Emunator ⚖️ Posted February 11 Posted February 11 Emunator: Arrangement, piano, programming, mixing, mastering Nemo Fairlight: Vocals, viola mo.oorgan: Guitar (rhythm - clean, lead - tremolo), drums, additional synths Bharat Raman: Violin minusworld: Guitar (rhythm - dirty), bass Zack Parrish: Guitar Solo (clean), additional orchestration, original mastering for DoD Comments: This was my entry for the December Dwelling of Duels competition, where it placed 3rd! My usual roster of performers were all snatched up by Zack Parrish and his One Winged Angel mega-collab, so I took this as an opportunity to work with some community members that I hadn't collaborated with yet, and it led to some incredibly rewarding encounters and some downright serendipitous moments where the stars aligned perfectly. I won't speak too much to the influences on this piece, other than to say it ended up as a mashup of The Bends-era Radiohead meets Cornfield Chase from Interstellar meets Nightwish. I'll focus more on the collaborators here, because honestly? I think I was carried hard by everyone featured on this track. The amount of talent that ended up on here still blows my mind every time I listen to it. First off, finding a vocalist that could handle this style was a tall order out of the gate. Requiring a wide vocal range and an ability to handle gaelic lyrics, I assumed that this concept was dead in the water from the start, but I reached out to Nemo Fairlight on a whim and it turns out she was already planning to arrange this song herself, and was intimately familiar with the source material. What she delivered absolutely exceeded my expectations, even dropping viola parts to round out the arrangement. Nemo helped bring this song to life but also turned out to be a really wonderful new friend that I had the pleasure of getting to know while we were producing this piece! The vibes instantly clicked and made this experience all the richer for that. By this point, many of you know that I'm not the only member of my family involved in video game remixing - my younger brother mo.oorgan has been involved in music longer than I have! However, up until now, we've never actually collaborated on a full song together. My love of the Metal Gear Solid franchise comes entirely from watching Morgan play through the game when we were kids, so this felt like a perfect moment to make that all come together, and the results made me question why this took so long to happen in the first place. Mo dropped a swath of percussion, guitar, and auxiliary synth parts onto my demo and I used every last bit of it - the assignment was definitely understood here :) It was such a natural fit and helped me get much closer to my initial vision than I could have ever gotten on my own. Bharat Raman got involved in an entirely different way. He was staying at my house working on a recording project with my roommate, and while we were chatting, I found out that he was actually familiar with Metal Gear Solid as well, and he offered to break away from his project for half an hour to record some parts. To my surprise, he recorded all of the violin parts you hear in this song in about 20 minutes, without ever hearing my arrangement beforehand. He even knocked out the lead line from the MGS4 Love Theme in one take, without a metronome or backing track, in a single take simply on a whim. I built the entire section from 3:14 to 4:08 around his improvised recording because it was so beautiful. I can't even express how lucky I felt - what are the odds that such a brilliant violinist would happen to be staying at my house the weekend that I was writing this piece, and already have enough familiarity with Metal Gear Solid's soundtrack to be able to record this much material in literally 20 minutes? I felt like the luckiest producer on the planet in that moment. Rounding out the collaborator list, minusworld is an artist I've had my eye on for a while, churning out endless DoD bangers month after month, but it was his Porcupine Tree-inspired Inscryption remix that made me know he was the right guy for the job. Being able to handle both the Radiohead-inspired indie sections as well as the heavy metal breakdown at the end. I made the right call - Minusworld delivered exactly what I needed on the bass and rhythm guits, and I had absolutely no trouble slotting it right into the mix - he was not only a true professional but also an incredibly nice guy, too! And of course, it's not a DoD entry if I don't get Zack in there somewhere. Since all of his usual spots were taken, I basically gave him carte blanche to add whatever he wanted to the track, so that ended up being the guitar solo leading into the final verse and the staccato strings in the intro. Zack is such a talented collaborator that can fit in literally anywhere and make the track better for it. This man will always have a spot on my tracks. As for source usage, it's pretty much all over the track anytime the vocals are present - I didn't stray far from The Best Is Yet To Come at all in terms of chord progression or structure, with the exception of the aforementioned 3:14 breakdown, which was based on the Love Theme from MGS4.
prophetik music ⚖️ Posted March 4 Posted March 4 opens with a variety of noodles in the keys, winds, and vins. nemo's voice fits this perfectly. the distorted sfx were very confusing for a moment until i figured out what was going on. there's some percussive elements that build into a very cinematic section at 1:00. nemo's voice gets more covered up there initially once the marcato strings come in initially, but it starts to get on top as it gets higher in her range. there's a break at 1:29, and some more whistle work. this kind of falls off more than i'd expect before the verse comes in at 1:50. it feels really early aughts for a bit here between the clean guitar and the very crisp drumset work. there's more padding material at 2:18 and i think it needs it. as the texture fills out, i'm again feeling nemo's voice is fading into the background a bit more than i'd expect. there's more building into another drop at 3:14, and this is very lush. the violin lacks a bit of richness i'd hope for and is again farther back in the mix than i'd expect a lead instrument to be, but the whole section is really fun with the sfx and backing elements added in. nemo's back at 4:17 (love the breath being left in, that's very organic), and this is another build. there is an ascending scale to the the big hit at 4:46. the violin is momentarily out of time which is a bit confusing. the big hit is less than i'd hoped for - i can't hear the snare or kick at all, the reliance on what sounds like a riveted ride instead of a crash for the downbeats in the cymbals adds a lot of colored static to the mix and is just noisy, the rhythm guitar is primarily low-range and not a wall or even really in the mids, and i can't hear the bass either much at all. i liked the vocal solo work by nemo though - that's just not something we hear in this community hardly at all, and this is the first time the entire song that her voice was actually far enough forward to hear what's going on. i didn't care for this part near as much as i'd hoped given the work around it before this. the big section ends suddenly with some sfx and strummed guitar, and then it's done. the sfx fade out very quickly, several seconds earlier than i'd expect. this is obviously over the bar. the realization is really interesting, the arrangement's enough that it's not a cover, and the execution is, for the most part, really solid. there's some specific elements i didn't care for - pushing the leads into the back throughout was not something i liked, and the big payoff chorus wasn't what i'd hoped going into it (but i recognize some of this may be personal preference) - but the overall package is good and it's obvious why this did as well as it did at DoD. YES
jnWake ⚖️ Posted May 7 Posted May 7 (edited) Heh, I remember this one from Smash Month definitely, even re-read my review from back then as preparation! Begins with some build-up, there's a low note on A while piano, strings and other stuff "noodle" on top, setting an ambience. At 0:31 Nemo starts singing, a whispery tone that sits beautifully on top of the music. There's some noise effects hard panned that I don't really enjoy much, make me think my headphones are broken! At 0:45 we get more percussion and a harmony vocal, soon joined by strings at 1:03 and some more intense percussion. There's a bit of a rest at 1:28, similar to the intro, with instruments "noodling" before a new verse kicks in around 1:55, based on another part from the source. The most interesting part here is the percussion, which has a pretty frantic snare pattern, creating a cool contrast with the soft vocals, guitar and pads. On this whole section (and the ones that come after) the bass seems extremely quiet, which is kind of a shame since I miss a note grounding the chord progression more clearly (I gave it a shot with a simple boost to the track at around 100hz and it sounds much fuller IMO). Around 2:20 we move to what I'd call the chorus of the original. Violin break hits at 3:14 with the "Love Theme". It sounds beautiful but the higher notes get a little buried in the mix. At 4:10 or so we return to "The Best is Yet to Come" with more more vocals! At 4:45 there's a cool transition by Nemo into a metal section. I love the idea behind this part but I continue feeling the bass is missing on the mix, and the kick could also be punchier. There's a lot of vocal tracks here and also a string line, so the higher end gets quite busy and it's difficult to discern everything perfectly. Still, this is a very nice climax to the track. At 5:43 there's a sudden break into a guitar line and the track ends. On the arrangement side this is fantastic, treatment of melodies and chords seems conservative but everything surrounding them is so unique that no one would say this isn't transformative enough for OCR. You did an awesome job with the general structure of the track, building up into the final climax beautifully. On production I hate to say it but I'm torn. There's definitely some really cool stuff, like your usual sound design flourishes, but I have some nitpicks about the general balance. Main one is the bass, I feel it should be much more present on the mix. The metal section, in particular, is screaming for a stronger low end (kick included this time). Second is that some of the leads get lost a few times, but this is a much smaller nitpick. Overall, excellent arrangement, top notch sound design and performances. While I think the mix could be improved (low end mostly) this is quite clearly above the bar. YES Edited May 7 by jnWake
Chimpazilla ⚖️ Posted May 7 Posted May 7 This is an arrangement I have not heard yet, which is amazing but speaks to how productive Wes has been lately. The arrangement and performances are stellar. The vocals are awesome, it's so great that this singer was available and able to handle this specific genre and do it with such skill. The guitar, bass, string and drum performances are all top notch. The soundscape is packed very VERY full, as expected with this roster of performers. The mixing is not ideal; I believe the parts could be EQd and placed differently to not sound this overwhelming, and I agree with jnWake that the low end is a tad weak. The vocals almost get drowned out during the heaviest sections such as the final big chorus. The mastering could have more sparkle to it. But there's nothing dealbreaker here for OCR. It's a lovely emotive tune, full of feels and ear candy, and I totally see how it took 3rd in Dod that month. Let's go! YES
Emunator ⚖️ Posted May 7 Author Posted May 7 I'm going to make some tweaks to the mix on this - I burned out hard on this track after DOD and felt like the mixdown was good enough, but not great yet, so the feedback above is tremendously helpful. I know this track has more potential in it, so I'll get it to that mark! Thanks guys.
Emunator ⚖️ Posted September 17 Author Posted September 17 I was going to get more in-depth on the mix tweaks here but due to issues loading the project file, the best I can do is a remaster on the flattened WAV file to try and introduce some of the bass presence back and narrow the low-frequency stereo width. I do think this sounds a bit better than the first version, so this is good to go! https://drive.google.com/open?id=108LvATvy3BJFjIzDRpJresLZYX28no_B&usp=drive_fs
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