nice to get the melodic content in, but i'd have expected some variance at this point in the track beyond turning on and off percussion loops. there's some variance to the melody at 2:30 to fit the instrument, which i think is fine. the melody is done at roughly 3:03, and the track just loops through the backing percussion for another 20 seconds until it's done.

AA is a patient original, with the melodic material not coming in until about a third of the way through the piece. you do a similar thing here where you wait pretty long to bring in the melody, allowing the chord progression and arpeggiated elements carry the work until then. i'd say though that this exposes both the heavy use of looping material (and machine-gun repeated notes in your sampler) as well as the lack of overall delta in your track. it doesn't go anywhere. the groove initially is neat, but it is the same throughout, and your variances are exclusively with very prominent elements turning on and off with no volumization to make their swell and fade an actual swell and fade.

i think this is a neat tech demo. i don't think it's ready for the site yet.

 

 

NO

[Liontamer]

I liked how the percussion really change the flow of the piece. I could live with how the loops have been used, but prophetik's right though, where's the rest? The core beat though is extremely plodding, and despite all of the cool drumming going on, that kick stays in one place the entire time. Ignoring the melody and the loops, that kick is extremely boring and eventually weighs the whole thing down. Though you don't need to veer hard in the other direction and make it ultra-busy, it's not working as is.

The plucked lead at :24 sounds thin and mechanical; it's actually serviceable, but when I hear something like that I'm thinking that it's a good starting point that will eventually get doubled or effected to then create some contrast, and that also never happened either, as we get the same sound for the melody finally arriving at 1:45, only with the sample sounding even more exposed. When the melody arrives too, the source's bassline is also there, but it barely, barely registers. At 2:32, we get another round of the melody with this plucked lead, and I'm ready for this to be over because the core of it is still so static; it's undercutting the more subtle textural differences you were trying to present underneath the melody.

prophetik had much more salient comments, and he's a gentleman and a scholar. Really good potential here, IMO. Figure out how to spice this up and don't stop cookin' here, Alexis, it's not fully baked.

NO (resubmit)

[Chimpazilla]

The intro sounds promising, but there's a riser that starts at 0:16, it only goes four bars which isn't long enough to build the energy there, and the final beat is silence which isn't signaled in any way, and it is sloppily done (perc loop still playing until final beat, should stop sooner) which sounds very awkward and more like a rendering error than a transition.  When the drop hits at 0:23 it has no impact because the same energy and beat were already established in the preceding buildup section.

The plucked instruments have not been humanized so each pluck is the same which sounds mechanical.  This is extremely evident with the instrument playing at 1:28 because each pluck happening on beat four is way too loud.  The same instrument is playing the lead starting at 1:53, and the lack of humanization is really jarring.

The core drum beat plays the same thing through the entire arrangement, although there are good variation loops that come and go.  The energy of the piece never changes once established so it doesn't have good energy dynamics.

The arrangement is on the conservative side, with all leads playing the same writing as the source for the most part, with notes left out here and there rather than added to or varied.  There are multiple similar drum-only parts.  There is no outro other than a quick drum flourish.  Great concept and great start here, but needs more attention to writing, sequencing and arranging to be a proper full arrangement from OCR.  Love to hear it again with the changes made, though!

NO (resubmit)

[Gario]

This is a pretty cool track - the instruments chosen really do fit the overall ambience of the source. Others have commented on how cool that percussion is throughout, and I'll double that sentiment; the percussion really adds some good flavor to this arrangement overall. The synths and instruments have a sound to them together that I really haven't heard before, and it's a really cool combination, at that.

The arrangement has a few structural issues that hold this back, which Prophetik does a great job outlining. Overall the same instruments are performing the same functions throughout - that pad is playing those harmony stabs, the kick holds a similar pattern throughout, the percussion has two modes outside of the end of the track (cool way to end it btw), the texture is ever present and always the texture, etc. etc.. The arrangement never feels like it goes anywhere different than you initially establish, the arrangement is too static to keep folk's attention for the whole thing. For anything longer than a minute it's important to change the make-up of the arrangement from time to time - maybe remove some instruments so that different combinations can be heard, or perhaps an instrument acting as texture can be used to hold the melody for a bit, or even a completely new instrument can come in and shake things up. Plenty of ways to break up the static quo, but at the moment I can jump almost anywhere in the arrangement on the media player and I'll not know where I am in the track - it all sounds too self similar.

The production quality is interesting. I think some TLC to blending the instruments - making sure they sounded like they had similar reverb levels, some of the dynamics were better controlled, etc. - would've done this arrangement a lot of good. I kinda like it's home brew feel, personally, but I think Liontamer is correct that the production itself is a bit too rough for OCR's standards.

I'm saying a lot up here but I think this is pretty close. Some tweaks to the arrangement so that it isn't as static and some care to the blending of the instruments and this would be a cool addition to OCR. Best of luck, and thanks for sending it our way!

NO