Liontamer Posted December 27, 2007 Share Posted December 27, 2007 Oops, late on some potential Xmas stuff; might be too much on the mainstream source usage referred to in the sub letter - LT Well, this is my first time submitting material to OCR, so please bear with me if the general format of this email is slightly amiss. Hopefully 'twill not be too... lengthy. Remix title: "Carol of the Belmonts" Remixer name: Apollyon Email address: fiendishlyevil1@yahoo.com Game arranged: Castlevania: Symphony of the Night Songs arranged: "Dracula's Castle", "Moonlight Nocturne" Composer: Michiru Yamane System: Sony Playstation Original Soundtrack: Comments: Well, where to start? I have been remixing videogame music for quite some time now, but have never gotten a project to the point where I deemed it OCR-worthy. Most notably, whenever I remix any of Mitsuda's work, I find myself perpetually engaging in minor tweaking so I do not completely mutilate the feel of the original; as a result, nothing significant ever gets accomplished, and the mix stays in a sort of barely-altered stasis. This is the first time I have ever had an objective deadline (Christmas), so I had to work a little faster than usual. This track, like all my non-midi work thus far, was done on the computers at school with a relatively outdated edition of GarageBand (the closest I can come to a remixing program on my budget), and was all done over the course of about three weeks. GarageBand is often somewhat lacking in the instrumental department, so the sound production may be a tad lacking in this mix; I can only hope the extent of the arrangement (particularly the shift from the original 4/4 song to this 3/4 mix, and the resultant alterations of melody and rhythm) will be enough to redeem this flaw. The other major downside of working with GarageBand is that the Macs at school have drastically different sound setups than any other computers I have ever encountered, so I must save the song, drive home, and play it on my home computers before I can judge whether I have the leveling right. As you can imagine, progress is rather slow using this method. As for why I chose these specific songs, I have always been a huge fan of Michiru Yamane, and the SotN OST is arguably her most brilliant work. There were parts in which I tried to emulate the feel of the original songs (for instance, crafting simulated "wind" sounds in the intro), but overall I just went with whatever sounded good on the spur of the moment. The most difficult facet of the remix was the leveling of the lead guitars; because they have such a distinctive tone, it is easy for them to overpower the rest of the song, but if you tone them down too much, you lose the melody line in certain parts. I would like to have included part of "The Tragic Prince" (another SotN classic) somewhere in the remix, but I knew there was no way I could do justice to that one, so I decided to just leave well enough alone. I suspect there are those who will not notice this (I obscured the instrument in question slightly more than I intended to), but the fast-paced, vaguely Ecco-esque little instrument underlying most of the song is actually playing the repeating section of "Carol of the Bells". Originally, that was all I intended to do with the holiday-oriented part of the song, but one of the friends providing feedback on the song pointed out that the pun in the mix's title would make no sense if no one noticed the "carol" part, so I decided to insert a more obvious "Carol of the Bells" reference later on. Anyhow, thank you for taking the time to listen to this mix, and possibly read through the comments (although I would not blame you had you skipped them - I have a tendency to ramble). Have a productive day. ------------------------------------------------------------ Regarding the "Carol of the Bells" usage, we now generally discourage mashups of mainstream/non-VGM music with the arranged VGM. For this particular arrangement I think I could let this amount of usage go as the major majority of track was CV, with CV source usage even during some of the Xmas music. But if most of the judges panel or djpretzel said this was a NO-go on that level, I'd roll with his call. Just keep that issue in mind for the future. (Section 3.3 of the Submission Standards). Akumajo Dracula X ~Nocturne in the Moonlight~ Original Game Soundtrack - 06 "Dracula's Castle" & 04 "Nocturne in the Moonlight" Decent base here, but some stuff stuck out as pretty poor. At :26, the lead instrumentation need more presence; right now the lead and support instrumentation are basically at the same level, with the melody not standing out at all. 1:07's section was a great example of that. The guitar synths have no meat or power to them. The drum programming at 1:08 is extremely bland and weak-sounding, like the only requirement is that it simply has to be there, not that it sufficiently fills out the background. The piano at 1:51 sounded nice overall, but it was too quiet compared to the rest of the sounds. The rock portion returned from 2:12-2:37, combining with a little bit of piano and some really fake-sounding guitar synth. Same issues with poor balance and the soundscape being too murky (e.g. 3:19-3:49), with the bowed strings, harp-like strings and vox and melodic synth. Also heard some weak drums along with some MIDI-grade hand drums in there from 3:50-3:59; oof, just a bad quality disparity with some of the other more refined elements you had. Basically just more of the same arrangement ideas and textures for the last few minutes, with the same sample quality and production issues. I'll leave it to some other Js for more specific production criticisms as they'll do a better job; I was just relaying the gist of the problems I heard. Better sample quality for some of the instruments would help this out (and there should be better free stuff out there), as well as better sound balance. In terms of a first sub, not terrible, but clearly leaves a lot to be desired. The arrangement was decent at least in terms of changing the mood of the source material, but was hindered a lot by the weak execution. NO Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Malcos Posted January 2, 2008 Share Posted January 2, 2008 The arrangement here is definitely a pass for me, however the musical ideas here are not fully realised due to the production and mixing. The overall sound level is very low - it worked in the intro but that low level just continues throughout the entire mix. The instruments playing the melodies and the percussion weren't prominent enough in the mix, as Liontamer has already mentioned. This makes the mix sound undefined. There is also a distinct lack of high frequencies in the instrumentation, and coupled with too much reverb on the piano, makes the mix sound very muddy and cluttered at times. Nice arrangement, but the mixing/production was really under par with this one. NO Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
big giant circles Posted January 2, 2008 Share Posted January 2, 2008 I myself was a bit unimpressed overall with the arrangement. Cool idea and notable effort in meshing Carol of the Bells with CV music, but it seemed to much "one or the other", rather than totally fusing the two together. In other words, I never really felt like I was hearing the two completely together. It was more like the track kept alternating back and forth, where the CV themes were a little too straightforward without enough variation during the actual source themes. For the most part, anyway. I did hear the play-off-one-another thing going on a little better there at the end, where they were alternating measure by measure or so. At any rate, that's not my biggest gripe. I could *possibly* overlook that were it not for the production. It's far too quiet, and the overall mastering/EQ leaves plenty of room for improvement. Too much reverb. Not that using a lot of reverb is always a bad thing, but it definitely is when the track feels like the reverb is out of control. It's waaaaay too quiet and sounds far back. It's like, if you've ever been near a stadium when theres an event going on, and you can hear the music outside the stadium but it's hard to focus on exactly what's going on. Also, as Larry would say - WHERE'S DA BEEF? Not a bad start, and I'd love to see SotN get some more love - one of my favorite games. But you'll need to take this one back into the shop in the meanwhile. Keep at it. NO Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts