Liontamer Posted December 6, 2007 Share Posted December 6, 2007 zyko One Monkey's Dream Donkey Kong 64 This offering is another guitar-driven track from this past (and surprisingly productive) summer. i've remixed this source (the banana fairy island song) once before with a track from vgmix 1, titled banana ether (sampled in stretches of this version). i never quite did what i wanted to do with it as i was very limited at the time. i wish i could say that this was a lot more in sync with the idea i had except i completely scratched the ethereal, tripped out feel for a driving, rocked out alternative. i'm very highly inspired and influenced by Yanni and one of my favorite tracks of his, One Man's Dream, has been a staple in my listening diet for over a decade. i can't bother to explain the amount of introspection (assisted and unassisted) i have survived to that piece and it was fitting for me to tribute it when writing my own audio introspection. what you get is a piece with a variety of personalities, a lot of homage to my early vgmix1 days, and, well, whatever else you might find in there. dig it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DarkeSword Posted December 7, 2007 Share Posted December 7, 2007 I'm a huge fan of Yanni's Live at the Acropolis, which One Man's Dream is from. In fact Blue Skies Over Guardia was subconsciously inspired by Santorini. I've said this on occasion, but I think that Live at the Acropolis is required listening for any aspiring OC ReMixer. A person can learn a lot about catchy melodies, syncopation, and arrangement development from that album; it's not the most complex music in the world, but I think it's a very educational work. But I digress. In any case, starting off, the piano is way too mechanical, and fairly straightforward in terms of interpretation; but at the same time, it's interesting how the Banana Fairy theme works out to almost a major key version of One Man's Dream. The bass pizzicato also sounds too dry; you've got some lovely high strings with the wind sound adding a lot of depth, but the plucked strings sound like they're just in the wrong space. Same with the percussion in the guitar section. As for the guitar, it certainly does rock out sufficiently, but going from that to such an obviously mechanical SNES music box sound sounds very jarring and exposes the sequenced stuff even more. We get more of the guitar in a more rocking section after some wonky zen tomfoolery (which I ultimately felt was pointless, but to each his own). I think the guitar is more at home here, but overall, the percussion feels pretty bland and the bass feels thin. Great soloing though through the end though. I think the first half of this mix is really what's holding it back, moreso in terms of samples and sequencing than anything else. I realize this is older piece of yours, so you might not feel like revisiting it, but I'm going to say NO (resub) anyway. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
zircon Posted December 9, 2007 Share Posted December 9, 2007 Pretty cool stuff here overall. I didn't really have a problem with the music box, despite it being lower quality.. I think it sounds less out-of-place than the tambourine from "At First Innocence" which we passed. Drums and bass are a little dry and plain but it's not a big deal for me. I thought 2:25 through 3:15 or so dragged on a little long, though the concept was interesting. As always I thought there were some tuning and performance issues (general tightness) though again, compared to "At First Innocence" they are not as significant here IMO. I like what was done with the arrangement, but as per Larry's source breakdown, gotta have more source usage. I've voted like this on other mixes that were just a few percentage points off and I want to be consistent. That aside, I actually don't have any major problems with production, though I can see the merit in the criticisms provided by Shariq & Larry. NO Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Liontamer Posted December 9, 2007 Author Share Posted December 9, 2007 http://www.hcs64.com/usf/downcnt.php?dk64usf.zip - (039) "Banana Fairy Isle" Yeah, the opening sequencing on the backing piano was definitely very mechanical, only drawing more attention to itself by the bar. Switched over into more genteel instrumentation at :58; cool wind SFX. The pattern being so tight works a lot more for the music box style instrument at :56 as opposed to the piano. Similar realism issues with the woodwind sequencing from :43-:58. Some geetar ripped it up from 1:19-1:43 (with a solid drum transition leading into it). Started turning sinister at 2:18, with everything going out of whack all the way until 3:15. I could understand criticisms of it going long, but even that section evolved. I didn't have any problem with it in terms of impacting the decision. 3:37 finally ratcheted things up with the source tune on lead guitar (along with some very understated guitar support). The soundfield was feeling pretty cramped, with the rhythm guitar and cymbals feeling pretty marginalized and swamped out. It's not terrible, but some better separation of the parts would really give this some more space and improve the texture. The drums were weed's usual samples, which IMO don't always fit. In this case, I'd say the snare in particular didn't sit right with me. The dryness of the snare actually seemed like more of a problem from 4:30-5:09 with the snare pattern being dry like zircon mentioned. If it were pulled back some, it would sound better IMO, more important than making the pattern more complex. Loved the transition at 5:11, dropping the snare, adding some chiptune-style lines, and moving things along nicely with the kick, cymbals and bassline. More percussion stuff added at 5:34 while the snare returned at 5:39, created more thick/crowded textures until 6:32 went for a nice acoustic close. Timestamping everything where I heard the source tune, I got :00-2:23, 3:20-3:21, 3:37-4:04, 4:29-4:36 & 4:43-4:50. In this case, 3:05's-worth of source usage within a 6:54-long track or about 44.69%. I saved that for last because there could be aspects of the source I'm missing, or another source could have been used that I'm not clear on. If I'm accurate though, I feel there needs to be more inclusion of the source material. Just applying some more of it within the background of some more sections would be fine. There were some crowded sections, but nothing that was a dealbreaker, IMO. Aside from ensuring there's more than 50% source usage (how I interpret the source material being "dominant" re: the standards), I'd say refine the instrumentation for the intro, refine the drums in those spots where the snare felt too dry and loud, and this would be all good to me. I'd definitely try to tweak it up, weed, to me this was pretty close. NO (resubmit) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
zykO Posted December 11, 2007 Share Posted December 11, 2007 i might be able to pump this puppy dizzy with steroids and resubmit. i agree with the lack of punch throughout despite it being by design (i was thinkin yanni throughout and yanni doesn't usually have meat on the bone). i also want to redo the piano ... the original take was a live take but i scrapped it because i'm not much of a pianist and replaced it with, what i was ironically hoping would sound like, an overly mechanical toy piano. guess that didn't work =) in any event, i'll tweak the EQ on it, re-record the piano and *maybe* shorten the Dream section of the track although, guys, are you freakin serious? hahaha Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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