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OCR01545 - EarthBound "Home Again"


djpretzel
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Engaging piano. Is that a little dissonance I sense after the first phrase of the piano solo? Very smooth mood music.

The vocals coming in was a surprise. Impressive all around. Unfortunately, it's kind of an abrupt ending.

I like it, a nice interpretation of music from a game deserving of the attention it gets at this site.

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This was always one of my favorite songs from Bound Together.

I know Dale hates the game and the music and blah blah blah, bitch bitch bitch, but he did a great job on this song and as always, his singing blew me away.

If you're checking this out and haven't heard the whole project before, give it a listen (link in the song write up) because you're guaranteed to find something you love. Seems Bound Together won't go away no matter how many times the website dies or gets moved, and that puts a smile on my face.

Much <3 Dale, glad to see this here on OCR. Now if only Ailsean would submit HIS songs... hahaha.

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Awesome piano work, a very professional sound, and damn this just good music. I sure as hell didn't know Dale could sing. For me this stacks up to Dragon Song and Pillar of Salt in terms of pure awesomeness.

Great composition all around, also the production values in the composition really enhance the mood at the perfect moments.

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Oh wow, it sure has been a long time since we've had Dale North on OCR. Not to mention, there's been a recent massive flux of Earthbound ReMixes, which can only mean great things!

Moving on, Dale North *solidly* arranges one of my all-time favorite tunes from Earthbound. This completely blew me away, especially by the time lyrics came in. I had no idea of Dale's singing talents. Nice, peaceful, arrangement mostly dominated by pianos and soft strings and pads -- overall the arrangement sounds incredibly full and lifelike. Props to you, Dale North.

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I'm quite familiar with the song from BT before it hit us here at OCR.

Very good, but, I'd expect my reaction is similar to many others that might spring up.

The vocals, they're great, they slap you hard with a serious blast of concentrated beauty...

Then...

they are gone.

The song is short; it is good, but it is short. I always feel like this song needs just one more minute.

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Sorry for the off topic, but everybody seems to really love Dale's singing voice and I NEED to recommend everybody to go check out his album.

http://dalenorth.com/blue.html

Pick it up off of iTunes. It's all original and features his fantastic voice as well as appearances from Tony Lofton and Sean "Ailsean" Stone.

I dont know if mods or DJP would want to keep this post here or make mention of the album in the song post, but if you enjoyed this song, you REALLY need to check out the album.

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I've been a big fan of this song since I first heard it a year or so ago, and completely agree that the singing is excellent and the song is too short.

The somewhat traditional Dale North mood is present and works really well with the source music.

I've always wondered why a song this good wasn't on OCR, and it looks like everything has sorted itself out in the end. :D

Awesome work.

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Your voice, sir, is melty. It has made a puddle of me the two times I've listened to the remix so far and it shall continue to do so, I've no doubt, each time I listen to it. I definitely agree with DJP on the note that it would have been awesome to have the mix be a more prominently vocal piece but at the same time...the piano was *beautiful* as well and the solo before your vocals tickled my fancy as well. ****, easy.

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First off, thanks for the compliments. They're greatly appreciated.

Souliarc, nothing was automatcally tuned in this song. Actually, most pitch correction in popular music today isn't done automatically, but manually. Furthermore, the quality of a voice has little to do with the imprecision of pitch, and more to do with the performance, technique, and tonal qualities.

That being said, I know I'm a terrible singer. I've corrected many a vocal passage in my day, just as I've quantized many a beat, and fixed many a performance mistake in a roll editor. I record and re-record again. Such is the nature of modern music.

But I'm glad you liked the song anyway.

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I must say that I rather enjoyed this. However, I do agree with djp about moving the vocal part sooner. Also, concerning the oboe/english horn (and this comes from knowing a semi-professional oboist), a natural oboe sound should pretty much cut through any other sound. They don't really have a subdued or tentative sound. They should be clear and resounding. Anyway, nice voice. I'd certainly like to hear more of what you can do in future remixes.

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I'm not so sure about that... this puppy is pretty much the industry standard in pitch correction, a descendant of it's hardware predecessor. But whatever works.

I'm no singer, but I'd say it's a toss-up between them all. If someone's really off pitch, it's very noticeable. If someone's squealing out extreme falsetto at the expense of tone to reach a pitch, again, it's very noticeable.

First, you're not a terrible singer by any means. Terrible is me trying to sing Coheed and Cambria in my car.

Second, pitch correction on a voice (or any acoustic instrument for that matter) is very noticeable if pushed enough. Quantization on the other hand, when dealing with MIDI, involves no audio stretching or shrinking and virtually makes any timing mistakes disappear (along with any flowing humanization). Therefore, since pitch correction is so evident, it's something that's easily picked on :P I mean no harm.

I don't want to drag this out, but:

I know what autotune is. Ver 4 sits right here on my shelf. What I'm not sure you know is that it's usually used in a manual mode by mix engineers - the autotune 'sound' (the 'snap' as some call it) comes from an automatic setting that's a bit insensitive to gradual pitch changes and vibrato. When it is used in manual mode, only notes/syllables that need to be repitched are changed, and this is done in a graph where you can make sure there are no artifacts - and be as precise as you want. Moves within two steps are invisible, and while I may be a bad singer, I don't miss notes by a full step (unless I'm drunk).

But the real issue here is that this song obviously wasn't 'tuned'. The funny thing is that its quite shitty: the lead vox is so pitchy that its kinda funny, and the high notes are sharp if anything. And on the background vocals (where' I regularly use pitch correction for tightness), in this instance they were so bad that I layered a synth choir over it to cover some of it up.

So, to finalize:

I've used many tuners in my day - on both my voice and other client's voices/instruments. I own AT4 and Samplitude's Elastic Audio, and used Melodyne for quite a bit. To me, they're tools just like EQ plugins or my outboard reverbs. I use this stuff all the time. But there is no tuning artifacts in this song.

Be sure of what you're saying before you just call things out.

and again, thanks for the compliments!

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this is ridiculous.

why are we discussing dale's vocal tuning? even if dale did use auto-tuning, do you think it takes away from the quality of the piece? could you afford to stop listening to most professionally produced and distributed music to satisfy that ridiculously naive stance? you'd have to throw most of your musical library away. furthermore, the song isn't even tuned; heck, somebody as tone-deaf as i am can tell.

just listen to the song.

==========

which by the way, is beautiful

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Souliarc, maybe you could learn a thing or two from Dale? I could be wrong, but I see no evidence of substantial credibility to back up your statements regarding Dale's "auto-tuning".

As for the arrangement...I almost remixed this in hopes of having Joe Cam sing over it, though I entertained the idea for maybe two minutes. Dale managed to make the track sound great despite putting it together at the 'last minute'. It made a great closer for Bound Together as well.

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You're just so far off the mark that it's just annoying now.

Look, I would tell you if I tuned this. The issue here isn't even the tunning, but is more about you THINKNIG THAT YOU'RE CORRECT when you have no way to know. WHY would I lie?

About 'nasal tone': Fuck me! I apologize wholeheartedly for how god/momma/science made me and how my voice changes depending on range. Actually, a popular and often recommended vocal technique is to project sound through the nose and facial bones when you know you're about to hit notes in your higher range - it gives a better sense of control and tricks you into positioning your mouth to let you hit those notes.

The fact of the matter is that I sing terribly, and I edit the hell out of everything I perform. Have you heard any of my original works? I sing shit all the time. I tune A LOT OF IT! I suck! Forgive me, I'm someone who loves to make music despite his abilities. But you throwing around words like 'suspect' is just plain stupid! I did not commit a crime, I arranged (and sang part of) a song for the hell of it. For fun! For a collection of songs about being friends and shit.

THE FACT OF THE MATTER IS that in this thread, where people - up to you - have been saying nice things about a song I made. Then you come in shooting shit down, calling me a liar, and just overall shitting on a once nice thread. I stopped submitting many years ago to OCR because of shit like this.

THANKS FOR REMINDING ME.

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souliarc, yes i said ridiculous and that is because you are ridiculous. don't try punking me with your clever one line responses - my comment that you should cease your naivete and appreciate the song for what it is, wasn't incindiary but mostly rhetorical and suggestive albeit with my normal dose of edge. your decision to get defensive is entirely yours.

even worse, your responses clearly show that you can't actually recognize any of the elements you are goin on about. whereas your initial comment was fair, you continue to question the man's production like you somehow have the tip on something THE REST OF US didn't.

your snide remark about the purpose of the thread and the equation of quality is also uncalled for. i am a judge and i believe i'm pretty familiar with what the equation is and what these threads are for, if not more so than you.

perhaps you should take morse's advice and learn a thing or two from Dale instead of insisting on the auto-tune issue...

...which again, for the record, was not used in this track

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it is very important that we all keep this in perspective

i absolutely fucking hate to see dale north say that this is why he hasn't submitted music in ages. dale is not only a good friend of mine but a very talented artist who is a significant part of this scene's history. that we alienate people THAT invested is mindbending.

the problem isn't the criticism. in all honesty, perhaps what we all need is to work on our abilities to TAKE criticism... having the presence of mind to know that failing at it from time to time is human is a heightened awareness but that does not exempt us from improving ourselves.

anyways, this was very good finality to the earthbound project. bound together was driven by the concept of unity and the warmth of friends. it was a pretty prolific showing and i was so very bitter for not being in the right place in my life at the time to have been able to complete my track for it. this track was the perfect conclusion. the music is very good; it, like almost all dale north musik, has that early 90's ballad thing goin on. the vocals come in fairly late and the lyrical portion of the track is very succinct and brief in relation to everything else. i love this... i'm a huge proponent of pushing the envelope even if not very drastically.

yes

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