NO - Stardew Valley "The Wind Can Be Synthesized"

[Liontamer ⚖️]

Artist Name: Kyaku

I try to remix from games that I have spent some significant time playing as my own little somewhat silly homage, a nod to the enjoyment they provided me.  Stardew Valley was definitely one of those games  and this winter track was one of my favorites.  More quiet and subdued compared to a lot of the other seasonal sounds, it felt like it captured fairly accurately that meditative, muted feeling that you get after being blanketed in heavy snowfall.  But of course, I’m addicted to synth wave still so let’s just turn it all upside down and here we are!

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Games & Sources

Stardew Valley - The Wind Can Be Still

Edited 2 hours ago by XPRTNovice

[prophetik music ⚖️]

opens with synth toms and a pulsing, driving beat centered around the chord progression outlined by the original's opening elements. there's a bit of melody at 0:32, but it's hard to hear to under the existing arpeggiating instrument. there's a break at 0:52 that admittedly sounds like something out of chrono trigger for a bit. i noticed here that the drums were pretty auto-pilot for a while both in terms of what they were playing and the fills being used.

starting at 1:12 we get the melodic line from the original around the 2:10 mark for a bit. there's a break in the beat right after this for a bit, and then we get a copypasta of 0:22 (this sounds 1:1 to my ears, right down to the too-quiet melodic line) and then later of 0:52, and then 1:12 as well. so that's a lot of completely repeated material.

2:51 is some new material from the original for a few seconds, and then the track kind of peters out - no fill into the ending, no chord resolution, and the instruments seem to stop at different times.

i think this one isn't quite done yet. first of all, it's just over three minutes, and more than a minute of that is a direct copy from earlier in the song. that's too much clear repetition - do something different! this can be as simple as mixing up your leads, changing a few chords, adding some countermelodic material, or updating the backing elements. along those lines, i found the drums to be extremely basic and same-y, even for a style that usually uses a base loop for most of a song. mixing up the drum fills so they're not rote and altering the beat for the middle a bit will make returning to it later that much more impactful. another issue is the not-ending is a real letdown. lastly, i'll call out that the melodic material at 0:32 isn't really audible, and it'd be great to get that bigger so that the correlation is more obvious.

i do think this has legs for sure! i love synthwave versions of winter themes, i think there's something about the nature of the synth tones usually used for this that fit really well. i'd love to hear this with some more variation to the track and some extra ear candy in your approach. the workshop would be a great place to get some other feedback as well.

 

 

NO

[Rexy ⚖️]

Your sound palette has those familiar Synthwave tropes - the driving beat, the synthetic drums and bass, and the choice of backing synths all work together to bring the genre alive.  Do note that at 0:32, you used the same patch to provide both a riff and the melody, and their identical tone and stereo placement make it hard to distinguish them.  Did you mean to use a different-sounding patch for the melody there and at 1:51?  If not, think about clarity for your instrument parts if you haven't done so already - like where they can be in the stereo field, additional layers if needed, or any separation via EQ tweaks.  Aside from the clash of two patches, it's not overly chaotic in its current state.

Source-wise, this track discarded the first 53 seconds and used that as the foundation - that entire stretch that anchored itself in that original E Minor key.  Then, what followed was one loop through almost the remainder of the source, a simple breakdown, and a near-copy-paste of that previous loop before using the source's conclusion for the ending.  You got the right idea with adding the pulsing rhythm synth at 1:41, but there's still more to do - Brad has already mentioned some amazing ideas for changing things up in the second half and adding more variations to the drum writing to keep making it feel fresh.  A "theme and variations" approach to arrangement is fine, but I do want to hear those variations. :)

I am all in favor of more synthwave, especially Stardew synthwave - and I see something special in this rough cut.  I would love to hear another version with the copy-pasta problem addressed first and foremost, with further thought taken to drum variation and the dual patch issue.  Do take advantage of the workshop on the Forums and Discord - help is but a mouse click away.

NO (resubmit)

[XPRTNovice ⚖️]

Ahah, pretty cool interpretation turning this into a synthwave thing. I was digging it from the beginning. I will say that the saw-wavy kind of arp thing you've got going on for the first minute or so is sticking out to me. It could just use a little carving on the EQ around 2KHz I think, or push back in the mix. My ears were really fatigued by the time they got their first break at 1:00. I believe prohetik is saying the same thing above, saying that it's tough to hear the melody under "that arpeggiating instrument." 

I think all these elements are mixed together well; classic synthwave stuff. Your production is on point, though; it gels together nicely without the wall-of-sound that often comes with synthwave mixed poorly. Great job overall.

However, whn the drop came back in at 1:35 is when I started thinking to myself that it was starting to sound a little repetitive. By the time 3:00 came around I was thinking to myself that there's only a few bars of music in this that are repeated in order to generate a piece that's 3 minutes long. When I went back and listened to it, I found that it was right; we have essentially just about 30 seconds of music here once you strip out the repetitions, so it's going to fall below the bar for me on arrangement.

At 2:50 I was like "ah! finally some new stuff" and then the song just sort of ended. 

This needs another pass to address the repetition/copy paste. The source for this is EXTREMELY rich; you should definitely have no problem ideating some more variations with this and still keeping that synthwave feel. You've got the mixing down, other than my nitpicks above, but this needs more variety. 

 

NO (resubmit)