*NO* Final Fantasy 8 'Blue Stars Over the Fisherman's Horizon'

Email sub file FINALF~1.MP3

Remixer Name: Tepid

Real Name: Philip Schwan, but let's just say Phil

E-mail: davidmschwan@aol.com or phswan@hotmail.com

UserID: vergo890

Game Remixed: Final Fantasy VIII

Song Remixed: Fisherman's Horizon

Comments: This started as a messaround with the Fisherman's Horizon melody. I know in the real song (a beautiful song indeed) there a lot of chord changes and a lot of jazzy chords. I tried to picture the song as an acoustic ballad and then decided later to make it a rock ballad aswell. I used some pretty strangly voiced chords to base the melody around, so it would still retain the relaxed feel and wouldn't be too awkward to play.

So I'm very pleased with the results, I think it's the best song I've yet recorded on Cakewalks Home Studio 2002. I've played all of the instruments live aside from the drums (sequenced on FL3.5 demo ) and the strings, from my PSR-240 (cheap stuff). Instead of playing the guitar into a mike from my amp, I tried playing it straight into my computer with a nice reverb sound, and I think it sounds better than my previous attempts to record live guitar.

The song took one full day to record. The drums took another full day to sequence (I gotta get me a better program for those) and it took me a couple hours to polish the song off. Once I get going with a song I can't stop, this has been pointed out by my mother who says: 'If you spent as much time studying as you did recording, you'd be in Harvard!'

Meh, only nerds go to Harvard...*turns on PS2 for another 8hr sesson of Final Fantasy until eyeballs begin to bleed*

http://www.tzone.org/~llin/psf/packs2/FF8_minipsf.rar - 307 "Fisherman's Horizon"

Cool, the intro is nice. YOU BE GUITAR BIASING ME! ... Ah man. Some REALLY weak strings entered in the background at :19. They're too quiet and way too synthetic and just don't mesh well with the piece. Another guitar and some bass entered in at 1:04 and the production was a total mess all over. Nothing has much clarity as all of the instruments mudded together.

Some electric guitar cut through at 1:47, but it had no power behind it and was obscured by the other elements. Some disappointing and excessively lazy drumwork also entered in at that time. By 3:00, the arrangement had been dragging on too long already and nothing's been changing significantly or developinging. With a relatively conservative take like this, you can't be repeating the melody ad nausuem like this.

Things settled down a bit at 3:33 and that section seemed to have a bit more focus. There was a sudden burst o' rock at 3:57, but it was plagued with many of the same problems as before at 1:47. At least at this section though, the electric guitars were prominently positioned and cut through the rest of the mud. Decent close at 4:40, but even that offered nothing new from a compositional standpoint.

Frankly, I don't think this can be brought to a passable level without a total overhaul. The sampled instruments all sounded fake: strings were inhuman sounding, the drum patterns were robotic and the hits always had the same intensity, etc. The production needs a shitload of work, so please use the ReMixing & Work-in-Progress forums to get more knowledge and feedback on how to make this work. This definitely couldn't support 5:08, so trim off some of the repetitive sections. In any case, I'd love to hear a resubmission of this, but I would probably call it a done deal and move onto the next project. Decent ideas, but the execution ain't there at all. Damn, what a shame, seriously.

NO

Good Effort!

I am confused as to your reasoning for the new chord progression. It seems to me that it was done mostly to make the song easier to play because you moved it to E which is much less difficult on the guitar than Eb. Your new progression is really just four chords long: Emaj7 Amaj7[this is an A-6 every once in a while] C#-7 Amaj7. If you are using these new chords because the original ones are too difficult for you to play then I would suggest you find a source tune that is not quite so demanding. If not then I strongly urge you to listen to the original more carefully.

The arrangement is also pretty repetive and is limited to adding drums at 1:48 and then removing them from 3:33 until 3:58.

Here are some options. If you do not want to change the progression you're using for whatever reason, find other ways to make up for it. You could have the instrumentation of the melody change up more frequently or possibly add some more harmony parts. Another way to make this progression more interesting without changing it would be to switch the notes in the bass from the root to the fifth, major third, or even a whole step above the root [in the case of the C#-7 you would use a perfect fourth above the root instead]. For example the Amaj7 could have a C#, E or B in the bass, the Emaj7 could have a G#, B, or F# and the C#-7 could have E, G# or F#. Just making these substitutions every once in a while could go a long way.

Finally to make the arrangement more exciting the very least you could do would be to spend more time working on the drum part. Have it change up more often. My own personal preference would require alot more variation than that but the song would be nearly passable with just more complex drumwork.

Overall I agree with Liontamer in that it would probably be a good idea to move on at this point. The stuff I suggested could really be applied to any song and I think it would be easier to work with a clean slate. I get the feeling that you have alot of passion behind your music so I'm looking foward to hearing some more polished stuff from you in the future.

NO

Cool title and I really enjoy this mix. The arrangement ideas are straightforward but interesting, the guitars are cleanly recorded and I don’t think that the production needs that much work to bring it around. The major production problems are the clarity during sections like 1:05-1:47 and power during the drum sections. The power can be improved by making the strings more prominent and working on the percussion.

I think one of the largest contributors to the mushiness is the delay that is not set in sync with the tempo. As a result, instruments step on themselves and each other, especially during busier sections. In Home Studio 2002 I don’t think that the default delay plugin allows you to sync the delay with the tempo; instead it requires you to specify delay in milliseconds. If this is the case, try this for your delay next time: divide 60,000 by the tempo of your song. If your tempo is 120 then this gives 500. Using 500 ms of delay (or any multiple thereof) will have the echoes line up with the tempo.

The drum samples have a good acoustic feel to them but I agree with Samuel that some greater variety would help this mix. Bring in a ride or toms on some sections. On some sections you might try a subtle fill beat instead of cutting the drums altogether. Hit the remixing forum and look for Zircon’s Groovy Drums tutorial for more tips.

Composition needs to be improved as well. With the limited variation on the theme it’s going to be difficult to sustain interest for 5 minutes. Thus, cut/shorten/revamp some of the sections that drag on (1:04-1:47, 2:30-3:33,…). The section at 3:57 was pretty fun, although it should have come much earlier. The transitions between sections are somewhat choppy so you might also work on making them more interesting.

Good stuff but with some fundamental problems. Nothing that I don’t think a little practice and some more tweaking can’t fix though so keep working at it.

NO

I agree in principle more with the comments made about the mix's production than with those made about its arrangement; I think the overall structure could have worked, but would have needed some different decisions made when it came to effects in particular. I think Brandon accurately cited the delays as being partially responsible for the mushiness, and there's some other timing issues where the lead acoustic is a bit behind that compound this issue. Drums get a bit lost and seem to sit dead center with very little panning, with the exception of the initial shaker.

Still, the emotion is there, the energy is there. It DOES sound like it was made by someone with a good ear and definite love of the material, and the backwards guitar work is excellent.

I'm probably more borderline than anyone else in voting no, and might thus be more interested in a resubmission than anyone else, but I still concur and am closing out with a 4th No.