Liontamer ⚖️ Posted May 17 Posted May 17 Artist Name: Michael Hudak October 26th of this year will be 25 years since Majora’s Mask was released in the US, and I wanted to make something for that milestone. Astral Observatory has a beautiful chord progression that I figured could lend itself well to the post-rock/ambient/whatever experimentation I’ve been doing recently. A major influence here was the album “The Tired Sounds of Stars of the Lid” (which might be a good alternate title for this remix...) by Stars of the Lid. There are two halves that juxtapose each other in intensity and mood. I don't think one side would work without the other with how I mixed and arranged them. I worked to get Pt.1 to sound analog and not synth pad-y; there are pianos, trumpets, and strings run through several reverbs (Reason’s RV7000, Synapse’s DR-1, Valhalla Shimmer), with external LFOs slowly altering settings like diffusion rate and pre-delay time. I took only the wet signals and blended them and then processed them further. I needed the chords to do the carrying while I focused on timbre and texture. Pt. 2 is a second movement of sorts, and has the piano playing (and altering) the melody. The AO chords are played throughout the entire song, albeit very slowly, aside from a brief detour from 1:10 to 1:22, and then from 6:40 to the end. Long fade-out but I think it fits the tempo. Listening again, maybe I could’ve made this even slower… Hopefully the chord progression is noticeable enough to pass, but I will leave that up to the judges of course. Games & Sources The source is "Astral Observatory" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s0krxH0dWhU by Koji Kondo. You may know of him.
prophetik music ⚖️ Posted May 23 Posted May 23 opens with some big washes of sound. this immediately reminded me of 800% justin bieber, actually - the super-wet strung out chords sound a lot like a paulstretch demo. the chords sound reasonably in line initially , although a few points are aurally confusing (like whatever's happening at 1:36). there's a break for the 'movements', and then we get into a new timbre and approach - again with the chords in the washes, but with broken chords in the piano outlining the harpsichord's part in the original at a slower speed. there's some really delightful little sparkles in these more restrained brushstrokes which are super interesting. the chord structure again gets dense by the fifth and sixth chord - i still don't really know what's going on there - but when it clears up, the chord movement is more obvious. the piano really goes off into some weird places by the end of this section and i found that to be pretty confusing (like the last chord, the piano's notes all sound like they're non-chord tones...but it's the resolution chord of the piece). i initially felt that the chordal patterns were too far apart from the original and as a result were academic. but after intentionally going along and only playing the core of each chord and then clicking to the next, i found that my original inclination was wrong - this is the original's chord structure (albeit not as clear as it could have been), and my original thoughts were due to not being able to correlate them due to the long tails and openings on each chord. so i do actually think there's enough source here, although the piano element does its best to confuse things. with that settled, i think that the vehicle here is dramatic and unique - the broad washes of sound are beautiful and cold, and remind me very much of looking out a window at a winter landscape. i 100% can understand if the other judges aren't into this, but i think what's here passes the letter of the law around source usage. with that in mind, then i definitely think this passes. YES
Liontamer ⚖️ Posted June 29 Author Posted June 29 I had to 2X this to more readily ID the otherwise straightforward source usage. After a straightforward albeit slowed down intro, around 1:10-3:30 felt more abstract and disconnected from the source, but then the second half stayed based on the melody until nearly the end, so the overall approach was grounded and mostly recognizable to me despite the much slower tempo. Because I also listened to this at 200% speed, when you double-speed the lil' piano accents starting at 3:38, it sounds like the connecting SFX in Sokobond, and anything that makes me think of Dualryan is cool with me! (You should arrange of one his soundtracks, e.g. The Yawgh.) This definitely isn't for everyone, and it isn't even for me, but as a piece of sound design, it's dank, dark, and something to swim in. :-) YES
jnWake ⚖️ Posted July 2 Posted July 2 (edited) Well, this is definitely different... Begins with a warm pad of sounds doing the main 2 chords of the source, each chord lasting around 15-16 seconds. Soundscape is sparse but there seems to be a lot of intention in how the sound changes during each chord. We continue with more chords from the source, although some of them are pretty modified (like 1:11 and 1:36 onwards). As a random fact, the chords and how they evolve kind of remind me of the Protoss Themes from Starcraft 1. Some of the chords are very intense and even overwhelming (around 2:30 especially), but it's an interesting sound. At 3:33 the pads and pianos become clearer and the main melody from the source can be heard (played veeery slow on piano). I really like the sound effects you added here, like some sparse reversed piano notes (I believe). Chord at 4:44 is haunting, here the melody gets a bit liberal but the chord progression is clearly identifiable. We continue on the same vibe until the end, which I must admit felt a little disappointing as there wasn't much of a resolution on the final notes. This is a very interesting piece and can be mostly described as ambient since it moves very slow, letting almost every chord and note breathe for a while. With this in mind, arrangement does it work, changing from peaceful chords to tense ones, driving the need for resolution. Source usage is mostly chords, which is something we have questioned in the past for other remixes, but in this particular case the source is, in fact, mostly chords, so it's acceptable. Production also serves the track's purpose, there's not many elements so there's no need for a complex mix. However, you nailed the sound design, I find the description of how you achieved the track pretty cool in fact. Overall, a very unique piece! As Larry said, definitely not for everyone and I can already predict some hating on YouTube but it's something that deserves to be on the site. YES Edited July 2 by jnWake
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