Liontamer ⚖️ Posted January 12 Posted January 12 Artist Name: TheManPF Additional artists: Zach Chapman; angrypolarbear; Ronin Op F; Jake Helland Last month on DoD we had what a lot of people called a pseudo free month due to the source choice freedom, Super Smash Bros. month, I personally picked that theme last year because I believed it was way overdue for one of those right? It's a celebration of videogame franchises and we're celebrating that celebration with more video game music, neat! It's very rare for me to cover the same game twice, let alone the same theme!! But that's basically what this is, it's technically a different song, but Final Destination takes heavily from Brawl's main theme and it wouldn't exist without it, it's also a track that I always adored and, like I said in my last Smash Bros. submission, I always wanted to cover but didn't know how. This time, instead of going outside of my comfort zone, I did the opposite, I've became a lot more confident with my metal sound lately and I wanted to embrace it, and did an arrangement that stays somewhat conservative but takes it to the next level, with some help from my friends, of course. Chris "angrypolarbear" Doughty is someone who I never collabed with on a main track in DoD before and that's a blasphemy, it's also someone who I can't find in the OCR database, how come???? Here he is in keyboard duty, playing all of the pianos, synths (including improvised solos!) and also helping with the choir. He's a beast, and everything he does he does it with a lot of passion and love, and I'm glad I could have him on my side for this one. Ronin Op F is my go to violinist, he absolutely shreds on his thing and delivers his parts with a lot of finesse and even does his own solos, please give him more praise! He deserves so much more spotlight than he gets. Jake Helland helps with the acoustic guitars in this one, in a middle break taken straight from wily theme, where I have him shred on steel and nylon strings for a few measures, he's the final piece of the puzzle in the Dog Food For Bananas group, which I thought would be super awesome to have all three of for this collab. Zach is delivering the bass lines and he, of course, as always, absolutely kills it. He also recorded a few vocals for the choir along with Chris and I. I did some guitars choir arranging mix etc whatever that's not important tho This is the first time in what feels like forever that I get a medal in DoD (2nd place!!), I purposefully tried to go out with a bang since, like the title implies, this is the end for me (for now), and I want to drop DoD mains for a while, while I focus on other fun things that may be coming in the future, look forward to it! Lyrics: Audi famam illius Solus in hostes ruit Et patriam servavit Audi famam illius Cucurrit quaeque Tetigit destruens Audi famam illius Audi famam illius Audi famam illius Audi famam illius Iuxta me Socii sunt mihi Qui olim viri fortes Rivalesque rant Saeve certando Pugnandoque Splendor crescit Spes omnibus mihi quoque Spes omnibus mihi quoque Audi famam illius Solus in hostes ruit Et patriam servavit Audi famam illius Cucurrit quaeque Tetigit destruens Games & Sources Games & Sources Game: Super Smash Bros. Brawl Songs arranged: Final Destination (https://youtu.be/sqYpWVH0wOQ) Original composer: Nobuo Uematsu; Uematsu composed Brawl's Main Theme, the Final Destination version seems to be arranged by Takahiro Nishi? Not entirely sure, this information is surprisingly hard to find System: Wii Year: 2008
prophetik music ⚖️ Posted January 16 Posted January 16 opens with similar orchestra and flourishes. vocals have probably a bit too much reverb and not enough formant boost, so they're hard to make out. the backing elements are frenetic and intense, which is fun. the guitars lead at about 0:39, and there's some violin in there as well. the lead into 1:02 is great, big and intense. there's an extended solo section followed by a section that's just vocals, drums, and strings. the mix overall is really hot (there's a ton of clipping identified) but it's extra loud here, and the cymbals make it so i can't really hear a lot of the vocals. there's another tonal shift at 2:00 - i really liked the shift to the persian scale as a way to mix it up, as it's been fairly straightforward throughout. 2:34's the first real dynamic shift we've had the whole track. the step back here is nice, but again when the crash starts going it's irritating and over-loud. we get a half-time section at 3:33 - would have been nice to hear the drums step back earlier, but i liked a lot when they did so that other stuff could take the fore. percs are back in at 4:17, and everything doesn't sound quite synced right away. crunchy note at 4:58. everything's back in at 5:02, and then suddenly we're in a chorale section! the layering of the parts make it hard to tell what part is what - a bit of panning and varying formant reinforcement and levels of verb would help make the individual parts clearer. this is a cool idea though. coming out of that section at 5:35, we get what's clearly an extended build section for the Final Destination. 6:29's payoff chorus is exactly as intense as you'd expect, although the synth riffing that was really wide in the ears wasn't my favorite. it gets really loud and hard to pick stuff out by the very end, but that's a bit to be expected given the scope of the track. it ends with a phase shift to some audio from a match, which is a bit of a letdown but i get the nostalgia concept. overall i found the cymbals to be super notched sounding and a bit shrill, especially when they were by themselves. additionally, in general, the voices had a lot of fundamental and needed a formant boost around 2.5khz to get them to pop out of the texture more. overall though i loved the arrangement - there's a lot of breadth to an original that's actually pretty straightforward. i appreciate the various ways that you keep it fresh over a 7:30+ long track. and overall i think the mix is pretty solid, it's just a few specific things i wish were different. definitely not enough to keep this back. YES
Chimpazilla ⚖️ Posted April 8 Posted April 8 This is pretty darn epic! I have a few mixing crits. The drums are very quiet. I can only hear the snare and tom rolls, if there's a kick in there it is almost entirely silent. At 1:48, the synth lead doesn't seem to fit with the soundscape, and it is too loud sometimes, but I love the soloing it does starting at 1:59, that's super cool. Sometimes the intstruments don't sound like they are in the same room as each other, for example the piano starting at 2:37 sounds like it is recorded in a separate space as everything else. When that piano returns at 3:54, it comes in waaaaaay too loud. Cool outro! This is an insane amount of detail and instruments in an extremely dense soundscape. There is so much variation here, in instrumentation and writing, tons of solos and fun vocal interludes, while keeping the source material dominant. The volume balancing is not ideal, and often some elements come in too loud, and the whole thing is a wall of sound, although everything is audible. The overall mix is somewhat shrill. It's a great arrangement, so I'm passing it despite my mixing crits. YES
jnWake ⚖️ Posted April 10 Posted April 10 (edited) Definitely remember this one from DoD! Begins with the string intro from the original, but it's slightly modified and a bit more epic (I dig the brass). We quickly move into metal territory at 0:16, with some heavy guitar and percussion over the classic choir from the source. Since this is a busy section it's a good spot to talk about the mix. On the percussion side, toms and snare cut through the mix nicely, although I wish the latter had more high frequency content for a brighter sound. Kick, however, gets lost in the mix, it could've definitely used the "click" treatment that's often seen in metal music. Similarly, bass is definitely there but it also lacks some higher frequency content for extra clarity. Anyway, at 0:39 we move into the next section, with a fun guitar lead that's followed by Ronin's violin. There's a big reverb difference between lead guitar and violin that sounds odd when you transition between the 2 leads. A guitar solo kicks in at 1:12, nice! I didn't comment on the rhytm guitars earlier but so far they sound somewhat buried in the mix, hidden behind the orchestra. I think it'd have been nice to carve a more defined spot for them through EQ or maybe mid/side boosts/cuts. Choir returns at 1:36 for a new section, which sounds great. apb's synth joins in around 1:48 with a lead sample that seems to have a lot of detune, which can sound odd at times. Synth solo around 2:01 marks the first big departure of the arrangement from the source and the mix sounds much cleaner here, with less instruments playing. There's another guitar solo and even a piano one later. I really like the piano sample and playing here. At 3:08 a section from earlier returns, now with a synth harmony (the detune is very noticeable here). Zach's turn comes at 3:31 with a fun bass solo before a violin lead. There's a big break at 3:54 with a piano/guitar duet. Here, the piano sounds too bright and attack heavy IMO. An unexpected acoustic guitar solo with some fun percussion comes around 4:17, super cool. Ronin gets his own solo around 4:45 as well. At 5:15 there's another break, featuring a choir solo, which is awesome. There's a transition into a percussion heavy section later (similar to how the source does the loop). Some melodies get a reprise around 6:01 and then at 6:25 the choir riff from 0:16 returns, now with guitar and synth noodling over it for what's arguably the track's climax. The Final Destination take on the main Brawl theme gets a couple reprises on guitar/synth harmony until 7:35, where a phaser effect moves us into some game footage and SFX. Quite a creative ending! On the arrangement side, this is fantastic. It starts very similar to the source in structure, with the main change being the metal approach. However, things change around the 2 minute mark and slowly, but surely, you make the track your own, adding all sorts of variations, genre shifts and solos. In a way, it's like a lite version of your Wily remix. The entire section from the choir solo at 5:15 until the end is particularly fantastic. There's absolutely no doubt about source usage, being present in basically the entire remix. On the production side this has some flaws, mostly due to the amount of stuff present on the track. Most sections have percussion, bass, rhytm guitars, strings doing rhytmic AND melodic stuff, and usually an extra instrument (or 2) doing leads. Balancing all of this can be pretty hard and it leads to some instruments getting buried on certain sections, some instruments feeling louder than they should and other similar issues. Now, despite this, I think the mix sounds good in general. Overall, this is a fantastic arrangement that's definitely worthy of the silver medal you got. I have production nitpicks but the mix is more than good enough for a mixpost. Awesome job! YES Edited April 10 by jnWake
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