*NO* Super Mario Odyssey "Garden of Chips"

[Liontamer]

Artist Name: JSABlixer

This remix came about when I decided to listen to a bunch of my older stuff and realized that a previous remix of this song which I had made a couple years back had many neat ideas which wound up underutilized due to my... not very good skills at the time, so I decided to do more with some of the ideas in it. The whole section up to the drop (0:00-1:00) is almost completely from that original remix, and everything past that is new. While making it, I discovered the existence of the Sherm variation of the theme (which plays when you've captured a tank in-game), and realized that it fit really well with what I had already started making. It wound up sneaking its way into almost the entire second half of the remix, a decision I don't regret. It's way too groovy to not be there. I think that's about it, so enjoy!

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Games & Sources

Steam Gardens by Koji Kondo - Super Mario Odyssey by Koji Kondo

Steam Gardens (Sherm) by Koji Kondo - Super Mario Odyssey by Koji Kondo

Edited November 4 by prophetik music

[Liontamer]

After starting things very conservatively, nice curveball at 1:00 with the dropoff and then slamming things with a full soundscape, then the interpretiveness of the arrangement really picked up from that point on.

The lead from 1:25-1:49 was too loud and was also pushing down everything else, so the track was feeling imbalanced, but it wasn't for too long. Nice change of the melodic instrumentation at 1:50 to keep things fresh, then 2:29 used similar techniques as 1:00, only more intense. Nice Street of Rage "HEY!" at 2:42, that was random. :-)

I do wish this had something going on in terms of stereo/panning, but the adaptation to chiptune's effective enough that it overcomes that. JSA makes all of these chiptunes a pleasure to listen to.

YES

[prophetik music]

opens with a fun soundtest-style chord resolution, and then quickly gets into the groove. initial melodic presentation is really dense - everything's very close in both sound style and register, and i wasn't a huge fan of how dense it was. i get wanting to save the fun stuff for later, but this is nearly a quarter of the piece and it is pretty tight together. there's some new flutters and bass elements added at 0:47, which is very helpful, and then we get the entire big hit at 1:01 which is awesome as expected.

1:12 is where we get the full band sound for the first time, and it's a lot more fleshed out. i also thought that the lead at 1:25 was both too loud and kind of boring what it was doing - i wanted to hear the backing elements a lot more. this trucks through some repeated material with a few intensifiers, and then it's done.

i think overall there's a lot of missed opportunity in this one. with a reduction of quality and breadth of instrumentation, we in general require more on the arrangement side to balance that (for example, see small ensemble or piano solo works that we post). there are a lot of elements of this arrangement that are on autopilot to my ears - the drums essentially don't change for a minute plus in the middle after not changing for 40s earlier, there's the same flutter backing synths used to provide chordal elements, the melody's played with the same flips and changed elements every time that it comes back...there's a lot more copied material in here than you'd expect for a track that relies on arrangement to carry it over instrumentation or synth design.

i think there's too much repetition. there's several novel ideas in here - like i loved the little HEY shout, i like the initial presentation of the melody and the section at 1:01, etc. - but there's so many track elements just doing the same thing for 16 or 32 bars in a row that they did before. hearing the drums do the same thing for a minute when there's so many ways to mix them up and personalize them (especially with a melody line that has a lot of offbeat stuff!) is such a letdown.

 

 

NO

[Chimpazilla]

This entire track is in mono.  I understand that original chiptune could only ever have been in mono, and this remix is done in a purist style.  While not dealbreaker for OCR, the mono approach feels like such a HUGE lost opportunity to experiment with surprising blasts of WIDE STEREO after lulling the listener into a false sense of security with the mono soundscape.  At 1:01 when the first big blast hits, that's when my ears are crying out to hear things in stereo.

The soundscape does feel very cramped, and without utilizing any stereo space whatsoever, it would necessarily feel cramped.  There's no way around this in 100% mono.

I think the interpretation of this theme is very cool, and there are tons of fun ideas in this arrangement.  The instruments feel samey, and the writing gets repetitive after awhile, but again all of that is due to the chiptune-purist approach.  The drums are often on autopilot as Brad said.

I am leaning toward a NO; I agree with Brad, it is just too repetitive.  An arrangement like this could have flown back in Ye Olden Days, but in 2024 this is just too much repetition.  To use such a limited mono soundscape, the arrangement and writing would need significantly more variation to overcome the repetitiveness in this remix.

NO

[Emunator]

I agree right off the bat that this is a track that would really benefit from the chiptune++ treatment. I am certainly not suggesting that you HAVE to do that if you want to retain a purist approach, but I do think the impetus is higher to work around those limitations with a more ambitious arrangement or more dynamic programming, and unfortunately what I'm hearing doesn't really cross my threshold for that. It's close, and there's a lot to love about this, but the whole track feels very constricted and never really takes off as a result of this. The drums lack depth and impact, so even though you're clearly going for an EDM-esque drop, I don't feel the dynamic contrast compared to the buildups that come before it. It's missing that chest punch, wall-of-sound that I know this could have achieved.

The repetition doesn't bother me as much as the other judges, but I also don't think this particular track brings quite enough to the table to make up for the lack of depth that is inherent in pure chiptunes. I know you have it in you, your PVZ track feels like it achieves what I'm describing perfectly, as well as some of the tracks you've shared in Workshop hours (get that Sea of Stars track to us, stat!) However, on this piece, I just can't sign off on it without further development to the arrangement or sound field.

NO

[Flexstyle]

I can see why this is getting some back-and-forth here. I think that, with some attention to detail on variations (both with the drum sequencing and with the arrangement of the melodics), this would be a pretty easy pass. Chimpa's suggestion of moving it from the mono to the stereo field would also be a big WOW moment, if that's the direction taken. It's a good suggestion but not the reason to hold it back. 

Overall, the song moves along well enough and the sequencing is done well enough to where I'd feel comfortable posting it. If it doesn't go through, ultimately, one extra coat of polish should do the trick. I'm not gonna be the one stopping it, though. 

 

YES

[Chimpazilla]

4 hours ago, Flexstyle said:

Chimpa's suggestion of moving it from the mono to the stereo field would also be a big WOW moment, if that's the direction taken. It's a good suggestion but not the reason to hold it back. 

 

Just to be very clear, the mono aspect was not the reason for my NO.  Although I disliked the mono-only soundscape, of course that's not a reason to reject, but I felt that the arrangement was too repetitive.

[Hemophiliac]

There are some really cool ideas here and some neat chip effects as well, that make this unique. There are a lot of really cool textural changes that you do to keep things moving with a limited palette like this. 

Being mono is a bummer because it takes away from the awesome space that can be created for the bigger moments like at 1:01 when you get those big chord hits and unisons.

The biggest hit is the drums going into autopilot and just playing the same thing for long stretches of time without variation. Not only variation in pattern but some variation on the velocities within them.

Once we get past 1:01 I don't really feel like there are any changes in the dynamics either, which makes much of the track lose it's impact later.

There's a lot to like here and I enjoyed the chip-take, it's really close where it is now.  It needs less repetition and more variation to get over the hump.

NO

[XPRTNovice]

Intro: okay, I'm groovin. I'm groovin. We've got chiptune, it's lo-fi, it's fun.

Enjoy the bass coming in at :50. Not too much, still stylistically appropriate, followed by a HELL OF A DROP. I enjoyed that a LOT. It was so atypical and interesting to my ear, and then we kick this shit right in at 1:18. Got actual goosebumps there because I was not expecting it and it was very well done. 

The drums are starting to fatigue my ear here just before 2:00 - I think it might be because we have so much high end in this arrangement. With a it more low end that might temper out, or you might drop the chipsnare by a paltry 2db. 

Also loved the drops/hits at 2:35. Enjoyed how they played on the earlier thing you did, but added a little variation.

Overall, I think my brain wanted a more full soundscape of this piece, with more of the frequency spectrum being used, but that might be a stylistic departure that you're not wanting. I try hard to say less of "this is how I would do it" and more "this is what it makes me feel" so there's that. While I agree with Brad on the "missed opportunity" - which is somewhat what was trying to say above about wanting some more fullness in here -  I don't think we can equate a lack of potential to missing the bar. 

YES

[Gario]

Oh wow, pure chiptune, in the year of our Lord 2024? Don't mind if I do!

Source is pretty catchy once you listen to it (not familiar with Odyssey's OST, myself), and this arrangement very clearly represents a version of it that could've perhaps been on a beefed up gameboy. The technical achievements in this remind me of the ol' chiptune work of Zef (a nice compliment, if you're at all familiar with his chiptunes!), and overall the soundscape makes nice use of the chips to give us a full and often dynamic arrangement (lookin' at that surprise drop at 1:00).

As mentioned by Chimpzilla, this being 100% mono, while adding to some of the authenticity does cause issues of clarity. I'm feeling it hard at 0:22, where I can barely hear the lead when everything is playing - there are just too many instruments sharing similar timbres sharing the same EQ space playing at similar levels. Spreading the instruments out in the space would really help the listener pick out the parts without impacting the listening experience.

And while I may be being a tad harsh, there are too many instruments for this to be 100% hardware accurate, so if we're going to compromise in that department why not provide us stereo sound so that we can hear what you crafted better? Even Rushjet1 settled with this compromise for his 2015 "Dark Depths of Wily's Castle" arrangement, and it sounds all the better for it.

There are also issues of repetition in the arrangement that are hard to justify - the direct repetition of 1:51 at 2:04 is a pretty big example of it. Repeats like this sound like filler; if you need to use similar material to fill the space give the listener a reason to listen to it: embellish, play with expectations, etc.. Direct repetition turns the listener off and tires them out.

Overall it's fantastic when it's firing on all cylinders, but it needs some polish on the areas that are less than it's fantastic highs. I suggest the stereo spread to help with the mixing clarity of the arrangement, otherwise you'll need to either work with the dynamics of the dense textures when the lead is drown or move the lead so it doesn't share the same space and timbre as the accompaniment. As for the more repetitive elements, either give the listener a reason to return to them with variations or leave em' on the cutting room floor, the arrangement will be a much better listening experience for it. Really enjoyed the arrangement, hope it comes back with the TLC it deserves so we can put it on the site!

NO

[Rexy]

I love the direction as well.  I felt like it lured me into a false sense of security with an adaptation for what sounded like a single Game Boy as opposed to two, and then all of a sudden, it started developing with a busier soundscape and textural shifts to make this two-variation direction work.    That also makes me feel confident that you are getting a whole load of mileage out of LSDJ, no thanks to the careful attention to noise shifting and texture/pitch manipulation on the fly.   The Sherm variant is on point, the sudden Streets of Rage SFX was unexpected, and the choice of differing harmonies from the OG makes this a strong sticking point for me.

Now, repetition-wise, the only thing that feels like a problem for me is the drum writing, which has the same pattern outside of fills and breaks.  The tonal elements around feel like enough work as the sum of their parts for me to consistently see them as dealbreakers, but the basic boots-and-cats-and-etc setup runs its course very quickly.  Drumwriting isn't easy to work on, but studying other potential ideas for grooves and figuring out how to implement them into your software is a good idea.

Similarly, with six channels of pulses and two of noise, the mono sound also feels like it's hurting the mixdown so much, to the point that I'd like to hear the details of each individual channel rather than them mushing together.  From what I saw in the LSDJ manual, there should be a way to mute individual channels and put them all into a single DAW, then tweak their properties (panning, EQ, other effects) from there - which I'm under the impression is how gravitygauntlet mixed down some previous work of yours.

It's a fun fakebit arrangement, and it'll be amazing to see on the site, but it needs some repetition re-work and another mix pass.  Know that you have a great network to assist on the latter when required - you've got this.

NO (resubmit)