Liontamer Posted August 4, 2007 Share Posted August 4, 2007 Remix name: Level Up! Remix link: Size: 4.4 megabytes Length: 3:27 Encoded with: LAME 3.97, -V 2 --vbr-new Remixer name: Shadow Real name: Brodie Rao Email address: me@dackz.net Website: http://dackz.net/sa/m/ Userid: 3034 Game: EarthBound Original Song: "You Gained a Level!" Composers: Keiichi Suzuki, Hirokazu Tanaka SPC Soundtrack: http://snesmusic.org/v2/profile.php?profile=set&selected=783 Comments: I thought to myself, "hey, I haven't been to OCReMix in a long time. Maybe I should submit something!" And here I am. Larry EDIT (8/4): I hollered at Shadow after reading what the source was. His comments below: I had a feeling this would be an issue after it was brought up in the IRC channel. Personally I don't see what the problem is, it's just expanding on the theme in the original song. It repeats forever in the game, it isn't ten seconds. You hear it when you gain a level in the game, and it keeps playing until you finish confirming stat upgrades and exit the battle. I chose it specifically because it gave me a lot of room to work in, because it was such a simple song. The original intent of the song is still there, I just made it into a full song with a little different style. I think it'd be pretty lame if it were rejected solely on the basis that the original song isn't much of a song, but I guess it depends on what you consider to be a remix. And I guess this is kind of funny considering my first remix was really just a cover. Larry EDIT (8/12): Shadow sent in a louder version; arrangement is the same. Use the J-hosted link if you want to be sure you have the right one. Again, his comments below: One more thing: I changed the overall mastering of the track so it's not as quiet. http://dackz.net/sa/m/remixes/level_up.mp3 has been updated to reflect that -- it's now 4.66 MB, instead of 4.47 MB. Everything else is as it was. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- http://snesmusic.org/v2/download.php?spcNow=mo2 - "You Gained a Level!" (mo2-033.spc) Doesn't bear enough recognizable connections to the original. Too bad, because it's a good track. Bear in mind, the source does repeat ad infinitum, but the reason it's a 6-second long source is because that's how long the loop is. Once you've heard that, you've clearly heard the whole thing. Off a 6-second jingle (that's used in other places in the game, so believe me, I recognize it), the chance to do something explicitly derived from the melody of the original was there. And that's not the route that was taken. The only part seemingly arranging the source melody started faintly at :11, and even that was too liberal. How you got from point A to point B is practically impossible to understand. This might as well be an "Onett's Arcade" arrangement for all you can tell. It's one thing to expand, it's another to bear little resemblance to what you're expanding upon. This isn't rejected because "the original song isn't much of a song". We've actually had more done with less than what you had to work with. Looking forward to hearing anything of yours in the future, but this one went off the rails as far as the arrangement standards goes. Hope to hear more from you, Brodie! NO Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
zircon Posted August 4, 2007 Share Posted August 4, 2007 Unfortunately I have to agree. When the original is just simple chords turned into three note arpeggiations, you really have to stick more closely to them. Yeah, I can make out the chord progression (if you could call it that) in a few places, but because the original is so simple, you need a much more clear connection before going crazy with variations. Larry and I talked about this in #ocrjudges; a good example of taking a short tune and doing a deep, interesting arrangement is "Glass Cage" by Israfel. That mix would easily get accepted today. Additionally, I think you could probably make the production more interesting. The drums are good, but generally speaking we frown on submissions that rely on chiptune style sounds. Bringing in even one or two more "hi-fi" elements would really help. NO Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Malcos Posted November 8, 2007 Share Posted November 8, 2007 The source cannot be easily found in this mix. The synth arpeggiations sound similar, however it might have been a better approach to have started out clearly defining the source, as it is such a short one. The drums are good, however the sound overall is quite lo-fi. The mix itself is a little repetitive, however the main issue here is the lack of a clear link to the source. NO Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CHz Posted November 10, 2007 Share Posted November 10, 2007 I love this piece. Saving it until the end of time. THE PROS I'm loving the percussion. The first 1:12 of the track has none of it at all, so the simple cymbal loop that starts up then makes a huge presence, and the freestyle loop riffage when the perc starts properly at 1:36 is boss. The ending is pretty tight too. I don't know what it is about them, but keep up the good work. Second, your leads: badass. I've looped the first 1:12 of this track like 15 times already, that's how much I love the writing and synths. They pick back up again near the end of the track, but I'm thinking about moving to Massachusetts so I can legally marry the first third of this track. THE CONS Most of this track feels too empty. In the first part, you've got the bass and drums on the bottom, and the hot synth action on the top, but nothing meaty enough in the middle to keep the whole thing solid. At 1:12, we get a nice synth in the middle, but all the leads drop out save one, which eventually goes away at 1:36. So now we have a solid base for the leads to come back to, and indeed when they hit at 2:24 the song cranks into awesometh gear, but 1:36-2:24 lasts too long by itself, especially since the synth does a whole lot of flipping back and forth between two notes. It occasionally hits a note below and one above, and the notes it alternates between switches, but that section is screaming for more variety. Much more pressing, though, is the arrangement factor. Takes guts to tackle a four-measure source tune, but you have to be really mindful of the balance between source and original material, and there's just too way much of the latter in this mix. I can hear occasional brief references to the source in one of the leads, most noticeable in the first twenty-five seconds or so, in the style of AeroZ's recent mix Wicked n' Floating: it hits the notes, but there are a ton of notes inserted as well to fill out the melody. Much more often, though, it's going on doing its own thing completely unrelated to the source, as do the rest of the leads. Other than the very faint use of the source verbatim in the background during the first part of the song from around 0:12-1:12, all the rest is original content. If the source connection were more substantial, I would pass this in a heartbeat, but until then, NO. I don't know how much you can do to what you've got without radically overhauling the whole thing, but make an effort for your old pal CHz, wouldja? I'd love to see something like this on the site some day. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Palpable Posted November 10, 2007 Share Posted November 10, 2007 Some very neat programming going on here, and the beginning reminds me of Max Tundra, one of my favorite artists. You're pushing the right buttons for me. I like how much wilder it gets as it goes on, and I was impressed how interesting it is to listen to even though sometimes you're just riffing on a couple notes! The drums are light and airy, but I would have liked to hear them a little higher in the mix - when the lead comes back in at 2:30, they get drowned out. The song could use more of a driving rhythm too and the boost would help that. I'd also like everything to be a touch brighter. It doesn't grab my attention enough and boosting some of those highs would help. But like everyone else has mentioned, the connection to the source material seems really tenuous - the arrangement is just too liberal. It's obviously tricky to work with something that's only a few notes to begin with, but I barely hear anything even approaching it here - I think the best I can say is that I kind of hear a similar instrument buried deep in your intro. To be honest, I have some doubts you could work the original in enough that I'd yes it, because it would involve scaling back some of the improvisation, but if you're willing to resubmit, I'm willing to give it another listen. I'm definitely saving this song to my hard drive anyway. NO Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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