Liontamer Posted February 16 Share Posted February 16 Artist Name: Chromatic Walnut This is a roots-rock quartet arrangement of "Theme of Love." Games & Sources "Theme of Love," Final Fantasy IV (Nobuo Uematsu) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
prophetik music Posted February 26 Share Posted February 26 this is a great track for this genre adaptation idea. starts out pretty loud, feels like the limiter's working overtime. it's also heavy in the right ear - the bass doesn't appear to be center, but is in the right with the lead. i listened to parts on just one ear and then just the other, and the right ear's far heavier in both content and in volume. it feels pretty unbalanced. lead guitar tone and performance however are great. there's a lot of personalization in the lead performance. drums break at 1:13 which is a nice choice. the track goes through the A section once more and then it's done. there's some intentional and some unintentional amp stuff at the end from the sound of it. this is very short. the lead part is really fun and the genre adaptation is great, but with very short pieces (two minutes is a hard cutoff for most judges), you need everything else to be firing on all cylinders to count it. in this case, the performance is great and i love it, but the mixing is odd with how heavily panned the lead and bass are, and the mastering is not great because the limiter's getting pounded. this needs to have another pass where you're pulling back all of the elements so that the limiter's not constantly engaged when the bass is playing. that's going to let each individual element shine more. i don't think my concerns would take very long to correct, but they're enough to hold a very short piece back. would love to hear this again however with a clearer master (and maybe a bridge!?). NO Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gario Posted March 22 Share Posted March 22 Nice and short arrangement of a classic, and it's full of flavor throughout - love the overall idea behind this one. I don't mind the panning of it, there's enough going on in both ears where it balances out on headphones, but the overlimiting hurts the overall production quality; there are artifacts everywhere that just kills the quality of the lead. There's plenty of volume in this arrangement, turn down the levels so that there's less room for limiting issues. The reverb on the lead is pretty excessive, too, even for the style, so turn that down a bit, as well (that also will help with the overlimiting since that will decrease the overall levels, as well). I like it, I want to see it fixed and sent back our way since it's really quite close to being front page material. NO Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chimpazilla Posted March 22 Share Posted March 22 Short and sweet, lovely performances. Definitely a cover, but this is an effective and pleasant genre adaptation. The arrangement is short. I prefer a longer, more realized arrangement than this, but what's here is enough for me. There are variations throughout the piece, the drums change just enough to give a slightly different vibe every few bars. The guitar playing is emotional. I wish there was a proper outro; dropping it off cold like this confirms for me that there hasn't been a lot of thought put into the arrangement, other than doing a soft rock cover version. I feel like the instrument volume balancing is fine. I'm not bothered by the panning; the lead sounds about 20-25% panned right, and the rhythm guitar is panned more like 40-50% left, and the bass is centered. It sounds fine to me both on my monitors and headphones. The master is weird! There is a peak ceiling of -1.2db which seems excessive (I prefer -0.5), and I see an RMS value of -7.4db RMS which is very loud, heavy-EDM loud. Although this limiter smashing is causing the piece to lack any kind of volume dynamics, I do not hear any over-compression artifacts at all (aside from expected "amp stuff"), either on monitors or my headphones. I'm curious @Gario where are you picking up on artifacts? If they are there, I wonder how I am missing them. While I did have to turn my volume down to evaluate this track, I'm not worried about it being over-loud on YouTube since they do their own compression and normalizing. Although I am somewhat let down by the short length and lack of arrangement creativity, I don't find any issues holding this lovely soft piece from being posted in its current form. YES Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gario Posted March 22 Share Posted March 22 @Chimpazilla Could be the typical "Amp stuff" that you're talking about that I'm hearing as less than intentional, many of the notes when they hit buzz and sound almost distant which when layered over the heavy reverb, which hits me as wrong. I could be incorrect calling it a mistake, though looking at the waveform those hits are really smashed against the limiter. I stand by my judgment particularly because that reverb is really oversaturated, but I could see your point that it might be something more stylistic that I'm hearing negatively. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Liontamer Posted March 25 Author Share Posted March 25 Loud and a bit muddy but full of character. I don't have any problem with this production/panning/mixing though, this is totally fine with me. Bass writing got briefly messed up around :39, but it was able to quickly move past the stumble. Nice lower stuff at :56 to add a different flavor to the guitar work. Good changeups at 1:13 with the backing textures and getting more loose with the lead to offer some melodic interpretation, all good signs that this could justify the shorter run-time by not getting repetitive with the presentation. The ending at 2:01 was a letdown, then the little "done!" note at 2:07 was also abrupt and, IMO, disrupted whatever resolution there could have been with the taper of the note at 2:01. Even an extended fadeout of the last note/chord at 2:05 instead of getting stepped on would have clicked better. Wow, 2 minutes of good stuff with a pretty poor ending. Could have definitely developed more, but we have what we have, so the question is whether the lack of resolution merits asking for revisions. In this case, I'm going to go ahead and say this would be stronger with any combination of either 1) further arrangement development and/or 2) a substative resolution. Hypothetically, a 3-minute (read: more developed) arrangement with a flat ending or a 2-minute arrangement with a solid ending would both have less debate behind whether the total package feels complete. Nice job on this so far. NO (resubmit) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MindWanderer Posted March 26 Share Posted March 26 (edited) There's definitely some garage-band-grunginess to this, but I'm personally not hearing any artifacts (other than amp buzz, which is intentional) or pumping. I can see the hard limiter in the waveform, but it's far from slammed up against it; it's cutting off very low peaks but they're still peaks; it's worse in the right ear, which is definitely louder but not by a ton. The arrangement started off very conservative but introduced a lot of fun riffs in the second loop that are more than enough to count as interpretation. The ending was brief, but it was a proper ending, certainly not among the worse endings we've passed. I'm not hearing anything dealbreaking here. I find it interesting that all three NO votes above are NOing it for different reasons: panning/mastering, artifacts and reverb, and development and resolution. While I agree that the mastering and length are areas of improvement, I don't think that they're enough, even collectively, to send this back. YES Edited March 26 by MindWanderer Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Emunator Posted March 28 Share Posted March 28 Y'all, I think we're overthinking this one. It's a jam band roots rock arrangement, a little bit of slop and grit is good for the soul. The only thing that I would consider to really be worth noting on the technical side would be the overall compression/master quality, which leaves very little room to breathe and makes this sound a little less pleasant than it could. I didn't even find the ending to be too abrupt - the song has already said what it needs to say by that point. Viewing this through the lens of a jam band playing this at a dive bar or in a garage rehearsal space, this accomplishes what it sets out to achieve just fine in its current state. This isn't trying to be a perfectly pristine studio-quality recording and I don't think we should be judging it by those standards. YES Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hemophiliac Posted April 10 Share Posted April 10 Enjoyed the loose and mellow vibe from this one. The melodic embellishments were very fitting and was a really good way to put your own spin on this classic Uematsu tune. The bass tone is very warm and round, and feels like it would fit right into a track from the 60s. It's perfect for this style. I loved the structure of the arrangement, except for the ending. It really sounds like you’re about to take off on another, higher energy solo at 2:00 and instead it stops. It’s not abrupt because you resolve the phrase, but I was definitely not expecting an end already. While this is short and could be expanded on further, the length itself was not a deal breaker to me as there was very fun rhythm changes in the melody throughout to give it the loose feel. Where this goes wrong for me is the limiting on the track and a couple small drum issues. Ease off on the limiter to let those parts breathe and create space in the track, it shouldn't be brickwalled and have the peaks be clipped. This is an organic performance and that should be highlighted. The ride cymbal sounds like it’s getting cut-off, not sure if it’s just the sample itself or the reverb tail being cut by something else. It happens at various points through the track, but it’s more noticeable during the sections where the drums pick-up the energy such as 1:38-1:56. The tambourine that starts at 1:13 is very dry and seems to occupy a different space/room then the rest of the band. In the end this was a couple issues that compounded on each other in the limiting and minor drum issues. I'd like to those fixed-up and the track sent back as this is a vibe I can enjoy and chill to. NO Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Flexstyle Posted June 4 Share Posted June 4 I don't think the limiting is that big a deal myself. The drums bug me, as a drummer, because they're so dry and simple. Wish we had more variation there. Heck, I'm almost about to volunteer to just track new drums myself and even do a mixdown if this thing doesn't pass, haha. I'm in Emu's boat: the vibe check passes. This song clearly communicates the original theme, it does its genre well, and while some elements could easily be improved, I don't think that holds it back enough for me to stop it. YES Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
XPRTNovice Posted June 5 Share Posted June 5 INTERIOR. DINER. NIGHT. Rosa and Cecil are at the end of a weekend-long Gysahl Green binge, dark circles under their eyes as tired old women in poodle skirts pour coffee for patrons that probably can't even taste it. A Shelby's alternator grinds outside, unable to start. Okay, so that's the vibe I'm getting from this, which is a fun and original take on this tune. The performance is loose- at some times, too loose, but in a way that kind of ads to its charm. The piece, overall, is really mechanical here for me, almost like a Band in a Box backing track to allow the guitar to do its thing. It's sleepy, and a little sloppy, and the ending sort of just...happens. This feels more like a rehearsal of a garage band than it does a performance. I really do understand why the judges are split on this one, and to be frank I am too. We're barely eking by the length requirement, and even at that 2:13 mark it doesn't feel like much happens in the tune. I am really torn between saying that the piece just needs more *something* and understanding that the vibe/genre/style might be broken if we added too much to it. The mix, to me, is fine. It's produced exactly like this genre should be produced, in my opinion. I'm erring on the side of YES, but with a friendly warning that the target genre is what's saving this; if a piece was this lackadaisical in any other genre, it would be a no from me. YES (Borderline) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rexy Posted July 3 Share Posted July 3 This approach is simple - a sleaze rock adaptation, emphasizing additional note density and a similar swag-sounding bassline. The arrangement did its job just by changing the overall style of the source tune through a straightforward ABA structure. The only thing I mused over were two instances in the first half (0:25, 0:49) where it sounded like the fills were a bar too late and didn't have the impact getting in delayed as they were. However, if the Beatles had gotten away with it before, it would not have been an overarching concern and could have been seen as stylistic. The short length also comes with debating the overall production shaping. However, your attention to room ambiance on the bass and electric guitars and some firm down tuning on the snare drum is commendable. They contributed to the track's overall personality and got past any issues regarding panning or overall instrument selection. I did notice the limiter doing its work from looking at the track's waveform, though the amount of processing meant giving away to "amp stuff" as some of the previous judges had already mentioned, as opposed to artifact concerns. It's a minimal approach, yes. But despite its quirks, it cleared the bar for OCR for me. Let's go. YES Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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