Liontamer ⚖️ Posted August 3 Posted August 3 Artist Name: Argle So, uh, here's... something. It started back in the spring when I idly thought, what would be the most inappropriate thing to turn into a beach song? The first thing that came to mind was, Dark Souls. Obviously Dark Souls. There had been a DS track I've wanted to cover for a long time, the character creation theme, which has a wonderful Resident Evil typewriter music feel. At this point it was only an idea, a lad's springtime passing fancy. But once the right name for the track occurred to me, the bit HAD to be committed to. So, I present something utterly stupid. Not in like a General Grunt way, obviously comedic in nature, but in a "why??" kind of way. The thing is though, just because this idea is goofy AF doesn't mean it wasn't also hard. On the contrary. Whatever could be said to be in my wheelhouse, Latin jazz is not one of those things. So committing to the dumb bit was actually very challenging! The other challenge of the song was, even though the original is 5+ minutes long it's basically the same motif over and over with various atmospheric layers, aka nothing that would help me in a beach rendition of it. So this remix was an exercise in taking that short motif and reworking it in a bunch of different ways that keep it from getting dull but remain coherent. It shows up in obvious ways (nylon guitar @ 0:24 and 1:53, guitars @ 0:48, vibraphone @ 1:40 and 2:30, piano @ 2:06), but it's also lurking in the vibraphone at 1:18 even though it's mostly buried in favor of the piano solo. So... um... enjoy? (??) Games & Sources
Liontamer ⚖️ Posted August 10 Author Posted August 10 The track was 2:40.5-long (music from :11.5-2:52), so I needed to hear the source in play for at least 80.25 seconds for the source material to be considered dominant in the arrangement. :22.5-:44.5, :47-1:08.5, 1:18.25-1:21, 1:40.5-1:54.25, 1:55.5-1:57.25, 1:58.75-2:02.25, 2:04.25-2:05.75, 2:17.25-2:23.75, 2:29.75-2:51.5 = 92.25 seconds or 57.47% overt source usage There was more that could be counted if I better recognized some of the rhythmic changes, but I was just sanity checking it for clearly identifiable source usage without (hopefully) needing to do a deeper dive and thankfully this was well over half the arrangement. Lovely stuff. Reminds me a LOT of Japanese arrange album material - Konami's MIDI Power albums come to mind - both the uncanny valley instrumentation and the liberal, transformative treatment. Turning Dark Souls, of all things, into chillaxing beach music was never in my Overton window of arrangement possibilities, yet here we are! Fantastic. :-) YES
prophetik music ⚖️ Posted August 15 Posted August 15 opens with some beach sfx and some poppy keys. quickly gets into a melody that's built off of the arpeggiated sequence from the original alongside the expected percussion and additional instrumentation. bass is really quiet off the bat and the water sfx continues for a while which is probably at least partially why that's the case. i really like the octave doubling in the melody here. there's a bit of a break for about eight seconds and we get into a solo break at 1:18. some nice turns in here (and at least one that doesn't work, at 1:34), before a really smooth break for some mallet percussion. the main vibe comes back at 2:06. the backing keys here are a touch loud, but i like some of the extra fills being added in the percussion, and i like the personalization of the lead. there's a recap of the earlier mallet break, and then some sfx see us out the door. this is quick and fun. truly not an adaptation i would have ever expected. nice work. YES
pixelseph ⚖️ Posted August 20 Posted August 20 This remix is exactly the kind of thing I love about the VGM community: taking a source and reshaping it without losing its identity. Morphing the 9/8 piano arpeggio into something 4/4 and danceable is the biggest achievement here - any time the remix shifts the source's rhythmic structure, it gets much harder to track the source. As a fellow remixer who toes the line of stretching sources in strange ways, mad respect to Argle for this one! Using the melody as a hub to return to after trading solos between the instruments works well, though I do agree with proph that there are weak phrases in the piano lead. Specifically, the phrasing on 1:34 and 1:38 sounds awkward given the chord harmony, like the piano and the band aren't in agreement about where the voicings are; 1:29, by contrast, feels natural and smooth. We don't look for perfect, nor do we judge by potential; what's here is enough above the bar that lead-writing qualms can't bring it down. Can't wait to see this on the front page! YES
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