Emunator Posted June 17 Share Posted June 17 (edited) Artist Name: Zanezooked I bet this is a first: in a single song I’ve remixed the complete soundtracks of two games! Okay, so those soundtracks consist of one song each, but still. Marathon is a vibe, man. Its novelistic terminal text, atmospheric Craig Mullins chapter screen artwork, and evocative title music construct an otherworldly mood that has lived rent-free in my psyche for decades, and every so often jumps up and takes control, and I find myself once again perusing the Story pages and listening to the title music on loop—or, now, remixing it. MacWorld once described the Marathon games as having a “planet-hopping, psychological thriller of a story line,” but they’re also games about an invincible cyborg shooting aliens in the face. The title songs of Marathon 2 and Marathon Infinity capture this dichotomy. They’re by “Power of Seven,” aka Paul Sebastien, who at that time was frontrunner of the nineties techno group Psykosonik, and they have that nineties feel, with driving rhythms combined with spacious pads and a recessed, reverbed guitar (seriously recessed: the stem splitter I tried to use to analyze it could barely find it: it classified what it did find as “other” and it was barely more intelligible than in the original mix). I tried to respect that combination of space and aggression in my remix. I also took some inspiration from Justice, whose music was featured in the trailer to the upcoming “reboot” of Marathon as a . . . live service extraction shooter or hero shooter or something, sigh. Justice uses a lot of dirty, compressed synths, especially in the bass. Mine aren’t as compressed or gated because I wanted a spacious, reverb-y feeling, but I tried for some of that grittiness. Source breakdown: I called Marathon’s vibe “otherworldly.” The other world in question is Lh’owon, the planet on which most of the action in Marathon 2 and Marathon Infinity takes place. It’s ancient homeworld of the S’pht (yeah, I know, that silly apostrophe trope), though it’s currently populated by a garrison of the Pfhor, who enslaved the S’pht a millennium ago. Its extensive ruins hide clues to the fate of a tribe of S’pht lost thousands of years before the Pfhor arrived. Oh, and the planet’s sun currently imprisons a Lovecraftian elder god of chaos which will devour the universe if freed. The first minute of my remix is about soaking in the ambience on this unspeakably ancient, largely ruinous planet. It starts with some literal ambience recorded directly from the game (and drenched in reverb, as if heard from within one of the rock-like structures you run around in). Pads and high strings play a theme that the background synths play at 0:30 in the Marathon 2 source song. The strings fade away with an irregular loss of signal. Into this planet’s system comes the rampant and only possibly insane artificial intelligence Durandal in a captured Pfhor dreadnought; he sets about bombarding the Pfhor garrison from orbit and teleporting his pet cyborg security officer (the player) around, flooding an outpost with lava over here, saving enslaved humans over there, and then going on an extended archeological dig into the ancient S’pht ruins in search of a weapon that can give Durandal the dominance and universe-outliving immortality he hungers for. At :55 we start to hear the encroaching orbital bombardment, and at 1:25 the security officer arrives and starts kicking alien appendages. A synth grinds out the guitar progression from the beginning of the Marathon 2 title music, then a recessed guitar takes up the melody. After this, a synth bass plays the bass from :30 in the source song, before the cycle repeats. At 2:39 the strings return to provide a pause in the Total Carnage, playing the theme from Marathon Infinity. The security officer is discovering the oldest remnants of the S’pht civilization, far older than humankind—and some of it is still sentient. Though he doesn’t yet know it, the fate of the cosmos is at stake. At 3:45 carnage returns with the Marathon 2 themes again. At 4:28, the guitar plunges into the Marathon Infinity theme for the conclusion, while high strings and a buried choir provide a sense of spaciousness and age. I hope you like this! Games & Sources Marathon 2: Durandal Marathon Infinity Edited Tuesday at 08:28 PM by Hemophiliac Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
prophetik music Posted June 24 Share Posted June 24 opens with sustained strings and ambiance. bit of a LOTR vibe in the soaring string line. the bass instrument here seems really out of place compared to everything else going on. at 0:56 we start getting the bassline from marathon 2, and at 1:26 we get the main body of that theme. it feels pretty 90s for sure, but not in a good way. the lack of audible sidechaining on the kick and the synth guitar being the only instrument over the bass really doesn't feel nearly as fleshed out as the original (or other stuff by psykosnik) does...there needs to be something else filling in the freq range so it doesn't feel so hollow. also, the bassline at 1:57 isn't quite the bassline from M2 at 0:30 - the note before the highest pitch in the riff isn't right. the rhythm's recognizable for sure though. there's about 30s of copy/paste, and then 2:41's onto a new vibe entirely. this has some really nice cinematic elements. the lead tone - is that a high cello? - isn't very idiomatic but it's very lonely and evocative, i really like it. the arp's attack is a touch heavy and overlaps a bit which is a downer at the end of that section. 3:45 is back to the marathon 2 techno again. this all feels straight copied from the earlier section, which is a downer. 4:28's a new section, which is nice, although it's still struggling with the same issue (nothing between the bass and much higher lead instrument, drums are boring, no mastering really on this section). there's a high sustain before a rhythmic ending that doesn't quite work and needs more workshopping. then we get some ambience and it's done. this is really ambitious! there's a ton going on here, and i think from a story perspective the arrangement works really well. there's some really beautiful elements (like in the opening and at 2:41), and some that's really blah and needs some beef, like the techno sections. i think that reworking and spiffing up some of your synth choices will help a ton, as will dressing up some of the techno sections. NO Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Emunator Posted August 31 Author Share Posted August 31 This starts off super heavy on the ambiance before jumping into some Noisia-esque bass swells that feel incredibly cinematic. I admittedly had high hopes for how this would progress, and to your credit, I think you've brought some excellent sounds and ideas to the table. For a lot of the track, it works well, but Brad correctly identified that there are some production choices on the beat-driven parts that are holding this back. The lack of sidechaining from your kick drum to the secondary elements is preventing this from truly locking into a groove, and also contributes a tremendous amount of mud. Whenever you have your kick going, you need to be doing some level of ducking on your pads, strings, bass, and even a little bit to your leads - otherwise, there's simply too much going on in the frequency spectrum. There's also a noise layer that appears to be present in the background for those sections that I would back off on significantly - at the very least, throw a high pass filter on it so it's not competing with the bass/kick so much, but ideally that should also be receiving some sidechain treatment. The guitar sounds fine to me but is also VERY loud - I think you need to be more surgical with the volume level adjustments on each element in the mix. Be deliberate with which instruments you want to be front and center in each section and back off on the gain for the other parts. I actually don't really have an issue with the sound choices overall - I think with the right mixing treatment, this could absolutely work as-is. Although I don't think the synth elements are necessarily more engaging than the original, you do substantially differentiate your arrangement through texture, orchestration, and atmosphere. It feels very ambitious and cinematic and I enjoy the concept tremendously. At its core though, the mixing needs work so that the sounds gel with each other and contribute to the groove, rather than stepping on each others toes. NO (resubmit!) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hemophiliac Posted Tuesday at 08:27 PM Share Posted Tuesday at 08:27 PM I'm in agreement with my fellow J's on this one. The arrangement itself on a macro level is good and I enjoy listening to this one. The part that needs improvement is the production and mixdown. From 0:00-1:25 everything works for me, and sounds pretty good. At 1:26 a slightly different bass synth enters and takes up a lot of the space. It's got a bunch of high-end on it that crowds out the other parts from being balanced with it, some top end reduction with EQ could help to tame it. I agree with Emunator about side-chaining as well. It isn't required to have some to clean it up, but it would really help in creating a lot of space and helping to lessen the muddiness. There is some general part imbalance during the upbeat sections where I'm not sure what the focus is supposed to be because of the size of the bass. I like how both sources are incorporated and how the overall flow of the piece works very well. The production is what is holding it back unfortunately. This would be the kind of piece that could benefit from some feedback in the workshop if you need more suggestions on how to clean up the balance between parts or reduce muddiness. NO (resubmit) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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