Liontamer Posted December 1, 2007 Share Posted December 1, 2007 (edited) Nutritious Justin Medford ID: 16520 Super Mario 64 Lethal Lava Land This song is for the Mario 64 remix project, so if accepted, please don't release it until the project is completed. I've always loved the music from Mario 64. While this definitely wasn't my favorite track from the game and wouldn't normally be my first choice to remix, I saw that the track was open on the project and had some sudden inspiration that pushed me forward. The original track doesn't seem to have any normal time signature or natural progression to the song, but instead sounds like a collection of instruments playing (seemingly) random notes around a general theme. A Indian coworker of mine pointed out that it's a type of classical Indian music (though I forget the name of the genre). Anyway, because of this, it's was a very difficult song to remix and the themes used might not be readily apparent. Here's the breakdown: :00 - :08 uses the riff that the sitar plays at the very beginning and throughout the original :08 - :32 consists of variations of that same riff with backing chords and counter melodies :48 - 1:37 is from the melody played by the flute-ish instrument that starts around :37 in the original 1:52 - 2:28 is a combination of both the sitar and flute melodies used together with different instruments Edited June 16, 2014 by djpretzel Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DarkeSword Posted December 1, 2007 Share Posted December 1, 2007 Wow. Pretty grand opening you've got there. I never thought of this song in terms of a sweeping orchestral piece. I really like how you've interpreted the source tune here. There's a lot of the right kind of originality; you've taken the original themes and played with them just enough. Wonderfully orchestrated. The samples aren't the most amazing, but they certainly get the job done. Nice sequencing. I think this is great, and a perfect example of the kind of interpretive work we look for here at OCR. Nice work. YES Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Liontamer Posted December 6, 2007 Author Share Posted December 6, 2007 It's so tempting to just drop everything and listen to "Snow Mountain" after this source tune finished. Lots of great memories playing that level. http://www.zophar.net/usf/sm64usf.rar - 10 "Lethal Lava Land" Yeah, the samples weren't overly hot, but the writing was rock solid and the samples were used well, IMO. Hitting the :34 mark, the dynamics were already very nice, a trend that held up the rest of the way. Really creative usage of the melody from :37 of the source from :48-1:50 here; I would have never thought anyone could integrate those section well into any arrangement, but you've proved yet again why people in this community can't be counted out in terms of creativity. What the hell was that springy sound from 1:50-1:51? Fixy fixy before it's posted. Overall though, just a really impressive choice of direction to go with the theme, executed effectively. If this guy stays hungry and continues to improve, who knows how deadly he'll be at this. Welcome aboard, Justin. Now you gotta get those excellent Follin WIPs finished, also some great concepts. YES Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
zircon Posted December 6, 2007 Share Posted December 6, 2007 OK all you aspiring orchestral OC-ReMixers out there... listen to this before you complain about us rejecting your mixes due to production! Nutritious isn't a pro film or triple A game composer, and he doesn't have big expensive commercial samples. As a matter of fact I think these are free samples. No, they're not knock-your-socks-off amazing, but the combination of good writing, orchestration, mixing, and processing masks the weaker elements and the end result is quite enjoyable. It conveys emotion and does a great job of interpreting the source tune (which I am not particularly fond of.) The arrangement as a whole is very effective. Some might criticize the dynamics on this, since it is mostly quiet overall, but I think if you simply turn up your headphones/speakers, it sounds wonderful - compression would really make the loud swells less impressive. If I had to make one nitpick, it would be that aside from the trumpet and cymbals, most of the instruments could use a high end EQ boost to increase brightness. A little more stereo widening/separation wouldn't hurt either on some of the ensemble parts that seem to be rather centered (like the french horns.) I have no idea what Larry is talking about at 1:50 or so, I don't hear anything wrong there. Great job! Keep it up. YES Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CHz Posted December 7, 2007 Share Posted December 7, 2007 I couldn't hear that spring Larry mentioned at first, but after turning up my volume all the way, there's a really faint sproing right after the harp plays the second note at 1:51. Dunno what the cause of that is. Not a killer for the mix at all, but I'd like to see that fixed if possible before the piece goes up. Anything more to add? Not really. Very solid interpretation; you did a great job of arranging the original piece. Source usage is there throughout, and your writing's all good. The low areas are rather soft, but you go nice and loud at the beginning and end, so no problem there. Enough work was put into the samples so that nothing sounds really bad. Really just an excellent job overall. Pretty easy call. YES Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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