20 Feb
2004
20 Feb
'04
11:54 a.m.
At 19 Feb 2004 20:21:24 -0800,
Florin Andrei wrote:
On Thu, 2004-02-19 at 09:50, Pete Bessman wrote:
Not my genre (i'm into the Vangelis / Yes / Tangerine Dream / Schulze /
Oldfield / Jarre type of stuff), but sounds good technically.
But, oh... i think it would delight me in the context of a movie such as
The Matrix :-) think - the long Highway War in part 2.
Hey, thanks! Never thought about that...
Yeah, like others said, that piano needs a shot in the
arm. Or just
forget piano and put in something with a more electric feeling (but
maybe that's just the heavy-metal remnants from my crazy teen years).
Once the tools are in place I'll give the song a proper treatment,
although I might just leave the original as is (for nostalgia) and
do a remix. Who knows, I'm not one to plan *too* much.
The first 15 seconds sound kinda cheesy (the timbre,
not the melody).
Percussion seems a bit weak and kinda hollow and kinda not really
getting along with the other guys in the room, but maybe that's
precisely the idea (i'm not accustomed to the quircks of this genre, so
i could like criticise the violins in a Vivaldi piece).
Teeheehee... yes, it's supposed to sound cheesy. The idea is that you
make the listener go, "Well this isn't very impressive..." so that
when the big stuff hits it sounds even bigger.
Bass is outstanding, but could you turn it up in the
eq a bit? It
sounded kinda weak even on my bass-loving and dry Alesis M1 Active
monitors. Or i don't know, maybe i'm in love with big fat bass these
days.
Yes, more bass, agreed. Definitely.
For The Matrix :-) i would make those distorted
pseudo-guitars (which
are otherwise very good) even more aggressive, more in-your-face, more
your-ass-is-grass. Dunno how, make them grunt, add harshness, double
them (carbon copy the MIDI track) with a deep low-freq fat sound...
naah, the latter would ruin that great-sounding bass.
Those pseudo-guitars are *real*. They're are actually tripled, one
hard left, one hard right, one up the middle, each with their own
recording (done in one take each). I don't want to make them too big
because I _do_ want vocals in there, and it's _real_ easy to drown out
vox with a steroid pumped guitar sound. Plus, the difference between
unmastered and mastered guitar sounds is immense, so I'm interested to
hear what this would sound like after it's mastered.
The ending is brusque but not brusque enough. Either
smooth it out, or
make it even more marked (like a reverse piano sample's envelope). Hafta
make up your mind.
I'm invoking my creative veto here. I like how it calls back to the original
lo-fi drums and throws in the big chorus guitar part, but in a lo-fi manner.
It's nice and circular.
The overall progression of the piece feels like
it's conducted by a
professional's hand, it's sure of itself and has the right ups and downs
and a general good swing between the different parts (although that's
something that's endlessly improvable by definition).
Well thank you very much.
Good criticism, this is. If you want to do a mix of your own, you have my
blessing, I'm looking into getting some space to put the sources.
[pb]