prophetik music Posted September 6 Share Posted September 6 (edited) (Submitted as part of the TimeShift Album) Credits Azmodea - Vocals For me, Stellaris's "Faster Than Light" encapsulates the essence of what makes the game so compelling. As a fledgling spacefaring empire, you're ready to ignite your first-ever faster-than-light drive and embark on a journey to explore and colonize the stars. This piece is filled with hope and optimism, and Mia Steagmar's vocal performance in the original is nothing short of angelic. My arrangement of this piece stemmed from a challenge on the 8-Bit Music Theory server in mid-2021: to transform a track into an apocalyptic version of itself. The concept behind "Faster Than Light, (But Not Fast Enough)" envisions a failed empire that encountered an insurmountable enemy or obstacle and is now on the brink of destruction. The once hopeful and celebratory theme is transformed into a mournful lament, with my wife, Azmodea, delivering a heartbreaking rendition of the first two verses. In the second verse, she is joined by Solaria and Mia (both from Synthesizer V), whose harmonization amplifies the dramatic impact. The piece, which begins with tremolo double basses beneath a solo violin, concludes with the quiet, solemn notes of a harp—an echo of a fallen empire. I want to extend my gratitude to Emunator for helping refine this track to meet OCR standards, teaching me how to transform my initially stiff VST strings into something far more organic, providing a heart-wrenching VST flute, and offering numerous pointers on the mix—especially on taming the timpani to prevent it from muddying the low end. Special thanks also to timelovesahero for inspiring the harmonization of the lyrics in the second verse. Games & Sources Stellaris - Faster Than Light (Vocal Version) Edited December 10 by Chimpazilla closed decision Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
prophetik music Posted September 10 Author Share Posted September 10 played quite a bit of this, and this track comes around a lot. thought about doing a take on it myself too at some point. some aggressive tremelo strings to start. there's a piano gliss at 0:22 that's really not realistic at all (shouldn't be all the same velocity, should schmear into one another). if the goal is as a transitional element, i'd recommend keeping it more scalar. as it is, it sticks out too much. this same gliss is repeated at least five times in the track and it's pretty obviously a copied part for each. vocals come in at 0:43 and they're very forward - in my opinion way too forward. they should sit back a lot farther in the mix. i can hear the background elements getting crushed pretty hard. i don't know if i'm a huge fan of the layering either - there's some flutter in azmodea's tone, and unisons are by far the hardest interval to tune properly. i wonder if it won't be as noticeable farther back in the mix. i'd recommend turning it down a lot - like by half - and then slowly bringing it up so that you can hear the vocals clearly but they settle in next to the backing elements. there's some other technical suggestions i'd have around the vocal performance (mostly just opening up your mouth on the higher notes and the ee vowels to avoid a thinner texture due to the lyrics and mouth shape required for the words) as well. there's a more full orchestral section that starts at about 1:25. the idea of this section is nice - a fuller orchestral section that showcases some of the movement that's so common in the Stellaris score - but the execution is that it feels like a string pad with some percussion around it. note how waldetoft's orchestration of his original have tons of movement in all parts, and there's rarely long sustains in any one part for an extended section of time. i'd encourage you to emulate that level of movement. second verse's vocals are farther back in the mix and settle in better, but they're still too loud. there's some timelessness to the performance which is a nice contrast to how rhythmic the other elements are. this is again followed by an orchestral section that's got more movement to it. the flute's got a few chuffs that don't feel super realistic, but the orchestral elements below it are copypasta from before to my ears. the track goes through the descending pattern a few more times. there's a harp section at the very end and then a broken arpeggiated chord twice at the end - i'd definitely recommend playing with your tempo in this section as it sounds very robotic right now - think about starting the chord arpeggio slowly and speeding up as you get higher, and then 'strum' the last chord much quicker. you're also going to want to mess with the velocities to get more appropriate timbre from lighter or heavier articulations. i think this has a lot of promise in the concept! there's a lot of partwriting and cleanup work to do still, but i definitely think that this arrangement has legs. NO Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Liontamer Posted November 9 Share Posted November 9 Cool original; very lush initially. Interesting opening to the arrangement, with lots of tension. Piano cameo at :20 was too bright in tone to work as transition instrumentation; totally out of place. A choral of Azmodea's vocal lines come in at :42 sounding dry and pitchy, and mixed too loudly; they chorus half-decently, but you hear a lot of wavering, and then you hear some lines drop out as others' notes hold longer, which feels sloppy and disjointed. The tone's actually not terrible, but often sounds squawky. The vocal blending at 2:08's section sounds noticeably smoother, but it's a matter of degrees because the same overall issues are still there; loud, dry, pitchy, different voices noticeably dropping at inconsistant times. Vocals ended at 2:50 and the track basically bookends with more orchestration of the source. Arrangement-wise, it's straightforward, but I could get behind this concept as interpretive enough. The instrumental's solid to me even though prophetik's critiques make sense. The vocals pull it down. I'm not sure their tone fits this piece, but it's not produced well enough (or with enough attention to detail) to bring synergy to the piece. The original has one voice, and while this doesn't need to mimick that approach, you could probably get more out of less with fewer layered voices and be able to smooth them out and/or mix and match the best segments. Agreed with proph at the potential here, Moebius, worth continuing on with it. NO (resubmit) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chimpazilla Posted December 10 Share Posted December 10 I agree with my fellows that the vocals are sinking this. They are loud, dry, nasal (midrangey), pitchy and wavery. I love the remix concept, but the vocals need another production pass to make them settle into the song rather than riding on top of the soundscape as they do here, and the vocal performance needs to be improved, either through retakes or extensive pitch correction, and proper processing. The rest of the instrumentation is working well, although I agree with Larry that the piano at 0:20 feels bright and out of place. For me it's primarily the vocals that need work since they are the most prominent element in the track. With the vocals sounding better this is an easy yes from me. NO (resubmit) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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