Hemophiliac ⚖️ Posted September 30 Posted September 30 This was my submission to Dwelling Of Duels' Fresh Month 2025. I've been on a break for a while but I knew I wanted to come back with an entry different than my usual tropical electric guitar styling. One thing that I've been wanting to do more is making more music with my tiple, which is a Colombian 12 string instrument that it like a smaller guitar with 4 courses of three strings. The Colombian tiple is known particularly for playing pasillos and bambucos, which are based 3/4 or 6/8 time. For Fresh Month, I wanted to make a track inspired by traditional pasillos but including violin and using my Coda EDC flute (which is basically an ocarina) and my cajon to go for a fully live feel using the tools I've got on hands. I got on VGLS to find something from a game I've played before and found that, somehow, there was a Brothers: A Tale Of Two Sons sheet on the website. I played Brothers a long while ago and really dug it (been meaning to replay it now that it has actual co-op play) so it seemed like a perfect opportunity to represent a less known game with a virtually unheard genre in VGM. I took the melody of the theme song and treated it like a species counterpoint exercise to create the voices for the violin, ocarina and bass. My biggest challenge for this piece was the violin; I've only been playing for about 5 years but I've been feeling more comfortable with it that I wanted it to be a part of this track. I do wish that I had an acoustic violin available but my point for this track was to use the tools available to me at the moment and I like how it all came together. Games & Sources Brothers: A Tale Of Two Sons Main Theme :
prophetik music ⚖️ Posted October 1 Posted October 1 melody really works well in triple meter. opens with the tiple and bass - what a unique sound that the tiple has! i'm not familiar with it - and adds the violin and flute soon after. flute's got a few NCTs at 1:16 and 1:22 which sound a little weird, but overall the contrapunctal elements represented by the flute are nice adds. the solo section with the tiple is nice - i love the lead tone of it, like a really wide 12-string. violin solo is pretty darn solid for a newer player. there's a bit of a recap coming out of the violin solo and a final big hit to end it. from a technical perspective, i found most of the instruments to be a little too dry, and separately it sounded like the minor to major turnaround that was halfway through the chord progression got stumbled on quite a bit (example would be 2:35). but i liked the live feel and interpretation of the original, and i think that the overall ensemble works really well together. i'd have loved to see a few of the missteps cleaned up, but overall i think this is over the bar. YES
Hemophiliac ⚖️ Posted October 5 Author Posted October 5 (edited) I want to start off by saying thanks for sharing this source and arranging it, it's beautiful. With this, I have no qualms with the source usage. It's well represented and the additional line movement from the secondary parts is plenty of personalization. I really enjoy the folk-nature of this piece and I like the instrument selection, they all work very well together. The tiple in particular is awesome. The drums sound very dry to me, and the snare in particular stands out as being in a strange place in the mix due it's dryness. The flute is where I'm having issue reconciling the piece. 1:16, 1:22, and 2:34 all have moments where the flute is playing a note outside of the chord being played in those moments. While they are generally moving towards a chord tone after, they do land on a strong beat and this causes an accent to them making them stand out to me. It's really only these 3 moments that stood out to me in the whole piece. Other moments of dissonance or motion like this did not bother me as much. I'm going to let this sit for a few days and come back to it and see if those awkward notes stand out as much to me, and hear some other thoughts on this before I make my decision. ? Edit 10/27: I've listened to this again, and the flute notes do still really stand out to me. I see how everyone else has voted on this, and that's fine we can disagree on how this one lands. Yes this has a "live" feel, but those notes happen too many times and stand out a too much to me. If I'm wrong and this passes that's fine, but I need to stick to my guns on this one. NO Edited October 28 by Hemophiliac No longer ?
jnWake ⚖️ Posted October 9 Posted October 9 (edited) Thanks for noting the instruments on the write-up, otherwise I'd have assumed it was a 12 string guitar. Always fun to learn something new and to see a different genre here. Anyway, this begins with the melody that starts around ~1:02 in the source, now on tiple. I really like how the tiple sounds, very lush and clean, lovely! Around 0:25 we get a bigger ensemble with the introduction of the violin and a percussion. Violin takes the lead, doing the second melody from the source while the tiple now takes a rhytm role. As small nitpicks, I feel the both percussion and violin are a tad dry and the violin sound lacks attack, makes it sounds very synthetic. We then repeat the main melody with the flute doing some harmonies. After that there's a repeat of the second melody with the flute doing some harmonies and then a tiple solo, followed by a violin solo (I feel 2:11 has a wrong note on the violin). There's a fun chord progression change around 2:18 but the tiple playing has some sloppy moments there (2:20 specifically, sounds like you played the wrong chord and quickly fixed it). We then get a new melody on 2:26 (there may be a wrong note at 2:35 on the rhytm tiple? Same at 2:39) and we finish the track with a variation on an earlier section. Arrangement is fun, you did a nice job adapting the source to the new genre/rhytm/instrumentation. My only criticism here really would be that the cajon writing/playing is fairly repetitive, I feel there could be more fills added to make it more varied, even if the general rhytm doesn't change much. I don't have issues with the flute notes that Hemo pointed, I agree that they're a bit spicy but I like them. Production is good, the tiple recording in particular is excellent and the mixing is clear, although a little dry. As noted above I have some issues with the performance, with some off sounding notes in different parts. Overall, this is a great track! Fun idea to adapt the source to a "pasillo" and you executed it well. However, for this to be posted I'd ask for the artist to fix the wrong notes on flute/tiple, especially at the points noted above (2:11, 2:35 and 2:39). YES EDIT: I decided to revise my vote and leave it as just YES, not gonna let perfect be the enemy of good! Edited October 27 by jnWake 27-10-25: Changed vote from C to Y
pixelseph ⚖️ Posted October 26 Posted October 26 Great source, and an excellent rearrangement! Also unfamiliar with the tiple but love the tonality. I'm not as discouraged about the non-chord tones from the flute as my fellow judges; to my ear, it sounds like a live jam with the instruments you'd hear in a house and all the fun that comes with it! The mixing feels balanced; nothing stands out as egregious to my ear. YES
paradiddlesjosh ⚖️ Posted October 28 Posted October 28 Neat source, super fun arrangement! There's a clear vibe of a live band in a cantina jamming this one out. I think there's a lot more working for this track than against it: the live feel, the production value, the style transformation outweigh the dry, repetitive cajon part and the sour notes in the flute and violin. For the latter, the pitches pointed out by my fellow Js at 2:35 and 2:39 are the only ones that irk me personally, and not nearly enough to sink the track. Could the cajon part benefit from some variation? Sure, but it's not a focal point of the track at any point and the pattern propels the whole thing forward well enough. Much like a mass-market cerveza, this track's execution isn't ideal, but it'll hit the spot when you need a cold one -- or a pasillo. Nice work. YES
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