*NO* Pokémon Red Version "We've Got Rats"

[Liontamer ⚖️]

Original Decision

Artist Name: Worlder

 I really wish the Audio File upload would work for me Dx

I am again submitting this Electronic/Rock remix of Team Rocket Hideout Theme from Pokemon Red. It has of course, been changed a lot, although it is not a total rehaul of the instrumentation or anything like that.
As mentioned in the original upload, this was heavily breakbeat influenced and also some techno/electronic music composition techni9ues have been used as well. Building intensity on the stacatto-played guitar part that references the main melody of the original theme (0:00-0:20) was the key idea here. Way back when originally writing this there were ideas for more parts, but the resulting structure at 4 minutes length seems solid to me and so I did not want to add more parts to what I already had as I felt it would just waste time or be messy. The timbre  of the synth that comes in at 3:23 is also meant to vaguely reference walking around with a poisoned Pokemon, which you could expect to happen in the game area that this tune plays.

- - -

This is a resubmission, and so I must thank the OCRemix staff for the feedback on my earlier upload of this track. It can't be overstated how helpful and yet succinct the feedback was. There was some clean advice, and some of it was so obvious that I can't say what I was thinking.
I think there are some good use of pans in this song, but retroactively I am unable to explain why the "solo guitar" section was completely panned. 
It should be easy to avoid such mistakes in future submissions. There were other pans that I brought in to be less wide as well.

Apart from changes that directly address Pan/Dryness/Kick Drum, some changes to guitar tone and reverb have come with decisions to welcome a bit of difference in feel.
Most notably, the section from 0:38-0:58 previously was where the energy kicked in more but still did not have a full sound. I feel now that the sound is full, and now feels like it is a "restrained" - for lack of a better word - until the next section.
The guitar is more clear yet it is also more distant from the listener, so it's a pretty different texture here. 

If anyone who saw the original was wondering why this resubmission took so long - I lost all my MIDIs and had to rebuild the library. It was only a tiny bit painful.


Anyway, the arrangement breakdown here should cover what needs to be said.

Arrangement Breakdown: (Referring to timestamps in the video uploaded above)
0:00-0:20 - Stacatto type version of the opening melody in th source tune with a kind of "Spy Movie" type thing going on in the bass.
0:20-0:38 - To me what is kind of old school techno technique, repeating a small portion of the melody as a build up.
0:38-0:58 - End of the "intro" - this is referencing the same part of the original theme, but the music has become more filled in.
0:58-1:14 - This is a direct reference to the section of the original theme that plays 0:23-0:28 in. 
Instead of playing the turnaround that normally ends the progression each repeat, it's been combined with notes referencing the opening melody.
1:14-1:17 - This is 0:31 to 0:35 of the original theme.
1:17-1:43 - Turns 0:35 to 0:42 from the original theme into a repeating groove. Dynamics are carried by the drums here, in fact alternations in the drum patterns would be the primary tool to keep dynamics fresh throughout the song.
1:43-1:56 - This is 0:31 to 0:35 of the original theme.
1:56-2:32 - Fulfills the same dynamic as the section from 0:42 to 0:57 of the original theme without directly referencing it. It is sparse in the same way and precedes the song building up its intensity again.
My remix is supposed feature the same elements of the original themes structure while also utilizing building grooves so that you get a chance to dance, and this is fulfilled primarily in these ending sections
2:32-2:38 - This melody is the bass line that the original theme instates from 0:42 to 0:50. Continuing until 3:03, where a synth lead line is introduced, which is referencing the bass line of the source tunes opening melody (or at the end theme, before it repeats, it can be heard on its own) 
These instruments work together and continue to build until 3:35
3:35-4:17 Reprise of the stacatto-ified opening melody of the original theme. Tasty 7th chord, end.

Thanks for listening

---

Games & Sources

Team Rocket Hideout theme from Pokemon Red Version 

A biting aggressive track from the original Pokemon games with some dynamic softer sections.

Arrangement Breakdown: (Link to Original theme for timestamps)

 

Edited Wednesday at 07:39 PM by paradiddlesjosh

[prophetik music ⚖️]

thank you for being willing to accept feedback! not everyone always is and it's refreshing to see someone be willing to step back and try something different.

opens with some chips and fuzzy guitar. percussive elements and bass come in soon after, although they're pretty hard to hear. there's some interesting filtering on the percs, but the bass is nearly unable to be heard. the chips and guitar are in unison for most of the first thirty seconds, but we do finally hear stuff 'hit' at 0:38, and the band sound is together at 0:43. the full band sounds pretty bass-lite still, and is dominated by the crash cymbals and the middle-range chip sounds. there's a more intense rhythm section at 1:15, where the guitar is more audible, but the bass content is still really lacking. the fuzzy guitar is such a unique choice for this section - i keep wondering what a heavier distortion would sound like.

there's a big break at 1:57, with a lot of call and response in the guitar. there's some real intonation issues that are highlighted by this section. this is followed by a more rhythmic section with heavily automated drums for a moment before a band section that has all sorts of more complex drum patterns in it - there's some really fun drum writing in here - and eventually introduces the main melodic line over top. this repeats for a bit before we get to a resolution, and it's done.

from a mix perspective, there's a ton of sub-40hz content throughout this, which is a part of why the bass sounds so quiet throughout. trimming out most of the stuff under maybe 50hz would help a lot...you don't need 11hz at -24db =)

beyond that, a lot of the not-chip choices of instrumentation really lack punch. like, the entire section at 0:59 is super intense, and the writing is complex and interesting, but it sounds like it's being played back on a cell phone - there's so little body to the sound.

from a performance perspective, the guitar being out of tune throughout is rough. it's very noticeable every time the instrument is on a sustain - the big chord at 0:40, the descending line at 1:03, the riffs at 1:18, and especially the sustains that occur from 1:56 through the end in both the rhythmic sections and the lead/solo sections. that's not as easy of a fix unfortunately as changing some EQs, but it's tough to listen to in those spots.

i still think the arrangement is fun! i think that there's a lot of technical stuff holding this back from being a really great chiprock tune.

 

 

NO

[Emunator ⚖️]

So glad that the submission process yielded some helpful feedback for you! That's what we aim for :) 

This starts off with some really grimy sounds that tells me we're in for something gritty and interesting. And you definitely delivered on that conceptually - the crunchy guitar, frenetic drums, and nasty synths really work together well on a sonic level. 

The mixing is still holding this back, though. There's a few technical things I notice right off the bat. Prophetik correctly called out the low end rumble as being a problem - you're going to want to look at each of your mixer tracks under an EQ and see where that rumble is coming from, I suspect it might be the kick drum but it's hard to tell. His screenshot says it all though - the human ear can't perceive anything below 20hz so all that frequency is doing is cutting into your headroom and muddying up the low end impact of things like your kick drum. It also sounds like you might have some low-end frequencies that are panned off to the sides, which is generally not something you want in the mix. I would use a stereo imager to ensure that you don't have any errant frequencies making things even weirder down in the bass frequency range.

Speaking of headroom, this song doesn't sound like it's properly mastered. There's a lot of headroom in the waveform overall, but even when this is normalized, you have a couple of big spikes at 1:36 and 3:07 where the song gets noticeably louder than everything else. It doesn't sound natural, I'd evaluate what's causing the track to peak at those points and bring those elements down, or tame them with a gentle compressor - this will then give you room to bring the whole track volume up to normalized levels.

These two issues are the biggest ones I'm hearing - I'm not as in-tune with guitar intonation/tuning so I can't speak to that, but for me, if the mixing and mastering were dialed in to remove the low end rumble and give it a proper master, this would be good to go for me!

NO (resubmit)

[paradiddlesjosh ⚖️]

Howdy, Worlder! I didn't have a chance to get to this one the first time 'round, so let's have a few listens.

Oof, proph and Emu weren't kidding about the extra low-frequency content -- specifically in the side channels (content happening in the left or right channel that is different from the content in the opposite channel). While most producers aren't pressing their works to vinyl records these days, keeping the low-end stuff (bass, kick drum) as mono as possible can help maintain mix headroom and give those elements a strong presence -- especially on systems with subwoofers. Now, I could be wrong about this: it sounds to me like the low-freq side channel content is mostly reverb and the bottom end of the chippy arp from the intro (maybe some of the rhythm guitars too, but it's a much lesser extent). If it's reverb, a high-pass filter will clean this right up (and don't be afraid to take the filter up to 400-500 Hz; reverb is great for giving a sense of space in a track but it muddies a mix up really fast), and the same can work with your rhythm guitars to a lesser extent (80-120Hz). If there's some other instrument generating low-end content (like that chippy arp synth in the intro), that should get high-passed to just below the fundamental frequency of the lowest notes it plays; this'll give your kick and bass the space they need.

Separately, I'm with proph that the drums in particular are lacking punch. Some of this is the "internal mix" of the drumkit -- hi-hats and crash cymbals are louder than the kick and snare (e.g. the bomb blast pattern from 0:58-1:12ish, the half-time breakdowns at 1:15-1:27) due to either velocity or volume balance, maybe both -- some of it is sample selection, and some of it is a lack of compression and saturation. The extra club kick layer at 3:10 helps that segment compared to the first half-time breakdown at 1:15, but the snare is still anemic.

It's unfortunate that we're being so hard on the production elements of your track, because the arrangement is well above the bar. The writing has good energy management and interesting twists on the source material -- the build at 0:58-1:14 and the evolution of that bassline from 2:38-4:00 are some highlights for me. And although I agree with proph that the guitar intonation issues detract from the experience at 1:58-2:35, the part itself provides a refreshing break from the frenetic passages that come before and afterward.

This one's still not quite there yet, Worlder; please keep cooking on this one! You're closer than you think.

NO (resubmit)