Liontamer Posted October 6, 2007 Share Posted October 6, 2007 Sound quality...not so hot - LT ReMixer name: Parsec Real name: Mark J. Hadley Email address: parsec_productions@yahoo.com Website: www.parsecproductions.com UserID: 21993 Title of song: "Nocturnal Leap" Name of game(s) ReMixed: Eternal Sonata Name of individual song(s) ReMixed: Make the Leap Additional information about game: An RPG for the XBox 360, taking place in a fantasy dreamworld within the mind of the famous composer/pianist Frederick Francois Chopin during the final hours of his life. Link to the original soundtrack: The music from the game can be listened to from the official website, eternalsonata.namcobandaigames.com Comments about the mix: The main battle theme, "Make the Leap", was a fast and driving orchestral piece. As Chopin was a pianist, I was inspired to make a piano version of the music, and I decided as a contrast to make it much slower and softer. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The game's almost as crazy of a premise as Katamari Damacy. Couldn't believe it when I read it. Thanks for the link to the source tune, Mark. Not bad stuff. DarkeSword mentioned that he felt Sakuraba's material could be hit or miss. I liked the energy of this one. The brass samples in it were poo though. Eternal Sonata - "Make the Leap (Regular Battle)" Source comes in at :23 and was all over this arrangement, so no complaints on that level. The sound quality was definitely hurting pretty bad. I liked the thick ambiance here on account of the reverb, but it's arguably too thick and can be scaled back. Part of the problem of scaling it back is that the drier you get, the more you expose the sampled piano and it's lack of realism, which didn't sound that strong to begin with in a lot of places. You need more post-production refinement of the sequencing to make the performance sound smoother and more organic-sounding. As is, much of the performance sounded more rigidly played than what the writing implied. Unfortunate too, as there were some really nice, emotive moments apparent in the arrangement when the performance flowed better. It also felt like a ton of frequencies got lopped off somehow. That combined with the ultra-rough production was too much to look past. Sorry I can't offer more specific criticisms, but hopefully the others will have good insight and recommendations. This is a really nice base, but needs a lot of TLC on the production side so that the arrangement isn't undermined as much as it is now. I noticed you recently signed up for the forums, so please make use of the Works forum and particularly the ReMixing forum to ask specific question on how to improve with your current tools. Sincerely hope to hear more from you. NO (rework/resubmit) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
zircon Posted November 19, 2007 Share Posted November 19, 2007 Wow, the source is very long... no shortage of material to work with here. Unfortunately, while the interpretation is pretty solid, the production is not. The sequencing is pretty mechanical in a lot of places, especially with those repetitive left hand chords early on. If you know you're working with mediocre samples, you should make an effort to write around them. A lot of the writing here is rather plain and simple, especially prior to about 1:54. At that point, things got considerably more interesting. I would revise the first part of the piece to be more like that in terms of rhythmically and melodically interesting material. As of now, it kind of plods - and there are other places in the mix like that too. However, I'm getting sidetracked, as my main issue is the production. Too much reverb; frequency balance doesn't sound so great.. try another sample, or failing that, ask someone in the community to perform it for you, or even just ask them to run the MIDI through some of their piano samples. Lots of people would likely be willing to help if you asked in the Remixing forum. Cool mix though - I encourage you to keep working on it AND submit new material. NO Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CHz Posted November 21, 2007 Share Posted November 21, 2007 I like how I could tell by the first five seconds that Sakuraba wrote this source tune. The first 1:50 of your mix still sounds like every single Sakuraba battle theme ever. Decent dynamics for the build in that section, but it is rather simplistic in both arrangement and composition and does drag. After that, though, the arrangement of the source is all kinds of fine, and the piece becomes quite a bit more interesting to listen to also. Liontamer and zircon pushed at mechanical sequencing. The piano is definitely not as robotic as it could have been, but there's definitely room for improvement on that. Some passages like 2:09-2:12, 3:09-3:12, 4:04-5:04, etc. I thought were really hurting for a more human touch. Everything else could use more humanization in too, but those in particular were the biggest offenders that set off my red light. As for the sound, definitely pull down the reverb. Get a better sample that you don't have to drench so much in order for it to sound not so bad. This one has promise on the arrangement side, but tweak the sequencing to make the playing seem more real and work on getting the sound better. NO (resubmit) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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