Emunator Posted July 18 Share Posted July 18 (edited) Artist Name: Mel Decision I wrote this song for an 8Bit Music Theory discord weekly challenge to "make a mash-up arrangement from at least two SNES songs." I thought it would be kind of funny to go for two of the most widely-remixed SNES songs I could think of, Schala's Theme from Chrono Trigger and Terra's Theme from FFVI. Thinking about it, mashing up these songs felt appropriate—both Schala and Terra were women possessing vast magical talents, both used by powerful countries as weapons—Terra as a slave for the Gestahlian Empire, and Schala to power Zeal's Mammon Machine. I wanted each melody to get the spotlight, while still twining together underlying parts of each song throughout the piece. I transposed the songs into the same key so it would be easier to meld them together. I was feeling synths and a trap beat for this piece (idk why, vibes?), and I ended up experimenting with some new sounds and production techniques to fill out the arrangement. As always thanks to the amazing OCR discord community for ongoing feedback and support on this mix! Games & Sources Chrono Trigger: Schala's Theme by Yasunori Mitsuda. - Melody used 0:00–1:00, 2:30–3:03, 3:50–end - Accompaniment used throughout FFVI: Terra's Theme by Nobuo Uematsu. - Melody used 1:06–2:30, 3:03—3:51 - Accompaniment used throughout Edited October 7 by Chimpazilla closed decision Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
prophetik music Posted July 22 Share Posted July 22 (edited) schala's theme is just too good. opens with some filtered arps into the terra theme at 0:12. hats here are really bright, probably too much so. bass has the martial rhythm from the original, and there's a countermelodic element but no pads or kick. 0:36's where the kick comes in, and the beat here is really nice. i think the hats are still a bit too loud - some automation on the volume may help with that? - and there's tbh not a lot of arrangement going on here, this is a lot of 1:1 translation. it's really dangerous working with top-tier originals IMO because it's so easy to just lean on what made those originals great...but then it's not your mix, it's someone else's. finding ways to make your take unique and yours is a critical aspect when you touch Mt. Rushmore tracks like this. i don't think you do that here. 1:06's a big whooshy hit transition, and we shift into schala's material. i like the layering of terra's theme on top of this, as well as using the original terra's theme synth used before for schala's material. i would like to hear more mel in the way the instruments present the material here, but the dovetailing is nice. same with the following section at 2:07. 2:30's got some weird notes in the bass (specifically at 2:42, 2:49, and 2:54). also at this point the lead's getting overused - it's been going for most of the track and it's starting to feel pretty dry. there's a shift at 3:03 to a new tempo-synced lead. this is very loud - it's way over the top of everything around it, and the tempo sync feels weird when nothing else has a rhythmic element around it. there's an outro that starts at about 3:50. the bass element through most of this sounds like it's detuned and it sounds super weird as a result. there's a bit of arps and it's done. from a synth perspective - several of your synths don't have verb on them, which sounds a bit weird to my ears when they're leads. adding some presence to them can help fit them into the mix easier and helps sand off rough edges. from a mastering perspective, this mix has a lot on the edges of the freq spectrum. there's a ton of bass and sub-bass content, so it tends to feel heavy on the low end. i believe this is due to the bass not having anything to prevent the bottom from spilling over. separately, the hats are very loud and in front of everything all the time. bringing them down a touch will help everything fit together better, i think. overall, i found the arrangement's dovetailing to be really nice. i do feel however that the mix meanders a lot in the middle two minutes or so. you've got a strong focus to start and end the track, but it kind of wanders in zero-energy territory from 1:05 through at least 3:00. finding a way to inject some extra meat into that will help a lot - this is maybe an opportunity to explore some other synth choices or feels before coming back to what worked at first in the last section. i think overall i'd like to hear more mel and less original, too. even just personalizing the melodic lines here and there can make a huge difference. that first minute for example feels word-for-word what is in the original for terra - there's a lot of synth window dressing, but it sounds a lot like a sound upgrade. making that not be the case is important, especially for an original that's so recognizable. you don't want your remix carried by the quality of the original composition - you want it to be carried by what you're doing to it. i think that this is really close. i really think the feel in that first minute is pretty well done. finding a way to add some energy in the middle, fixing some of the mastering missteps, and injecting more mel into the track will really make this a fantastic addition to the catalog. NO Edited July 22 by prophetik music Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Emunator Posted October 4 Author Share Posted October 4 As a proponent of shamelessly mashing up two extremely popular SNES source tunes myself, I tip my hat to your gumption here. There's certainly a lot about this approach that works - I do think some of that is simply the strength of the original compositions, but the blend of elements on a compositional level is pretty cohesive. I have no nits to pick with the arrangement here, and it doesn't surprise me that this was made for a composition-focused community challenge, because I think that's the strongest aspect of this piece! So the good news is that you've got a solid foundation. I hate to say this, but didn't find the sound design to be very engaging. Everything feels fine and competent, but compared to some of your other submissions where sound choice, I can't help but feel like the sound design component of this track is keeping it from being something greater. I find it very hard to quantify this feeling, so I hope you don't mind me being a little more unfiltered and subjective than I would normally be when voting. Everything feels serviceable, but nothing is really inspiring me. It's hard to say this especially because I can tell that there was a lot of work that went into fleshing out these sounds with different effects and selecting a wide range of patches - it's not like you just loaded up a couple of soundfonts and called it a day. I think this might be a level of personal preference for more unique sound design, so take it for what it's worth. All that said, I will express that I think the drums cross over from a matter of personal preference to a more quantifiable critique - these just sound bland here in terms of creative processing and programming. Trap drums live and die by unique fills and rhythms, and this feels like you leaned way too much on a single loop. It's extra-noticeable in the hi-hats because they poke through the mix so much due to their dryness, but it's basically doing the same short rhythmic pattern ad infinitum. At the very least, I think this aspect of the song needs to be reworked and expanded on in order for me to sign off on this. Brad also touched on some mixing critiques that I'll also cosign, but those never really escalated to the level of a dealbreaker in isolation. I know I'm probably putting off bad vibes with this vote, but I do think there's plenty of potential with this arrangement. If the drums were reworked to introduce more variety/fills and a processing chain that blended better with the rest of the song, I'd probably be able to sign off, but I also felt it was worth expressing the feelings that I came away with that were more subjective too, because you've submitted multiple songs that felt much more inspired and ambitious in terms of the sonic world you created with them and I'd love to see you lean more into those impulses here and on future songs. I hope this comes across in the spirit it was intended! :) NO Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chimpazilla Posted October 7 Share Posted October 7 I think Wes explained things perfectly here. This is a nice arrangement, but the sound choices are very simple and the production sounds dated. The trap hats are indeed too repetitive (one loop repeated all the way through, no fills or variations) and too loud/dry. The arrangement is laid out very well and has good dynamics, including an intro, verse/chorus, breakdown etc. The drum writing and sounds/processing is probably my biggest dealbreaker, same as it is for Wes. The repetitive drum writing is taking the energy of the track way down below where it should be, and that's a missed opportunity for a very groovy track to exist. Another way to introduce tons of groove is by sidechaining the kick to the instruments in varying amounts (basses and pads get more, plucks/leads/percs get less). I don't hear any sidechaining in this mix whatsoever. At a minimum the bass and pads should get some sidechaining. Again this isn't a dealbreaker in and of itself, but it's a missed opportunity for groove. I think the drum sounds and programming alone are enough to request a resub, so that's what I'm going to do. You've gotten some great advice in this thread, so I look forward to hearing this again with improvements made! NO (resubmit) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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