Liontamer Posted April 26 Share Posted April 26 Artist Name: jmr Games & Sources EarthBound - Snow Man https://ocremix.org/song/820/snowman https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=niE24aTdtns EarthBound - In Winters There Is A Genius (similar song, but has a unique section at the end which I've used in my arrangement) https://ocremix.org/song/26452/in-winters-there-is-a-genius https://youtu.be/NY2SD4ur0Gc oooh fancy new submission form! Hey all! Hope you're doing well! Last month, I used Dwelling of Duels as an excuse to shake off the rust and try recording a solo arrangement for the first time in a while. Normally I'd turn to my Marshall Art bandmates for something like this - I'm severely outclassed as a guitarist compared to Mikhail and Cory, and I haven't programmed anything other than famitracker drums in years (and why would you, with ErichWK and Kev Ragone around?) - but I thought it would be a fun challenge for myself to make something entirely on my own. As the title of the arrangement alludes, this track is heavily inspired by the band Mono, particularly their song "Ashes in the Snow". There are some clear aesthetic and arrangement choices that are, shall we say, "borrowed" from that song (especially the drone and glockenspiel intro), but as my song proceeds I think it becomes it's own thing and leans less into their specific sound. A large number of the choices I made for the guitar tones and drum production (kick and snare spring reverb! :D) owe a lot to Cory Johnson's music. Cory's been an inspiration and a friend for over a decade now, and I've had the opportunity to collaborate with him quite a few times so it's maybe natural that his style would rub off on me. I think a few DoD voters might have thought this was one of his entries; I am merely the Big 8 to Cory's Coca Cola. I've also got to highlight one final influence - ella guro's "Unleashed!...". I posted a review of that track back in 2016: Quote It's always been one of my favorites on the site, and I feel like some of the original material I've done with Marshall Art might owe itself to the noisy, abrasive sound and chaotic drums of this remix. I kind of want to do my own version of this source at some point, but then I listen to this and realize how hard it'd be to make something I like more than this. So here I am almost a decade later, finally recording the arrangement I had in mind back then. It's pretty clear how that version influenced mine: BIG AND LOUD AND SATURATED DRUMS. Thanks for the inspiration, Liz. One final note: the intro drone. It is intentionally uncomfortably long. For the DoD version, I decorated that section with a Carl Sagan sample from an interview about the risks of nuclear winter that is awfully, scarily relevant to today's climate change crisis. I've removed this sample to comply with the content policy, but I've opted to not cut down the length of the drone that was under the sample. Even without Carl's prophetic voice that drone sets the tone for the rest of the arrangement in a way that I felt simply didn't work when cut down. The whole idea is to create a mood of tension, discomfort, and unease, so if you don't like how long it takes the song to start, I say it's done it's job. All the best, and I hope you enjoy the track! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Liontamer Posted April 26 Author Share Posted April 26 I remember voting on ella guro's and, at the time, we'd had a falling out, so though I was impartial with the vote itself, I was upset and shouldn't have let it to color how I expressed things. I still enjoy the arrangement side of "Unleashed!" and most of the production. I've listened to "Unleashed!" multiple times afterward to ensure I wasn't being biased, and I still couldn't get behind the (fully intentional) levels of distortion for the big boom-boom-boom drumming, even though I heard the Guided by Voices references and understood the influence, so it'll be interesting to see if I also feel jmr's approach, inspired by all that and "Ashes in the Snow", is too much. For example, 7:52-11:10 in "Ashes in the Snow" just sounds like noise & mud where the details of the writing are too obscured, so I hope it's not a ton of this. :-( Source theme arrives at :45. Great gradual build of the textures until 1:50, and I of course enjoyed the rhythmic changes. Nice transition into the chorus section at 1:50. I love the tension of the backing parts here, especially knowing the influences, as I'm 2:30 in and now I'm bracing for the hit, it's on the way. :-D OK, 2:43, we get some added geetar in there, and we don't have any massive booming or distortion yet. A-ha, 3:23, there it is, though I'd say this is way more tame than "Unleashed!" You get the boominess and the volume being overdriven some, but "Ashes in the Snow" had the distortion of backing guitars as a really thick backing layer and that didn't happen here, while "Unleashed!" had the drums & cymbals distorted and blasting at 1:33 & 1:47. I'd be really interested in Emunator (this is his kind of thing) or another J comparing "Unleashed!" and "Ashes in the Snow Man" to better articulate why I'm OK with the latter; the best way I can describe it is that the booming drums here didn't slam over the top of the other instrumentation and sound as crunchy & clipping. Diggin' it! YES Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
prophetik music Posted April 29 Share Posted April 29 12-minute inspirational work without timestamps or words? =( good thing i have listened to a bunch of post-rock. their production is fairly consistent with what i'd expect from a band that stylizes themselves as having modern classical influences. the opening drone is fully 20% of the work's length. i would have much rather heard the original's voiceover, to be honest. opening glock works surprisingly well with the heavily distorted drone. opening guitar tone is beautiful too, the backing part's light filtering really is very nice. there's a great build into 1:50 and a nice delicate approach to this section - the triplets are a great choice. i always think of bLiNd's approach to this track as the definitive version, so it's fun to hear a significantly different feel. 2:44's when the build starts a bit. continuing to include the glock is nice here, and the bass tone is really nice too. 3:23's texture just sounds loud to me. i like the idea and the frenetic, energetic drive that the drums have through here, but there is some artifacting that is not pleasant to my ears. following the big section, we get a very patient outro in a similar vein to the initial drone. i'm reminded of some parts of Bon Iver's self-titled album in the mastering and approach of this remix. there's an earthiness to the arrangement that is much more personal than some highly-curated, uber-mastered tracks we've gotten recently. this is a neat idea and i really appreciate the patience it takes throughout to express what it's saying. YES Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Emunator Posted May 30 Share Posted May 30 (edited) I've been summoned twice here - once by Larry by name, and a second time, unknowingly, by prophetik by invoking Bon Iver's self-titled album, which is one of my all-time favorites. This has all the makings of a favorite of mine. The intro was quite sparse, in a way that left me wanting a little more evolution to the drone or just a single extra level of texture somewhere ( I suppose that's the role that the voice clip was supposed to fill.) After comparing both versions, I actually wish you had submitted the DoD version. I'm not totally sure but I think we've had tracks posted before with extensive sampling of spoken word so unless Carl Sagan is owned by Square Enix, I think that would be in the clear. Once the glockenspiel enters the picture, we're in some gorgeous territory. It evokes a sort of delicate Pikmin-meets-post rock vibe that, as someone who obsessed over post rock to a very weird degree back in high school and college, I knew it wasn't going to stay that way forever. You build up with a gentle dynamic curve though, leaving plenty of time to appreciate the different layers of texture that you add on piece by piece. It blows wide open at 3:24, and we're blasting off into space. You don't hold any punches back and I think the piece is all the stronger for it. The outro winds down once again with some feedback and the glockenspiel, and it's gorgeous. You could tell me that this was a B-side from Sigur Ros' album Takk and, except for the conspicuously-missing Icelandic falsetto, I wouldn't have questioned you all. I feel like the mixing is not totally ideal during the climax. I would have liked a little bit less compression overall and a level balance that allowed the lead guitar to cut through more, especially considering how beautiful that tone is, but I'm also hard pressed to argue that this isn't how the pros do it in post-rock. If you compare this to 4:30 in Glosoli, for example, those drums and bass are SMASHED. The instrumental balance could possibly favor the lead guitar a bit more, but we're bordering on personal preference territory at that point. I'm totally ready to co-sign on this, but if we can use the DoD version with the voice clips, I think we absolutely should - it's the better version of this track. @Liontamer would that be an issue? YES Edited July 28 by Emunator Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Liontamer Posted May 30 Author Share Posted May 30 7 minutes ago, Emunator said: After comparing both versions, I actually wish you had submitted the DoD version. I'm not totally sure but I think we've had tracks posted before with extensive sampling of spoken word so unless Carl Sagan is owned by Square Enix, I think that would be in the clear. I'm totally ready to co-sign on this, but if we can use the DoD version with the voice clips, I think we absolutely should - it's the better version of this track. @Liontamer would that be an issue? Carl Sagan is an agnostic demon, so we shouldn't use his quote. (Kidding!) Yeah, no problem here, if jmr would want to use it. Emunator 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hemophiliac Posted July 21 Share Posted July 21 (edited) This has a very interesting meditative quality that I could find myself zoning out to. That is up until it turns into a full band sound later on in the track. Once we get there it's letting all of it's repressed energy out! I quite enjoy the drone and the long build up of energy through the piece. The arrangement is lovely, and Snowman/In Winters is represented plenty once we get to it in the glockenspiel at 0:46. When we get to 3:23 and the drums really show us their true colors, everything gets very overblown and squashed by compression. Lightening the compression would have prevented the overblown sound, but still kept the energy going. The pattern that was wrote for them could add more energy by itself without having to compromise the mixdown. That's also due to the fact that the drum part was much sparser until then. With that said, the moment is fairly brief and does not take away from my enjoyment of the track. If the whole track was like that I don't think I could pass it, but it's brief. Slow burn, cool track man. YES Edited July 21 by Hemophiliac Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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