Emunator Posted March 15 Share Posted March 15 (edited) Mel Decision: arrangement, production VARIA: percussion, piano, sound design, and miscellaneous sfx Moebius: chorus Cyril the Wolf: mastering My entry for round 2 of the second Game Set Mash!! compo. When listening through the Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow OST, the dreaminess of Purification gave me instant thoughts of Enya and that "Pure Moods" album commercial I must have seen hundreds of times on TV growing up. Luckily the other team chose "Maridia (Rocky Underwater Area)" from Super Metroid, which is also pretty dreamy. I queued up some Enya and ended up using "Only Time" and "Orinoco Flow" as my main reference tracks. I transposed both of the source songs into the same key and brought in a bunch of major chords in my arrangement to lift the mood, and tried to mimic some classic Enya vibes, like reverb drenched pianos, plucky string ostinatos, and arpeggiated harps. I had intended to write and record vocals for the track, but that never came together. Instead, I layered choral parts using Spitfire Audio's "Epic Choir," and also 8Dio's "Liberis Choir," courtesy of Moebius. I relied on piano and pan flutes to carry the melody, since that felt genre-appropriate. VARIA wrote a nice piano countermelody that helped break the monotony of the flutes. They also put together several layers of percussive, harmonic, and effect tracks that gave the piece depth and polish, such as the driving snare that comes in towards the end. Finally, I passed the track off to Cyril for mastering. Had a ton of fun collaborating with folks on this track. A++ would GSM again! Super Metroid: Maridia (Rocky Underwater Area) Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow: Purification Games & Sources Super Metroid: Maridia (Rocky Underwater Area) 0:17–1:10: Melody (Pan pipes) 0:04–1:10: Accompaniment (Pizz strings) 2:02–2:40: Accompaniment (Pan pipes, piano, harps) 3:38–4:10: Accompaniment (Piano) Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow: Purification 0:31–1:10: Accompaniment (Harps) 1:22–1:50, 2:40–4:42: Melody (Pan pipes, piano) 2:02–2:40: Melody (Bansuri) 3:08–3:35: Accompaniment (Harps) Those are specific quotes, the block chords and other harmony were largely drawn from the chords/arps being played in the songs, or we've written new countermelodies and harmonies to go along with the source material. There's probably some stuff I'm missing, it's kind of a jumble...and sometimes we're playing parts from both songs at once, since I transposed them into the same key. Edited May 31 by Liontamer closed decision Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
prophetik music Posted March 20 Share Posted March 20 the opening plucks were a little exposed, but i got what you were going for at 0:14 with the panflute and choir. it sounds really blown out though - there's definitely some distortion in my ears around a lot of this first section. i found the melody in this earlier section to be difficult to follow as well since there's no breaks, just constant flowing through lines. 1:07's a break, but it's quickly back to mostly similar textures. we do get some rhythm at 1:19 which is helpful to keep it moving forward. this section is also more reminiscent of an Enya melodic line. there's a note at 1:43 that doesn't fit. 1:58 is a somewhat new texture, with some new instrumentation, but again it feels overly dense and hard to pick out elements. the flute drops at 3:04 and the shift in texture is nice after what's mostly been a monoculture up until now. 3:34's backing arpeggios sound really neat, but there's consistently sour notes in the transitions between chords. i like the snare percussive elements. it trucks along, does the same sour note at 4:32 that was at 1:43, and then it's done. i'm apparently missing something because i don't hear metroid hardly at all in this. either it's very transformed and i'm looking past it, or it's only used in backing elements. overall i really didn't care for the vibe that this one lays out. there's a really dense cluster of instruments in the low mids that really conflicted against each other, and the heavy reverb - which i get why you used, thematically it's really fitting! - made for a soundscape where a lot of resonant stuff lived. there's definitely some distortion to my ears in the first minute or so. beyond that, i found the realization of the melodic material difficult to follow. part of this is due to it just wheedling onward with no breaks or transitional points to hold onto, and part of that is due to the very smooth and rhythmless backing elements. for this to get a passing grade from me, there'd need to be a cleaner backing texture for most of the piece with no distortion from effects layering on each other, and there'd need to be a rework of what's going on with the melodic material. i really wasn't able to follow it much at all, and from a general song form perspective there wasn't much to hang your hat on there. NO Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hemophiliac Posted May 31 Share Posted May 31 The whole concept of this piece could work well, and the Enya/New age-type vibe does come through well. However, I am in agreement with Prophetik on both points about the orchestration/part-writing being dense in the low-mids as well as the reverb being too much. Make sure the reverb has EQ cutting the lows to help it from creating mud solely from the reverb. When the pan flute first enters at 0:14, it starts to quickly sound like a flanger/chorus or distortion effect is applied on it. That kind of effect feels counter-intuitive to the smooth new age sound you're going for. This carries throughout the piece and dominates the soundscape. This really needs to be cleaned up, and the parts balanced more evenly amongst each other with possibly some low end parts reduced or cut. I appreciate that there was some thought put into the swelling of the background elements to help give them movement and energy, but the bass does get really big at times when it reaches it's fullest. I'm hearing the Metroid (something very closely resembling it) in the piano in the deep background 3:05-3:10, and then 3:11-3:30 it sounds like interpretation of that same part. Even with the timestamps, I'm not making out Metroid except for there. As is, the Castlevania parts feel much more dominant in the arrangement. Overall, more direction both in structure and melody would go a long way to keeping interest going as it does feel rather stagnant for a longer piece ~5 min. NO Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chimpazilla Posted May 31 Share Posted May 31 Awesome direction to take! But I agree with my fellows, the soundscape sounds too muddy and lossy overall. If the backing pads are going to be fuzzy/distorted, the leads should be clean so they can soar over the soundscape, but they are distorted too so everything kind of mushes together. The arrangement works well enough, but there isn't much in the way of arrangement dynamics, because the energy stays roughly the same throughout the piece, mostly because this heavily distorted soundscape never changes, so it becomes fatiguing after awhile. If the backing pads dropped way low or out completely at any point, that would provide more arrangement dynamics. Even with the timestamp provided, I cannot hear the source connections. Perhaps someone with more familiarity with these sources can hear it more easily. I feel like the source represented here has been very heavily interpreted, and often little two-note motifs are being counted as source (which is fine to do, it just makes it harder for me as a judge). I'd love for Larry to take a listen to see if I'm massively missing it, Larry's our source-o-matic around here. But regardless, the mixing issues are holding it back for me. NO Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Liontamer Posted May 31 Share Posted May 31 Quote Super Metroid: Maridia (Rocky Underwater Area) 0:17–1:10: Melody (Pan pipes) - I'm not hearing this 0:04–1:10: Accompaniment (Pizz strings) - what part from the source is this accompaniment referencing? 2:02–2:40: Accompaniment (Pan pipes, piano, harps) 3:38–4:10: Accompaniment (Piano) Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow: Purification 0:31–1:10: Accompaniment (Harps) - if this is the theme, the part's barely audible anyway 1:22–1:50, 2:40–4:42: Melody (Pan pipes, piano) 2:02–2:40: Melody (Bansuri) 3:08–3:35: Accompaniment (Harps) "Bloody Tears" - 1:18-1:36, 2:34-2:55, 3:33-4:25 "Maridia" - 3:04-3:30 = 117 seconds or 40.20% overt source usage Yep, whatever you did with the Maridia Rocky theme, congrats, it's unfortunately not recognizable in the first half. :-D I did hear the CV2's "Bloody Tears" melody from 1:18-1:36 & 2:34-2:55, even though it wasn't listed as a source tune, but "Purification" only arranges the intro of that song, not the verses, so this should have been DQed from the compo if "Purification" was the CV source, no? Maybe there's another Aria of Sorrow track also arranging "Bloody Tears"? There's Maridia finally from 3:04-3:30. Back to "Bloody Tears" from 3:33-4:25. Really dunno where this source breakdown even comes from, because the times and instruments don't match what's been given. I'm just confused, which doesn't mean I'm not being obtuse here, but just chiming in to say this didn't immediately make sense to me. To me, the instrumentation quality's solid enough, but the dynamics can feel pretty flat here despite the obvious gradual build when you skip around from section to section and better notice the changes in textural density. I'm willing to say that I also thought it was too dynamically flat on my first listen, but on repeated listens, I was fine with how it subtlely builds, and I'm OK being outvoted. There was a change at 3:04, albeit with no real transtion, so the switch felt awkward; see what you can do to smooth that out. To me, I'd just need a more accurate source breakdown, but if this source usage was explained better to me, and it was all in place re: sufficient & recognizable source usage, then I could pass this as is. For now though... NO (resubmit) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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