*NO* Kingdom Hearts 2 "Just Us Three"

[Liontamer ⚖️]

Artist Name: Azina

Summer is a time of nostalgic memories, and the original version of Lazy Afternoons perfectly represents that. But Roxas' life was only 1 year and 7 days long. My arrangement opens after that, in the last moments of his life. The piano holds the tonic, G, in the bass as often as I could get away with as an expression of Roxas' desire for things to stay the same. My guitar work in the first half is merely the melody reprised on guitar.

In the second half, I offer two harmonies that follow the melody strictly; the intent is to musically illustrate what could have been had Roxas, Xion, and Axel been able to have their own summer. As well, the arrangement opens up to accent strings and a soft, pulsing synth to support the three primary parts. The title itself is a reference to Lizz Robinett's lyrical adaptation released in 2016.

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Games & Sources

Game: Kingdom Hearts 2
Composer: Yoko Shimomura
Youtube: 

 

Edited 2 hours ago by Emunator

[prophetik music ⚖️]

opens with some nice electric guitar. keys in the background are pretty far away. lead guitar starts with melodic content around 0:14. it's much louder than the background keys (or are the keys just very soft?), and there's some pitch issues with the B especially. the guitar goes through the melody in a straight line for the first 90s or so, and then we get a textural change at 1:32 which adds some plucks and harmonies. notably there's a harmony line hard panned into the right and left ears all the way, which is a bit confusing on headphones. it goes through the melody again in a straight line. there's a flourish and some strings near the end around 2:35, and then it's done.

this is a pretty conservative arrangement overall. it's basically the original twice through with little to no added content outside of that. that can be enough, but i'd expect to hear a more interpretive representation of the original - through melodic additions, countermelodic rhythmic and harmonic elements, and backing elements. there's not a ton here that isn't in the original (in more complex and engaging forms, too). combined with the pitchiness of the guitar (note that the issue is both that the root note is out of tune, and separately that your vibrato is so fast it doesn't always sound intentional) and the hard panning which doesn't need to be so wide to do what you're looking for, and i think this needs a bit more time in the cooker. there's good bones here for sure, but i'd expect to hear either more harmonic complexity or a more personalized melodic component to get away from 'cover' territory.

 

 

NO

[Liontamer ⚖️]

Says Hitoshi Ohori on sax for the Kingdom Hearts II soundtrack, but if you told me it was proph here, I wouldn't have batted an eye. :-) Beautiful theme.

Definitely a straightforward arrangement, and we'll see where it goes, though offhand the reinstrumentation here does help it stand apart from the original. The light little bits of recording feedback do add some character, but not sure they should be in there.

1:31 has a subtle but noticeable shift in the energy by adding the percussive support and doubling the melody, which is the kind of stuff I was talking about in terms of needing some more personalization. Nice little guitar riffing/ornamentations from 2:37 until the end to add a last bit of flavor to close it.

It's not my thing personally, i.e. I would have done something more boisterous with the theme, but that doesn't mean this isn't a substantive albeit melodically conservative arrangement approach. I disagreed with proph; sure, I'd personally like it with more complexity, but that's not required, nor do I think this approach isn't substantive enough without it. The reinstrumentation of the first half has a measure of personalization to the approach. Not enough to YES it if the style stayed like that the whole way, but then everything from 1:31 on for the second half pushed it over the line for me in terms of standing apart from the original. I don't think it should be turned down for needing more dynamics when that's more of a personal tilt to me. If I heard this on the actual OST, I'd say it did enough to feel texturally different from the other version. We ride...

YES

[Gario ⚖️]

What a pleasant source, and what a chill interpretation of it. It's calming, a touch conservative but the personality of the performance shines through so I don't think it's too much so for OCR. The performances are as loose as intended, it really sells the "we're just chillin' and jammin'" vibes that it's going for. I agree with Liontamer that the arrangement has enough of a shift in energy to keep things interesting throughout the performance.

The production values on this are an issue, though. I suspect there's a lowpass on this that's keeping the arrangement all in the lower and lower/mid range of the spectrum, which while sounding *warm* also introduces the issue of introducing artifacts and fuzziness when instruments play together. There's small moments where the track clicks unintentionally thoroughout, but moments like 2:36 - 2:38 really take me out of it with how crunchy the artifacts get.

I like this otherwise, but I do think the production quality is below the bar. I believe lifting the lowpass on some of the instruments and remixing the arrangement would pretty much fix the production issues that I hear, so I hope to hear this again soon.

NO

[jnWake ⚖️]

What a beautiful source, fits the title perfectly.

Before starting the review, please remember we request WAV files next time you submit!

Anyway, we begin with an electric guitar and piano doing the arpeggios from the intro. Right away the volume catches my attention as this is very quiet (and it'll continue to be). At 0:13, the main sax line plays on guitar and, as you mentioned on the write-up, it basically plays the original melody as is. Piano provides the backing chords here, in contrast to the original's combination of acoustic guitar and strings. Chord progression seems very similar to the original but you actually added a ton of variations to the bass notes, like a big focus on G as the pedal note on the first few chords. There's a brief move to F on the bass around 0:27 (sounds kinda weird on the next chord at 0:30, personally I'd have moved to E like the source) and then we return to pedal tone G for a bit. From 0:40 you start following the original bass for a few bars but then return to the G pedal note on the chromatic E-Eb-D-Db-C section of the original, then it moves to B pedal note for a bit and resolves like the original. Cool! We reach the loop point around 1:18. Additional voices and some form of percussion join at 1:32. Mix here starts becoming muddier and it becomes harder to parse what's going on. The piano for example becomes almost completely buried and I can only hear a few bass notes here and there. There's also some plucky strings in the mix, also hard to hear. Second loop ends around 2:38 with some strings and we get a simple outro.

On arrangement I have 2 main notes. Note #1 is that the structure of the arrangement and the melodies are basically 1:1 to the source, which risks our "reinterpretation" requirement a little. The variations you added to the piano background do have a ton of merit as some are pretty cool, but I'm not entirely convinced on them being enough by themselves. Luckily, the second half adds some additional voices and stuff that give your version a bit more identity. That said, I wish there was a more concrete flow to this arrangement, it's basically 2 loops of the source. I wish there was more tension or build-up or something of the sort.

Production is, however, where this one fails more IMO. Electric guitar's fine, I like the tone and the performance. Piano, as proph noted, sounds quite far away and becomes very buried on the second half. Said second half is easily where the production's issues are felt the most, as the larger amount of voices makes it hard to focus on anything. I believe there's 2 guitars, a bass, some plucky string lines and the piano, but I can't really hear all of the elements that clearly. Also, as Gario above mentioned, there's a very "boxy" feel to the sound, with not much material on the lowest and highest frequencies. I think you can probably breathe a lot of life into the mix by looking at those areas. Finally, it's very quiet! I understand that this is a calm cover but it's quite below standard volume at the moment.

Overall, while I mostly like the arrangement, I think you need some extra spice on the arrangement and a second pass on the mix for this to pass.

NO

[Emunator ⚖️]

Lovely vibes right off the start, I'm not sure where this is going but there's a tremendous amount of expressiveness in the performances shining through immediately, which persists through the whole arrangement. A really unexpected changeup to the instrumentation hits around the halfway mark, but it's definitely welcomed. Overall, I found that this arrangement passed the bar with no reservations because of the human element added by the live performances - it's expansive enough even though it hews close to the original material, and I don't think there's a strong case to reject this track on arrangement grounds, even though it doesn't deviate from the original structure.

Production is more of a mixed bag. Instrument tone is really lovely overall. The mixing is handled in a way that has the piano sounding muffled, like it's coming from the corner of a quiet jazz club, and the guitar taking center stage and covering the lead melody role. I'm not opposed to mixing the piano that way and using it in more of a textural role., but I can see how it might have rubbed the other judges wrong. What's irking me a bit more is the heavy transient emphasis on the guitar - all of the pick noises feel incredibly loud in a way that does break my immersion in the chill vibe. I'm not sure if it's the compression style used or how the instrument was recorded, but it feels like many of the elements have a very plucky transient to it, and that is compounded more in the second half of the instrument when you add more instruments and the panning becomes more chaotic. It also feels like it's picking up on incidental artifacts/noises in the recording itself and accentuating them further - it leads me to suspect that compression might be the culprit here.  

I'm in agreement with jnWake that the second half of the track is where the production issues feel more present - it's very hard to follow what's going on because of instrument leveling and panning choices that were made - it's a lot to keep track of, and with the transients being so pokey, there's even more competing for my attention. I also felt like the mixing on the piano caused it to get totally lost in this section. 

I disagree with prophetik that the arrangement is the dealbreaking issue here, but because it's so conservative to the original source and doesn't take as many risks with the arrangement, the production nitpicks weigh a little heavier. That said, I love love love the vibe you've laid out here and the subtle ways you express feeling through your performances. There's absolutely a passing track here and I don't think it'll take much to get it there!

NO (resubmit!)