*NO* Quake 2 'Stroggicide' *RESUB*

[Liontamer]

Original Decision: http://ocremix.org/forums/showthread.php?t=5126

ReMixer: Nordin

Real Name: Jeffrey Nordin

Email: remix@jsquaredproductions.com

Website: www.nordin1.com/

Game: Quake 2

Songs: Quad Machine, Operation Overlord, Rage, Kill Ratio, and Decent into Cerberon

Add. Info: Quake 2 was, of course, Id software's glorious FPS from wayback in 1997. The music was done by Sonic Mayhem and was quite good, hence the compulsion to honor it in ReMix form.

Misc.: Here's is the new and improved version of Stroggicide. The last submission was rejected because it was too similar to the original material. Fair enough. That's what was intended although not the goal of OCRemix. Nonetheless, I was inspired to redo the song in my normal composing style - Progressive Metal! This verison of Stroggicide has a lot more going on in terms of arrangement and instrumentation.

I'm playing the drums, strings, synth, and piano parts. The string, synth and piano are all new to this mix. The piano is of course a real piano, which always sounds nice while the strings and synth are courtesy of my wonderful Korg. My brother is playing the rhythm guitar and bass and contributed (among other things) the kick ass bass line underneath the "chorus" at 2:51 and again at 6:22. On lead guitar, as well as mixing and recording, is my dad who contributed the frosting on the cake at 6:59 until the end.

The piano interlude at 4:30 is a very liberal interpretation of the Operation Overlord theme that unintentionally sounds just like Dream Theater's (my largest inspiration musically along with Nobuo, Mitsuda, and Yamaoka) Trial of Tears. Not to say it's not a fantastic song to allude to, but the effect was initially coincidental. The guitar solo in this section is also an interpretation of the Operation Overlord theme which is stated literally by the piano in the following section.

Some of the extra parts added include compressing some of the themes together, for instance the rhythm parts from Rage now serve as backgrounds for the piano melody taken from the middle of Quad Machine (at 1:24).

Twice in the song (at 2:00 and 7:18) I quote the first bit from Doom's famous E3M1 melody (which itself was "borrowed" from Pantera's Mouth for War except Bobby Prince's is much better), because we wouldn't have Quake without Doom.

As a final note, this song is heavy and loud and full of bass. Turn the volume up, and feel the Prog.

[The Orichalcon]

Drums stand out immediately as a major problem. They're buried in the mix, and I mean they're six feet under. I can barely hear them, and when I can they just aren't the right sound for this kind of mix. You need something heavier, rather than the room-reverb kit you're using at the moment.

I'm struggling with this one. There are some great elements in the mix that I'm enjoying a lot. The guitar is just great, and I mean great. Good tone, good playing, well placed in the mixing. I'm "getting" the references and liking it. But the rest of the mix doesn't gel to the guitar well. The drums I've already addressed, but I know there's other stuff in the mix and I couldn't honestly tell you what they are or what they're playing. They just don't add anything substantial.

I think I'll wait to hear more comments from other judges on this one before I finish my vote. I'm just not entirely sure with this one at the moment, or what could possibly be done to make it OCR-worthy.

[Liontamer]

Quake 2 Soundtrack - 7 "Quad Machine", 2 "Operation Overlord", 3 "Rage", 4 "Kill Ratio" & 9 "Descent Into Cerberon"

Yeah, I'm pretty much feeling TO's conclusions. Once things get moving at :25, the drums are just buried and the tone on 'em is really weak; just doesn't sound properly balanced or fill out the track. The drum writing's aight, but the writing tends to be too plain; it's probably more a matter of the production, as a beefier snare would solve most of the problems.

There's some slight timing issue as well which prevent the total delivery from sounding smooth (most exaggerated example, piano playing late at 1:12), but it's not too bad. During 2:50, things started clicking together more with the timing.

I agreed with TO that the textures don't quite gel right per se, and it's difficult to articulate, but the overall mixing is ok even if it could be adjusted. On the plus side though, the instruments all sounded pretty clean.

Bass at 3:41 sounded odd in the back briefly; seemingly didn't quite match up right with the melody. What were those clapping noises at 4:30, 4:33, 4:44, 4:47 & 4:49? Was that hissing underneath the guitar from 5:21-5:30? Not quite sure what that was, but didn't necessarily sound intentional; not a huge deal. Solo at 6:59 was rockin' the casbah, but the sheer volume got a bit grating on headphones.

The structure was fairly similar to the previous submission, but I was glad to hear more personalization of the arrangement this time around. I'm still on the fence about the overall instrumentation approach being different enough from the sources, which are all heavy rock, but it got better during the second half. The drum writing in the originals was very steady and beat-keeping, whereas that was usually not the case here. The progressive influences helped, but more of them would really help push this over the top. More instrumental variation and better attention to dynamics helped this one improve though.

I mentioned last time that the arrangement hovering at basically the same energy level the whole time was a big problem. Here, it's less so but only for the second half. I'll throw out there that more pronounced dynamic changes would, IMO, only make this more like the progressive rock style you're going for. Transitions like those at 4:15 & 5:15-5:21 (good energy change and good writing joining the sections) would have been welcome earlier on, but it seems like those ideas were only truly embraced in the latter half and not in the first half.

The sum total is all about polishing up the minor issues here:

*More cohesive textures

*Slightly tighter playing (not a major issue)

*More meat on the snare

*Bit more dynamic contrast in the first half of the arrangement

This is pretty close to being postable, but I agreed with TO on the textures not quite clicking and that's enough to sway me. It's all pushing me to a borderline NO, but in case this doesn't split the panel, I would really prefer to have more than 3 judges weigh in this. I really wanna see this receive a lot of feedback and make it in some form. The Nordins rock, but the presentation could be lifted up just a bit higher to really make things undebateable. Please give it one more go, gentlemen, with a final spit shine.

[big giant circles]

hmm. intro was pretty cheesy. although, i can say it was because of execution, and not because of the idea. mainly bad voice acting. like, were you going for the "WE'RE IN A #%#$ing WARZONE!!! WE NEED MORE AMMO!!!" type feel, or the "hey guys, we're playing a LAN game. here comes the bad guys" type thing. because it sounds like the latter. at any rate.

other than that, guitar performance isn't too bad. mixing early on is pretty weak, and the drums suffer the most, it seems. sound's like they're being played from the other room. at least until about 2:20 or so. 2:33 was pretty badass. definitely good shoot-anything-that-moves kind of music

4:15 is a refreshing change of pace, and adds diversity and flow to the track, IMO. haha, more voice acting at 6:15.

K, here's the deal. Fairly tough call, as for the most part, this is a pretty solid sub. But I just don't think it's quite ready to go up in it's present form. I'd consider shortening the first part of the track. that was my least favorite part of the song. and definitely rework the EQ. and as for the voice acting, if you're going to have that in there, then try to make it a little more intense. don't just slap some distortion on it and say the lines [acting coach]You gotta FEEL the words. BECOME the soldiers. be ONE with the game...[/acting coach]

not that i know much about acting. but i can tell what sounds fakey and what-not.

your within arm's length at this point. just a couple more tweaks ought to do it. tweak and resubmit.

NO

[Liontamer]

I voted on the originally subbed version with no voices, which I still have for anyone who'd like to hear it. The link in the first post has their current version with voice work added in.

The voice work is definitely way too cheesy and beginner-ish, but it's only in the very intro and 6:13. Not that it's a dealbreaker, but stuff like that only pushes a borderline NO further into NO territory. Unless you can get it sounding more emotional, I'd scrap it. I agree with BGC's general sentiment of "I don't mind gimmicky stuff, but if you're going to have it, do it right".

[zircon]

I'm really not feeling the voices. As Larry said, they're cheesy and don't add anything at all. I think if you wanted to create ambience you could have just added various explosion/gunfire/roaring sound effects. Guitars are pretty well recorded and performed, but I agree with TO that the drums are just lost in the mix. Kick is really "flabby" and lacks punch/tightness. Snare, hats, and crash all sound good but could still stand to be brought out more. The piano is also a little muddy too - EQing up the highs would be good there. Bass sounds great though.

I do like the changeups in feel throughout the track... seems like a good amount of dynamics and a solid arrangement. The breakdown at 4:15 or so was a welcome change. I would have liked to hear a little more of that. BGC's comment about cutting down on the first part of the song up to 2:33 as the material before that was really not as engaging as the later stuff in my opinion. I also think you guys could probably make use of string harmonies more, or even some synth choir or organ, to help fill out some spots. If not that, some more active piano playing and riffage would be cool as the song goes on. More guitar solos wouldn't hurt either.. I really liked the one towards the end!

5:49 is awkward and kind of low energy. At this point in the track I would expect things to be really built up but they're not. 6:15 is a weak point, could be removed entirely skipping to the higher energy section at 6:22.

So, the long and short of it:

* Work on the drumkit mixing more, but primarily the kick which is very weak

* Piano could be brighter

* Voice acting stuff is weak and could be cut out to make the track tighter

* The first.. 1/3 of the arrangement or so could be tightened.. it's a bit boring at the moment due to the simplicity of the parts

* Consider adding more active piano parts or some add'l overdubs (synth, choir, organ, whatever) to increase the intensity as the mix goes on

I encourage a resubmit.

NO

[Liontamer]

With zirc's final criticisms being so strong, I'm gonna go ahead and close this up. Don't be discouraged and definitely go for one last resubmit, Nordin. I think it's clear that collectively, we really like most of the work here and think it's just a case of refining what's in place. It would be great to get this family-created arrangement up on the site, especially from a game that hasn't gotten ANY attention in the arrangement community as long as I've been around.