Liontamer Posted January 29 Share Posted January 29 (edited) Artist: Metris Regarding creative approach, I wanted the track to have an identity that felt unique from the original track; this was achieved by expanding upon the structure of the original (with a clear beginning and end), as well as with the differing chords and more ethereal sound design. Some of the ambiences I had used come from Aturax Audio (who allows for his work to be used as long as he is credited). https://www.youtube.com/@AturaxAudio Games & Sources The track that I have remixed is titled First Steps. It is the second track from the OST of Celeste (the game it appears in), and was originally composed by Lena Raine. Edited January 31 by Liontamer closed decision Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Liontamer Posted January 29 Author Share Posted January 29 An enjoyable listen, but this sounds like a minor audio upgrade of the original music, so it's nowhere near distinct enough from the Lena Raine version for us to post this. We typically don't post traditional remixes where the original audio is sampled, and that's what this sounds like. You need your own sound palette made from the ground up that also sonically stands apart enough from the tone and feel of the original music. NO Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
prophetik music Posted January 31 Share Posted January 31 the waveform diff overall on this one is drastic. also LT this wasn't samples from the original, it's just a very similar synth that was used. starts out with some ambience (assuming this is the sampled element?) and some accelerating piano over time. the piano sounds intentionally filtered. the arp's in the piano, and the lead is a similar tone to the original. the kick starts as a more muted version and then has another kick with more beater added in later. the lead is 1:1 from the original. when the rest of the beat comes in at 1:18, it sounds to me like the track is currently the ongoing ambience, the beat, piano playing some chords and the arp, and the lead. that's pretty sparse compared to the complexity of the original. there's a break at 2:12 with no kick for a bit, but it's back within 15 seconds and we get the B theme for a bit. there's a stutter synth here that i didn't notice before, and that's a nice change. at 2:55 the beat's done for the piece (another 1.5 minutes!). the lead synth appears to truck through the rest of the melodic material in order with the piano under it, and then finish on some more ambient swells. from an arrangement perspective, i like the idea of giving the main body of the melody some more rhythm in the form of percussion. beyond that, there's not much here that isn't lena raine. we need more arrangement than this. section 4.2 in our standards talks about significant arrangement - another word that's used a lot is transformative. this doesn't have that, so it's a nonstarter right there. frim a mixing perspective, the kick is wildly louder than anything else in the track, it's not even close. the spectrum analysis shows a solid wall from 35-60hz, no cutoff below that and nothing close to it above it - that's too much. beyond that, the entire mix feels very muted and quiet due to not having any headroom from the kicks. likely this was mixed on low-bass-response headphones and that's why there's such a crazy difference there - this desperately needs another pass at mixing it on something with accurate response and then subsequently needs some compression to balance it. beyond that, sidechaining at least the ambience and the backing elements under the kick a bit would help with the pressure as well. i'd suggest really committing to the arrangement first. make something that's distinctly Metris's take on lena's work rather than just taking her work and adding pads behind it. change up the melody a bit, play with chords, update and add new textures that are critical to the work and not window dressing, change the tempo, etc. and then come back and get the workshop's view on it to see how it's going. right now this isn't passable. NO Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chimpazilla Posted January 31 Share Posted January 31 prophetik's vote covers everything I would also say about this mix. I don't feel like it's a midi-rip sound upgrade, and I don't hear any sampling of the actual game audio, although the arrangement isn't transformative enough, regardless of the lengthening of the intro and outro. I actually think this is a great concept which could work well if there was more variation away from the source tune, both in writing and sound choices. But the mixing also needs work. The kick is ridiculously louder than everything else, and the lack of proper sidechaining of elements makes the kick feel pasted (LOUDLY) on top of the soundscape instead of nestled nicely into it. The lead is super quiet in the mix. Try checking your mix on another device, other headphones, in the car etc. and you will quickly hear how out of balance the sounds are. And prophetik had a good suggestion to get more perspectives in our workshop. I would love to hear this again after improvements are made, I think it's a good basis for a remix! NO Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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