*NO* Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening 'Facies Templum'

hello!

subbing my 'latest' mix. actually, i wrote this in october of 2005, as part of that abortion that aetherius put together, however since it's been two years and i'm still the only one done with a song that anyone thought was decent (i finished three, actually), i quit the project altogether. here's the first one i did.

the theme for this track (face shrine) was probably my most hated track on the original OST. i despised the repetitive nature of it, and the fact that it didn't have a melody AT ALL. i decided to try and give it one. my piece, which is basically a short saxophone solo piece (solo in the classical sense, not the reality of it), attempted to give this boring piece of shit a melody and a standard chord progression. it utilizes reason 2.5's string synths, a piano, and a harp which plays the actual ost in midirip form (behind the arrangement) for the first section, until i can't stand it anymore. the saxophone continually rises higher and higher, reflecting the state of emotion for the player as he travels further into the face shrine, and then the piano leads us back to dreary green-and-gray graphics as the player finishes up the area and moves on.

i personally like this piece simply because of the fact that it's the first real solo sax piece i ever recorded, and considering i was using a radio shack microphone the size of a fig i think it turned out pretty nicely. i used finale 2003 to arrange, audacity to record, and reason 2.5 to synth and render. then, audacity to amplify slightly, and i was done.

you can download the track at www.soundclick.com/theprophetofmephisto - it's called Facies Templum.

looking back, i noticed two things - my vibrato is SO huge (i HATE it! goodness, what two years of schooling does...), and considering that this was my first piece ever with reason i feel it turned out pretty decent. if anyone can catch the Robert W. Smith analogy from his symphony no. 2, i'll give you a cookie.

thanks for your patience! look for a mix with me and fishy of "richard's villa" as soon as fishy gets off his lazy ass and re-records a short solo in the piece.

enjoy.

BRAD

This track makes me feel like you've got a ton of potential. I love the sax performance, and the recording ain't bad either, although it's drowned in reverb. I think that's a tolerable creative choice in this context. There are a couple things holding this mix back. First of all, the overall level is too low. This is a fairly easy fix. The other thing though is that the piano and string performances are mechanical. Not only that, but you really could tinker with the EQ to make it sound a little better. I'd like to hear this reworked, cause the arrangement and sax are rockin.

NO

http://www.zophar.net/gbs/zelda.zip - Track 88

Track 88 according to CHz anyway. Can't get this GBS to play at all. Any other GBS, all good. This one, no dice. "Face Shrine" regardless. Let's see what's up.

Starts off pretty quiet. I can already see what Vigilante was talking about with the levels being too low; they hardly even register here. Not a huge deal though. I just turned it up, and it sounded good.

Beautiful writing on the intro so far. The sax reverb also threw me off; something like this but a bit cleaner would work better, as this didn't sound even in the same universe as the other instrumentation. I'd tone it down a bit so that this meshed better with the soundscape.

Ugh, 1:56. C'mon Brad, with this ultra-mechanical piano. Did you break the project file? No way something that mechanical is gonna get by. You gotta be better than that, and you know it. Give it the human touch.

The sax production at 2:35 somehow sounded even more far-gone than the first verse. That's just baffling. If the rest of the soundscape had somewhat of a wash on it, this approach could work better. But there's nothing like that going on, just some light room-style reverb. Thicken up the back or thin out the front. Interesting touch at 3:12 with the brief performance noise.

The strings suffered from the same realism issues, though definitely nowhere near as badly as the piano. The strings were a lot more serviceable, and were couched reasonably well in the soundscape so as not to be very exposed.

The taper of the last few seconds around 4:47 needs to be touched up to not expose the sample. The ending itself was well written, but IMO the strings needed more volume, energy and tension to resolve this strongly and memorably. As is, the finish falters.

Agreed with Vig, the arrangement is pretty solid. Beautiful concept, pulled off ok, with the silky sax performance obviously making the track. If you polish this up properly, you got it. If you can't, you don't got it. That's the short of it.

NO (refine/resubmit)

Production seems to be the main issue here. I'm not sure the sax reverb early on is the issue with why it sounds farther back. It may have simply been recorded farther to begin with, in which case there's not a lot to be done. At 2:35 it definitely sounds like there is more added reverb, though. Either way, not a big issue imo. Volume levels across the board are really low though, and I feel like this could use more high end in general. The instrumental texture seemed more sparse than it had to be; a nice fretless bass walking around here and there would definitely add a level of interest that this could use. I think you tend to undershoot your orchestration/instrumentations... sax, piano and sparse strings would work better if the piano + strings were more interesting, but there's only so much you can do with that small handful of instruments.

The strings could be more realistic, as Larry said, and here's what I suggest you do to help that. Find solo violin samples and layer those on top of your ensemble. Turn down the volume. Make the timing on the solo violin a little off, if possible. This setup allows you to (realistically) emphasize a voice of the string chord.

Your interpretation of the source was quite good, on the other hand. Very nice additive writing and expansion on the simplistic monophonic material that you had to work with. No problems there. Just work on your production and maybe flesh out the instrumentation more.

NO resub