*NO* Halo 3 'Unleash the Chief'

Some major quality disparities with the guitar synth, but some redeeming qualities - LT

Hi there,

I'm submitting a recent arrangement I had to make of the Halo 3 themes most prominently found in "Finish the Fight" — the iconic track on the original soundtrack. The requested details are as follows:

Contact Information

* Your ReMixer name: Mathazzar

* Your real name: Marius Masalar

* Your email addres: marius.masalar@gmail.com

* Your website: www.mathazzar.com

* Your userid: 20770

Submission Information

* Name of game(s) arranged: Halo 3

* Name of individual song(s) arranged: "Finish the Fight"

* Additional information about game including composer, system, etc. (if it has not yet been added to the site): You folks seem to have the original Halo added (here: http://www.ocremix.org/game/halo-xbox/) but not Halo 3 from what I was able to see. Either way, it's pretty well-known; a game for the Xbox 360, with the soundtrack still written by Martin O'Donnell and Michael Salvatori.

* Link to the original soundtrack:

As for my own comments, it's interesting because I'm actually not a fan of the Halo series myself, as funny as that sounds. I think they're fun and I've played all three but I can't say I was particularly moved or intrigued by any of them. Nevertheless, I'm quite fond of the music (even though the choral theme is pretty blatantly ripped from Jack Wall's Myst IV theme, but I digress). This "remix" came about because of a recent small machinima scoring project I had where my music was being used in conjunction with the original soundtrack. As a result, I decided to make use of the original thematic material while giving it my own feel, without compromising its ability to coexist with the original.

I had a lot of fun with the track; I tried to give it a driving, motivating sort of feel while retaining the primarily cinematic orchestral style it had before. When I was done, it occurred to me that the community at large may like to hear it as well. And since it's for a fairly smale-scale, charity project, I retain full rights to it and I decided that the best way to share it around with the gaming community would be to showcase it with you fine folks. In any event, here is the link:

Thank you kindly for your consideration and I hope you enjoy my work!

Marius Masalar

Mathazzar Studios

Composer for Media

Might be missing something but I heard very little Finish the Fight in your arrangement. Maybe some similar chord progressions but nothing that directly references the melody. It's a pretty nice arrangement, but it's more like a track that matches the mood of the Halo soundtrack rather than an arrangement of a specific song. If someone can point out connections, I'd be ok on the arrangement end.

The guitar though! Man, that really hampers the piece; the quality is much much lower than the rest of the song. And you used it a fair bit too, so it's hard to overlook. I'm gonna call it a NO on that basis. It really needs to be more natural to match the realism of the rest of the song, consider asking someone to play it. Sorry that it comes down to that, but it's a big detail.

NO

Man, this is a pretty cool track. Pretty nice arrangement and partwriting. It's a fairly liberal take on the theme, as Vinnie suggested, but the Halo vibe is definitely here.

Now then, that being said, what the HELL is up with the guitar? There is no polite way to say this--it's absolutely atrocious. I mean, it's a GLARING flaw, and I'm really genuinely surprised that you would sub this with the guitar sounding the way it does. It sounds like you put a respectable amount of work into sequencing all the other instruments in a compelling fashion; why would you want to blemish that with such a rigid, fake, and otherwise grating tone?

Don't mean to sound, well, mean, but after checking out a few of the tracks on your website (which are pretty cool), I KNOW you can do better than that. Feel free to resubmit it man, this is a really solid base. I might suggest reworking the arrangement a tiny bit to make the "Finish the Fight" theme a bit more prominent.

You know what to do, now get to it!

NO

(also, you know Halo was released before Myst IV, right?)

Watch the bitrate, as we have a 192kbps bitrate ceiling.

Pretty much in league with these guys. I can hear how it's a liberal take on "Finish the Fight", but I'd also say make the source tune melody more integrated with the rest of the arrangement. Most of the middle sounded unconnected to the source, so aside from some supporting instrumentation outlining the main Halo theme, I didn't hear too many overt connections.

The sample realism was OK for the most part. Nothing awesome, but OK in getting the job done, with the exception of the synth guitar, which was definitely very bad and, as I mentioned, created a quality disparity with the rest of the instrumentation.

If you're willing to work the arrangement further and can find a suitable upgrade as far as the guitar, I'd certainly like to see what you could do.

NO (resubmit)