OCR04726 - *YES* Kirby's Adventure "Parasol to the Stars" *PROJECT*

[Emunator]

THIS IS FOR THE IWATA REMIX ALBUM BY TSori. This is being evaluated early to see if there's any fixes for the album.

 

Your ReMixer name: Lucas Guimaraes
Your real name: Lucas Guimaraes
Your email address: 
Your website: https://twitter.com/Thirdkoopa - knew nothing better to link for this
Your userid (number, not name) on our forums, found by viewing your forum profile: http://ocremix.org/community/profile/33965-thirdkoopa/
Name of game(s) arranged: Kirby's Adventure
Name of arrangement: Parasol to the Stars
Name of individual song(s) arranged:  Butter Building

 

CREDITS

Band: Whispy Woodwinds

Arrangement, Tenor Sax, Editing: Lucas Guimaraes

Flute: Gamer of the Winds

Clarinet: Steven Higbee

Bassoon: Andrew Gossett

Mix/Master: Ridley Snipes

 

After MAGFest and seeing my friends The Game Brass perform a wicked set, I thought "Hmm, we could start a wind quartet? Maybe?". I pushed the idea over to Gregory Orosz (Gamer of the Winds) and we quickly got to work. We've had a few arrangements being shopped (All of which to come out in 2024!) but when the Iwata album came up, I knew I had to do something special. We already had Butter Building on our 2024 list, so wanted to debut the band with it - and it's a choice I'm glad we made.

 

Much of the arrangement itself follows a story: A lot of hope with a hard journey halfway through, and then a more peaceful end to the stars. I initially had the idea of this mix being called "Building to the Heavens", in order to have that celebration of Iwata's career, but Trevor (Ridley Snipes) talked me out of it by saying it was a tad *too* dramatic. So I opted for "Parasol to the Stars", because even though there are melancholy moments (Iwata tribute album, I couldn't help it!), there's a lot that helps get to its big release. Feedback from both Hemophiliac and The Game Brass' own Thomas Kresge bring this to life.

 

As for the artists ourselves, everyone contributed their A game. Gregory, Steven, and Andrew were a part of the editing process the whole way. They sent me amazing recordings that really brought this to life. I re-recorded the Tenor a couple of times - as some may know, I'm not the most experienced saxophone player, but I absolutely love playing it and have been grinding away. I proposed the idea to Trevor to mix this a few months before I gave him the files, and he was definitely interested. Once I edited all the recordings, I gave it to him and the rest was pretty smooth sailing. KestrelGirl helped point out a few details, but everyone *really* loved it.

 

I needed to step away from it just to see how good it was, even my recording. I'm glad I did. Enjoy this journey to the stars.

 

[Emunator]

What a delightful little track. I always loved the original Butter Building source, but the wind ensemble palette actually feels even more appropriate for the Kirby universe. It's light, airy, and bouncy, just like the titular puffball himself. There's plenty of expansion and recontextualizing of the source materia that gives this a unique compositional spin without ever really straying too far outside the bounds of Butter Building either. I know how hard your team worked on getting the performances, mixing, and mastering absolutely spotless, and the effort paid off in my opinion!

YES

(PS: Ridley was right, the original title was too dramatic, and this one is better!)

Edited November 9, 2023 by Emunator

[Liontamer]

It'll sound like I'm saying I hate the sax; Lucas's sax performance is still pretty honky and lacks strong control (e.g. small examples, 1:18-1:23, 2:51-3:00), so while it's got some issues on display, it's capable enough to get by and, importantly, is surrounded by the rest of the quartet. Arrangement's fun with some good dynamics. Like butter, baby.

YES

[prophetik music]

i love wind ensembles, so i'm excited for this one.

right off the bat, i noticed the clarinet is consistently sharp at 0:13, and at least a little closed in timbre (my teacher always used to talk about visualizing a golf ball in your throat to open up your tone). there is also not a lot of overlap in the articulations - the clarinet is more legato, the bassoon doesn't use a lot of clear articulations at all (outside a few times where it's quite stuffy and choppy unintentionally), whereas the tenor's articulations are quite choppy. future arrangements should probably be more focused on correlating articulations (likely right on the page).

lucas's is indeed pretty honky throughout, so i'm going to actively not talk about that so i don't take up the entire writeup. there's some lovely overlapping lines in the writing - for example 1:12 into the flute and clarinet. the shift in tone at 2:04 is also well-timed and nicely done, giving a clean break from some of the more active elements before this. 

the entrance at 2:51 is particularly rough, but the subsequent resolution is nice to hear if still not quite in tune.

one thing i'd actively consider going forward since it's impossible to do what you'd normally do with an in-person ensemble and work on intonation on each chord - consider using pitch-adjusting software to fix intonation on sustains especially. keep in mind not every interval lands directly on 0 ct each time (major thirds are -13c, perfect 5ths are +5c, b7s are -24c, etc), but i think that would help a lot of the intonation issues i'm seeing. it's so hard to catch where everyone is in a chord on their own so some artificial assistance may be required. winds are particularly suited to pitch correction since they're "push buttons, receive bacon" for the most part when it comes to pitch - they hit a note and stay there outside of vibrato.

this is a fun little work that's got some really nice interplay between the parts. i think that the tenor performance unfortunately pulls it down, but overall there's some really neat demonstrative writing in this. nice job.

 

 

YES

Edited November 13, 2023 by prophetik music

[MindWanderer]

Cute and fun. The tenor sax performance aside, the only thing that really bugs me is how noodly and random it gets in place. 1:22-2:00 in particular is kind of all over the place, and that's a big chunk.

Other than that, this is pretty great, and my reservations aren't enough to kick this back over. Nice work.

YES