Liontamer Posted November 11, 2007 Share Posted November 11, 2007 ReMixer Name: Northmusic Real Name: Steve Imbordino Email: northmusic@hotmail.com Website: http://www.northsounds.com User ID: 22382 Source: Judgment Day from Final Fantasy Song Title: The Last Hour Comments: Hello, I'm a local musician in the Chicago land area (Aurora Illinois to be exact). A friend of mine turned me onto OC Remix a few weeks ago. I've always been a fan of video game musicians (some of the most unrecognized artists in the field to be honest), and was happy to see such talented musicians paying tribute to some great work that's been done over the years. That being said, my friend gave me a copy of Judgment Day, and asked me to try my hand at doing my own arrangement. The final product is attached to this email. While I know I'm not at the same level as most of the musicians on this site, I tried to keep the original composition structure in tact while giving it a more modern feel. Thanks in advance for the time spent in reviewing it. Best regards, Steve Imbordino http://www.northsounds.com ---------------------------------------------------------------- Dale North will kill you for taking that URL. http://tzone.org/~llin/psf/packs2/FF7_psf.rar - 413 "Judgment Day" The sounds are reasonably well-balanced, though there's not too much going on. Maybe it's just me, but I found the lead synth at :10 to be ultra-bland and cheap-sounding, on account of being so exposed. The strings weren't much hotter, but did trail in a way to help them sound more realistic. No major dynamic shifts in the composition, though there were subtle changes/additions/subtractions in the instrumentation that helped the piece evolve somewhat. That's undermined by the repetitiveness of the melodic arrangement. I did like the bassline though and the groove was decent, but the melodic interpretation is near-0 with no other substantially compensating arrangement or interpretation techniques used besides the genre change. Then essentially a rinse and repeat of :10's section with the melody at 1:43. In other words, you've really got to do more, and really develop this piece. Check out section 4 of the Submission Standards for more info on how you could further personalize the arrangement. Stick around here and use the ReMixing and Works forums if you haven't done so already. Good base here though, Steve. There's a lot that could be improved, and I'm sure my comments make my opinion pretty negative, but that's just because I'm focused on what's lacking. You're ahead of most first-time submitters. Looking forward to hearing more from you. NO Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
zircon Posted November 18, 2007 Share Posted November 18, 2007 I like the groove foundation for this but it's not quite as interesting when you have Stylus RMX and recognize all the loops used... In general my issue with this is that it really sort of simplifies the original harmonically. Besides the fact that the melody isn't really varied from the source much, and that it's generally repetitive, you basically stripped down the chords and harmony rhythms from the original to basic sustains, which makes things a lot less interesting to listen to. You can get away with less harmony parts if the individual part writing is more engaging, but in this case, it wasn't. As Larry said, this has a decent base, but it's fairly bare and simple, not only in arrangement but in the sounds used. Beef it up. I strongly recommend listening to the various FF7 mixes we've posted over the last couple months from "Voices of the Lifestream" to get an idea of where our bar is at. NO Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JJT Posted November 18, 2007 Share Posted November 18, 2007 not a whole lot to add to what LT and zircon said. this isn't bad, but it's not really approaching our arrangement or production standards either. vanilla on both ends of the spectrum. would be interested in hearing a resubmit of this, though. also, say hi to wayne and garth for me. NO Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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