*NO* Bloodborne & Dark Souls 3 "A Fugue for a Hunter / A Reverie for a Beast"

[prophetik music]

*PROJECT - OCR TIMESHIFT ALBUM*

COLLABORATORS:

• gravitygauntlet - ADDITIONAL LAYERED SYNTHS, DRUMS & COMPOSITIONAL VSTI
• Rad Decision - ARRANGEMENT TRANSPOSITION TO F#M; ADDITIONAL SPOOKY SFX
• JSABlixer - ADDITIONAL GAMEBOY TRANSITIONAL SFX

. . .Bloodborne Kart, anyone? :D

Taking "Ol' Skool" VGM leitmotif into the modern age, this remix of Bloodborne and Dark Souls 3 sources is the love-child of my immense passion and intrigue for the SoulsBorne-series of games created by FromSoft, fused with the games of my generation that SoulsBorne may take influence from (i.e. Castlevania). I felt it appropriate for the TimeShift album to give these sources a sort of..."vintage coat of paint", with the delicately curated soundscape and design, to make it feel as if "this is Souls-like, but--" GameBoy Advance or Nintendo 64; and it has felt like such a wonderful way to showcase and marry the concept of time (by honoring both a NEW and an OLD game franchise), and how both have, and still does, shape my being, my pursuits and my life. At 36 years of age (at the time of writing this), I've lived long enough to see the span of video games grow and flourish across *so many* different genres, eras and consoles, and *still* witness and enjoy them to this day. This goes for OverClocked ReMix as well, as both a site and a purveyor of the finest quality VGM remixes--having had built a library of them and skulked around the site for decades at this point, (practically since its inception, back when I was in late-junior high / early-high school!) Being able to meld my adoration for the old and the new within this has been a blessing, an honor and a joy, and I hope others will cast aside their weak flesh and join us Beasts of the Old Blood for the danse macabre of merriment on this dark-lit moon night. <3

This song is not only in dedication to OCRemix's 25th Anniversary celebration, but to...someone special and personal, who is extremely and very dear to me. . . He got me into the SoulsBorne series years ago, we've shared lots of fun times in general together since meeting on Final Fantasy XIV and sharing in our mutual love of both franchises, and hopefully many more to come. Ten plus years knowing him, and so many more of me knowing about OCRemix. I am so thankful to have become a part of this community and the VGM-sphere as a whole. This is my gift to everyone in it, however--

-- Kaz, this one's for you, with my deepest, heartfelt love and respect.

Cheers everybody, enjoy, and a big thank you to all who listen to this song now and forevermore.

Big hugs and shout-out to EVERYONE as well who were involved in the TimeShift project Discord, collaborated with me on this, or just lent ears for feedback and helped out. Y'all are the true all-stars and champions here. Thank you so much, from the bottom of my heart.

#

SUMMARY OF THE REMIX:

A hauntingly 'jovial' church ceremony and dance -- this remix has seemingly turned from an overtly horror-trope-y, slow death requiem march/choral mass to a more German classical opera/French Baroque, stately Castlevania 64-style arrangement, by changing it from the Dm -> Bm of the original main source (Ludwig's boss themes) into F#m. My hope is the wonderful mixture of realistic cinematic instrumentation and percussion as the bedrock / foundation, with the very modern Hip-Hop / R&B spin and structure on a chiptune platter of cherries on top are both saucy and unique for the sources used.

One other note--besides SFX and atmospheres used, and the VO, *everything presented here* in the remix arrangement was hand-written by me via MIDI piano roll. Not a SINGLE line of drums or beat or instrumentation is a loop of some kind unless I made it from scratch. :) This will also be my first mix in actually writing CCs on MIDI lines for orchestral dynamics and expression. :D So, indeed, onwards and upwards. <3 A big thank you to those in the Discord chat who helped me to learn how to do it.

REMIX INFLUENCES & INSPIRATIONS:

• 1980s Slasher Flicks (Halloween & Nightmare on Elm Street, specifically--you can hear it in the Intro's keyboards/piano, chiptune and staccato/spiccato strings hitting the fast bouncy plucks as countermelodies/counterharmonies to the mains @ 2:19)
• Phantom of the Opera (e.g. the pipe organs)
• Hammer Horror (Dracula, specifically--lines and FX of VO utilizes Francis Ford Coppola's 'Bram Stoker's Dracula' [1992] dialogue and wolf howls @ 5:21)
• Castlevania (N64/GBA-era: examples - 1, 2, 3, 4)
• Goosebumps / Are You Afraid of the Dark? (90s references & vibes)
• Old 1930s-50s radio plays, cinematics and horror/sci-fi dramas (e.g. War of the Worlds, hence the voice acting and VO FX)
• Black Violin

#

SOURCES USED AND THEIR PARTS (EVERY SOURCE TRANSPOSED FROM Dm/Bm TO F#m, BY COURTESY AND HELP OF RAD DECISION):

• Main Source - Ludwig - Accursed & Holy Blade: [P1] 00:00 - 04:18 / [Transition & Interlude for Boss Cutscene] 03:03 - 04:18 = Ludwig the Accursed; [P2] 04:19 - End = Ludwig the Holy Blade
• Father Gascoigne Boss Theme (utilizing the horn and bass stabs that start around 00:20)
• Cleric Beast / Vicar Amelia Boss Theme (utilizing the choir lines starting @ 00:15)
• Vordt of the Boreal Valley Boss Theme (utilizing the choir lines starting @ 01:48)

 

SOURCE & REFERENCE BREAKDOWN:

1. 00:00 - 02:42 = Modified / expanded version of Ludwig the Accursed's first few bars of its melody line and chords, stretched to become the intro and building operatic landscape for the piece
2. 01:24 - 02:05 = FATHER GASCOIGNE bass stabs w/ Ludwig solo violin & chiptune melody
3. 02:19 - 02:42 = repeated pulsing arp piano & string hits [spicc & stacc] are reminiscent of and take inspiration directly from the theme of the movie Halloween; the sound palette of the keyboard synth hits & chiptune plink-plonk are a reflection of the same motif used in the original Nightmare on Elm Street theme
4. 02:32 - 03:03 = FATHER GASCOIGNE rising horn section present as a transition assist
5. 03:04 - 05:41 = LUDWIG THE ACCURSED, in full
6. 03:52 - 04:34 = VORDT OF THE BOREAL VALLEY choir present (from Phase 2 of his original boss fight source); starts out being heard by the soft choir synth growing louder and louder, and then becomes the organs, timpani & percs (marimbas, xylophones & hand bell hits) as part of the larger swelling, ebb and flow orchestra set; other instruments, tubular bells and chimes continue the remainder of LUDWIG THE ACCURSED up until the source's transitional break
7. 04:56 - 05:42 = LUDWIG'S cutscene / transition Interlude
8. 05:24 - 05:42 = CLERIC BEAST choir present; crescendos in-behind the Dracula lines, and the rising tension, chattering strings as part of the LUDWIG transition into Phase 2, HOLY BLADE
9. 05:42 - END = LUDWIG THE HOLY BLADE, in full [switches up to a brief +3 semitones up / Minor Key Change @ 08:33-34 - 08:48]
10. 07:36 - 08:05 & 08:12 - 08:52 = CLERIC BEAST choir chords return as the trancey, pulsating, zappy synth stings, which are paired with the synth choirs as part of the finale

----

* NOTE -- ALL VOs [except the Dracula VA insert] COME FROM BLOODBORNE AND ITS DLC, THE OLD HUNTERS, BY THE FOLLOWING CHARACTERS - Micolash--Host of the Nightmare, Vicar Amelia, Father Gascoigne the Hunter and Ludwig the Accursed.

** Instrumentals were layered with gravity's own VSTi renders, playing similar MIDI content; Rad Decision assisted with adding ghostly, haunting winds and howls, as well as key transposition duties; you can hear JSA's contributions towards the end of the remix, where underneath Ludwig's dialogue are GameBoy noise/static sweeps and crunch paired with the scary, rising strings and other accompaniment as part of the transition to a faster BPM.

---

Games & Sources

BLOODBORNE - THE OLD HUNTERS Original Soundtrack; Tracks 4 & 5 - Ludwig, The Holy Blade & Ludwig, The Accursed; Artist(s): SIE Sound Team / Ryan Amon, Tsukasa Saitoh, Michael Wandmacher, Yuka Kitamura, Cris Velasco & Nobuyoshi Suzuki; Release Date: 2015; Label: Sony / Bandai Namco

 

BLOODBORNE Original Soundtrack; Track 4 - The Hunter [Father Gascoigne] & Track 5 - Cleric Beast [Vicar Amelia]; Artist(s): SIE Sound Team / Ryan Amon, Tsukasa Saitoh, Michael Wandmacher, Yuka Kitamura, Cris Velasco & Nobuyoshi Suzuki; Release Date: 2015; Label: Sony / Bandai Namco

 

DARK SOULS 3 Original Soundtrack; Track 6 - Vordt of the Boreal Valley; Artist(s): Nobuyoshi Suzuki and Yuka Kitamura; Release Date: 2016; Label: Sony / Bandai Namco

 

Edited Tuesday at 07:14 PM by Chimpazilla
closed decision

[prophetik music]

opens with foley and voiceover elements, As Is Tradition for a VQ track. i don't know where the melodic material happening behind the voiceovers comes from. some more elements come in around 1:50 and there's some keyboard elements that are lacking in velocitization, but there's some interesting textures being used here as more and more orchestral elements come in. there's a transition around 2:40ish with some horns, and they don't sound great - really blatty and far away, i think there's some extra processing on them that's causing them to sound more distant and lacking in attack than you'd expect.

there's a hard shift at 3:03 to the organ as a lead instrument. there's a bass with some attack modulation on it, and a few other elements added in like some strings and bells as a percussive element. this instrumentation doesn't blend at all with the prior section, it lacks intensity as compared to the original and what's been brewing in this remix so far, and i honestly am having trouble mapping it to the original as more than just the chord structure if even that. the chords that enter with the vordt theme also feel transformed beyond where their relationship to the original is not apparent. most of these instruments have a lot of bass content as well and they've overlapping a lot (an issue i run into with organ often). this noodles through the chord progression, continues to feel muddy and indirect with motion, and then hits a big section of falling action at 4:56.

5:42 is the Holy Blade section. the representation here again feels like there's no clear direction for a while, with the instrumentation kind of all doing its own thing and not coming together to a cohesive thing until 6:20. i can hear the adaptation of the Holy Blade descending riff here much clearer, which is good. the original's intensity and verve isn't present, which is kind of an interesting albeit confusing correlation against the fairly intense vocal lines and speed increase at the 7 minute mark. the entire section starting around 7:20 is probably the most cohesive section you've got in the entire piece, but i'd say that also it's still rife with similar issues as before, like the big buzzy bass instrument taking up a ton of frequency range and a lead that's hard to hear what's going on, and overall it's wandering instead of feeling like it's got a driving melodic element that's leading it. there's a sudden break and then the end comes out of nowhere.

overall i don't care for most of the direction of the work at all. i feel it's way more focused on the voiceover than on the music in the first several minutes and a few significant chunks after that (like between a quarter and a third of the track feels voiceover-driven). separately i feel it wanders throughout without focus on a melodic element or even a timbral element - there's no direction, and so it's hard to keep track of what's going on. the majority of the work, it's not clear where the music is coming from - it's either so heavily transformed or reduced that i can't map it. lastly, in several sections including the organ part at 3:03 and the holy blade section, there's a lot of overlapping elements in similar frequency ranges, so it's hard to understand aurally what's going on where.

i'd be remiss to say that i just don't get a lot of the dynamics and 'story' of the work overall. there's some neat building action through the first few minutes, but the release of that energy is...the horn section around 2:40, which doesn't use it at all. then there's another big build into the organ section, and that almost immediately disperses the build into a chordal exploration that i had trouble identifying where it comes from. similarly, the end of this section falls off almost immediately into a big voiceover-focused section that actually has no music playing for several seconds in it. the shape and macro direction of the work is not clear.

these are not easy fixes. i think that making the correlations to the originals in the earlier sections will make the volume (and volume) of the voiceovers more palatable, even if i think most of them are gross-sounding (not a horror fan, sorry). i think that really taking a critical eye to the organ section at 3:03 and EQing and/or changing instrumentation and instrument ranges so as to avoid some of the overlapping freqs will make that section easier on the ears. i also think that taking a look at the sections where the references to the original are basically just chord changes (long sections, like the two minutes after the organ comes in, or most of the minute before that) with very modified moving lines above them, and finding ways to tie those clearly and directly to the original will help a lot. lastly, finding ways to more consistently handle the builds and releases of the energy you build up in some of these sections would help immensely. i kept feeling let down when builds and ensemble crescendos didn't go anywhere - it happens four or five times at least throughout the work.

it's going to sound like i didn't enjoy much of this at all. to be honest, i didn't! but it's not required for me to enjoy the piece in order to critique the technical and arrangement elements. right now the scope and vision feels too big. i think overall that this needs a lot of transformative work to reign in the wilder bits and focus it more, so as to be more effective at conveying what you're trying to convey. right now it's a wildly imaginative, visionary, probably over-extending attempt.

 

 

NO

Edited October 9 by prophetik music

[Liontamer]

Seemingly a non sequitur intro; not recognizing anything for a while until the melody at :59, but there's lots of runway here, and the string-like lead sounds OK, like it's blended with chiptune. Abrupt change in the SFX at 1:10; doesn't sound good when it's jumpy like that. Lone synth at 1:23 sounds awesome as hell, like VRC7 chiptune stuff, then it's joined by another line at 1:37. The sample voices are cheesy to me; not offensive, but not fully cohesive. The piano line's VERY stiff though. In contrast, the VRC7-like line had a vibrato-like effect on it that humanized it (rather than sounding like inhuman sustains for each individual note). That said, I really like the tone there of that chippy lead, and there's lots of room for expansion and variations.

Wait, hold up. :'-( After the (abrupt) change in instrumentation at 2:42, things fell apart, IMO. Brass sample was very exposed as unrealistic coupled with a spooky-line that doesn't really mix with the gravity of the sampled voice work, then adding in some lonely-sounding kicks, then a change to a very mechanical-sounding organ line at 3:03 and some bizarre FM-synth writing around 3:08 that was kind of atonal. Sleigh bells added at 3:20, huh? Then very robotic-sounding organ and drums that both needed to sound denser at 3:28 and this texture is scattershot. Then a bubbly, brighter FM line's brought in at 3:39, then some castanets at 3:51 with machine gun triggering on them (no velocity variations) that exposes the sample, and just none of the sound design has synergy, no flow, no direction. Not sure what part that it coming in at 4:06, but the timing on that's also very quantized and devoid of any fluidity.

At 5:01, I'm digging the more understated instrumentation, but once it gets louder and more involved. I also liked the electronic string sound from 5:15-5:24.

Back to overly quantized writing at 5:43. Some sort of blippy percussion stuff added at 6:18 that doesn't have synergy with the string stabs, which aren't particularly melodious. Choir at 6:35 adds a lot of mud, not a lot of direction. Whatever buzzing line was introduced at 7:12 just cluttered up the soundscape; if it's meant to sound distorted, OK, but it comes off as messing up the texture rather than adding any stylistic flavor to it. The organ like at 8:05 seems like it's doubled by some sort of weird robovox-type lines, I'm not sure.

Not sure what can be done here. Past a point, I didn't hone in on how well the voice clips fit because there's so much that's not working that it didn't need to be focused on. I can see why prophetik said they're overkill. Same for the source usage; I ultimately didn't need to track it or even grok it because it was a moot point due to these other issues. Even if this wasn't so stiffly timed, the instrumentation doesn't click or mesh together either. It really doesn't matter what the genre is, it can't be in state of musical rigor where everything sounds quantized, otherwise it's a non-starter.

The only difficulty in offering this feedback is the possibility that it's taken on a personal level as opposed to assessing this piece of music. It's always offered in the attempt to lift you up to a higher skill level instead of tear you down. You often have good ideas, and have had plenty of arrangements you've helmed approved. I stand by the strong praise for your Lufia II album track, which was awesome.

It'll sound like I think you shouldn't or can't make good music; it's a matter of understanding where your weaknesses are and instead actively playing to your strengths. To me, it feels like some of your work very much needs needs a governor in the form of a co-arranger/co-pilot focused on musicality, production, and cohesion. And, as I've said before to HoboKa, I don't believe your current pitch perception is where it needs to be to effectively executive very interpretive arrangement concepts; to stay effective, color more in the lines with melodically conservative approaches, and make your instrumentation, ornamentations, and sound design be the primary ways you personalize your arrangements. In the meantime, spend more time on your pitch perception, and study up on how to make sequenced music sound more fluid.

NO

[Chimpazilla]

Oh gosh.  Nine minutes, ok wow.  I think I am going to organize my thoughts into bullet points.  It still may sound stream-of-consciousness, but bear with me.

• Too ambitious:  These arrangements are humongous; this one is the longest one yet, of the ones I have heard.  Starts with a ton of voiceover work, nearly two and a half minutes of spoken vocal before anything really melodic arrives.  That may be cool for a story-type video or audio drama, but it isn't really great as a standalone arrangement for OCR.
• Stiff sequencing:  The piano beginning after the two minute mark is very robotic, having no humanization at all.  The organ has the same problem when it arrives.  The choir, when it is exposed such as at 4:34-4:55 the choir sounds like an oppressive wall of sound rather than an emotive element, due to having a fast attack and long release, no swells, no motion to it, just a block of fake-sounding, overly loud, choir sound.
• Mismatched melodic and rhythmic patterns:  There are many written patterns in this soundscape, and often they are clashing melodically as well as rhythmically.  At 2:45 as things are just getting started, there's a drum beat and brass and a synthy thing, none of which sounds good together and the patterns are confusing rhythmically and melodically.  At 5:43, the soundscape is simple and sparse, but the patterns being played by drums and bass/synths just feels awkward.  Starting at 6:18, it finally makes sense and I can hear and feel a nice 6/8 time signature.  However when the choir joins back in at 6:36, it feels less groovy and more wall-of-sound.  At 7:08, once again I cannot connect to the pattern until 7:22 when the drums return.  But at 7:22, there are backing chords that aren't helping me make sense of things, and the melody writing feels so hectic and random.
• Melody lines lack melodic contour, as the notes jump around randomly.  An example is 4:07, the melody is so jumpy all the way until 4:33.   This may be literal source writing, but it doesn't fit nicely with the other writing here, it sounds forced, like the melody is being shoehorned into this part of the track.  At 7:22 all the way to the end, again the lead melodic writing is too random for me to follow, it lacks proper melodic contour and ends up sounding super confusing.   This may be verbatim source writing, but with so many sources combined like this, it does not work melodically or rhythmically.  The choir starting at 8:21 is playing a pattern that is way too busy for a backing element/pad, and together with the random sounding bassline and lead writing, it is making my brain melt trying to follow along.
• Too many source songs combined:  It is too difficult for mere mortals to sort out all these combinations, lead from this source, bass from that source, choir from something else... and it doesn't always work together melodically or rhythmically.  And these are not simple sources, they are complex orchestral pieces each unto themselves, so combining writing from two or more of them at once is going to be an almost impossible task.
• Tons of spoken vocals, often interrupting the flow.  Not a dealbreaker, it just adds to the piece sounding overdone.
• The mixing is fairly decent considering how many elements play together at any given time, but it is nearly impossible to get a clean sounding soundscape with so many instruments in similar frequency ranges playing together so much of the time.  As it stands, the mix sounds majorly overcooked to me.

I am so sorry to be giving such detailed feedback that I'm sure will be viewed as negative, but I will say again what I said on an earlier track I voted on.  I recommend starting with much shorter/simpler source songs, and build out an arrangement with a simpler instrument palette and simpler writing, with fewer patterns playing at any given time, while learning about combining sounds that work well together, and writing that compliments each other rather than conflicting or making the patterns too hectic.  You definitely have strengths in arrangement crafting, just gotta revisit some basics to make it work right.

NO