OCR04974 - *YES* Chronicon "Catactras"

[prophetik music ⚖️]

As I was playing the game, this song struck a string in my brain. I can't even explain what happened there. But I felt something and got an urge to remix this song. It's cryptic, repetitive and entertaining. The melody is simple but satisfying. It's dark. But good. I love it.

  So I took this song and added my influence with a grain of psytrance and Drum and Bass. Some Electric Guitars and loud master. All this added together gives you the last song I made alone as a Solo Artist. The atmosphere I tried to replicate is this dark and cryptic feeling you have in the original. With a little spice of fast Drum and Bass, sometimes filtered, sometimes half-step and sampled from the Genshin Remix I made a while ago. It's straightforward and conservative. It is very easy to recognise the source melody and progression so the listener won't be thrown off too far. The end was written after an experimentation with my wife and a song we were making together. So, even if she didn't write any for this one, she still influenced the whole ending ;) . Which is a plus.

  The song start in a slow and atmospheric intro with glitches before dropping some filtered drum. Then comes the hard hitting Drum and Bass that'll kick most of the song. With that, the main synth will be showing up with a lot of glitches pattern. After that there's a little silence then the main thing is on. 

Welcome to the ride.

  Also going forward, we will be sending music me and my wife co-wrote. So keep an eye out for some "Cinnamon Stone".

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Games & Sources

Chronicon - Forgotten City  --  Composer: Michael G. Woodley

[prophetik music ⚖️]

melody's immediately present, and there's some fun resonant goofiness initially before we start to get a tight, filtered beat. the initial beat hits at 0:43 and admittedly feels a little hollow since there's nothing really meaty behind it right away. that gets fixed at 1:10 when the bass comes in and we get the big variety of stuff going on behind the beat. the lead not having much reverb on it is a little off-putting initially but it feels a little better in the half-time section. 

2:15's voice lead is nicely reminiscent of the original. there's a big build into some premium sausage at 2:58, and then we're on the big chorus. the fall-off from this is very sudden, however, and we get some interesting delay effects and timings with the melodic material as a bit of an outro before it's done.

this is a fun one! upbeat and energetic, and feels much shorter than it actually is. i liked the ending's exploration of delay effects a lot. easy vote.

 

 

YES

[jnWake ⚖️]

What a challenging source to cover, basically just several modifications of one arpeggio...

Anyway, we begin with some pads/synths doing the main arpeggio. It starts small and quiet but it quickly starts to pile up with a ton of frequencies accumulating on the higher end. To my ears it's a bit much if I'm honest, and a quick check on SPAN confirms that there's a TON going on above 5kHz, which is fairly unusual. In any case, around 0:20 a percussion joins the soundscape, initially high-passed it seems. At 0:44 we get the proper drop and there's no high-passing anymore. Percussion is very punchy, I dig it. There's not much bass here so far, but after a quick break we get A TON of bass around 1:11. There's a ton of fun bass/percussion interplay on this section with some fun beat changes. At 1:53 we reach a break and at 2:15 we reach a section with piano+choir that seems to resemble part of the source. From 2:37 we get a similar build-up to 0:20 with the high-passed percussion and at 2:59 there's a new drop. I'm noticing now that the lead is super dry, it sounds quite odd when some of the phrases ends since the notes just cut-off really quickly, some delay/reverb would help. The track gets super loud here and I'm not exactly sure but I may be hearing some artifacts near 3:25. There's a very sudden transition at 3:42 into a quieter section for the end. I like the idea of 3:42 but I'm not sure the execution nailed it completely, it'd feel better if the notes didn't cut-off before the glitch effect but rather stayed with it, as if the tape was getting paused or something of the sort.

Arrangement is great, you took a very hard source and managed to turn into a fun heavy DnB jam. There's enough breaks and changes on the beat to keep it interesting for the entire duration. My only gripe would be with the transition at 3:42, I feel it could've been made smoother.

On production, I think this is generally well made DnB. Percussion is very punchy and the bass sounds great, which is basically what we need the most. Samples are generally good although I felt the pads had too much content around the 2-3kHz range, which can get fairly annoying during certain parts of the track. My other sample related nitpick is that the main lead synth is too dry and at times it sounds odd when the notes cut-off so abruptly. Finally, I also have some doubts about how loud the track gets (consistently -4/5 LUFS during the loudest parts) and how much basically every frequency range is being pushed. This is a picture of SPAN during the 3:00 portion:

As you can see, basically every frequency range is extremely high, with a ton of presence of super low stuff (some of it even below 20Hz) and also of very high frequencies. Now, the mix itself (despite the loudness) sounds good and one shouldn't simply rely on visuals to mix but in this case it seems like something that could be looked at to improve the mix, especially considering the loudest section may have some artifacts going on.

Overall, I think this is a great take on the source, fun arrangement and generally solid production. However, I have some issues with the loudness and potential artifacts on the 3:20 section, so for now I'll wait for other judges to listen while I give some more thought to my final veredict.

?

EDIT: I gave it some thought and I've decided to let my ears rule on this one. Although the sound near 3:20 is a little too distorted in my opinion, I'll not let that detail ruin what's generally a great mix.

YES

Edited November 7 by jnWake

[pixelseph ⚖️]

Great source track, never heard it nor the game prior to the vote! Rockos's translation of the source into rockin' DnB is handled well - shoutouts to the sections that made me stank face (1:10 - 1:53, 2:58 - 3:42) and the more exploratory outro section starting around 3:43. The groove switches and fills keep the track interesting across its runtime, which I agree with proph that it doesn't feel like 4 and a half minutes.

I do hear intentionally clipped and pushed elements in the mix that get exposed in the quieter sections, such as the delayed and filtered lead from 1:58 - 2:14 and the outro around 4:02 - 4:20. I wouldn't be against relaxing the compression on those elements during those pieces, but I'd still live passing the track as-is.

YES