HEY~! It's Lou Urau. Like I said in the MH forums (Lol)
I'm still throughly impressed and glad on how this turned out through all the hard work put into it.
It's a song that I dare say would have been good for a Tri soundtrack.
5 Stars~! :3
But if you possibly can, try working more on the Finale. I know it's a bit complex but you'll get it for sure.
Hey, it wouldn't have happened without the support of you and the rest of the forum. You should be happy with yourself more so than with this melody, trust me :P.
I did work pretty hard on the very last part of the finale actually. What I didn't work hard on was the transition to it since I knew I wouldn't have been able to think of a way to transition properly. Although if you mean working hard on the whole finale and perhaps adding that Monster Hunter theme, then yeah I could've tried harder. I couldn't get the Monster Hunter theme to sound good no matter what!
Anyway, thanks a lot for reviewing and for all the help you've given me!
It's like, an epic but small track. I never played the game before but I feel like I played it ._.
5 stars all the way <3
Small track? You sure about that? :P
But yeah if you mean epic and soft at the same time, then yeah that was something I was going for!
Thanks a lot for reviewing man. You should totally get the game!
You weren't kidding about this track being a bit longer.
I've never played Monster Hunter Tri, so this is an all new experience to me. I don't think it matters much though, because I can't see how this would be a disppointment to everyone. It really is the kind of tracks that pretty much gives me constant chills down the spine.
The introduction is amazing, and the first set of chills comes as soon as the build-up reaches its peak. It just sounds so majestic. Every single one of your samples sound absolutely amazing.
Your transitions are smooth and perfect, and there's a nice, continuous story being told all throughout.
The dynamics of the track are amazing. I'm not sure if that's the appropriate term in English, but I'm talking about your... uh... volume control? In lack of a better wording. You really got that down to near perfection. The song can catch you off guard at times, but I can't decide whether this is a good thing or not, it really flows nicely with the track overall.
This is amazing, I get equally surprised every time I hear some of your tracks. They're just so well composed and produced that it's hard to believe it's a one-man project.
Wow man, thanks so much for reviewing this track too! I owe you.
"You weren't kidding about this track being a bit longer."
No. No I wasn't :P.
"I've never played Monster Hunter Tri, so this is an all new experience to me. I don't think it matters much though, because I can't see how this would be a disppointment to everyone. It really is the kind of tracks that pretty much gives me constant chills down the spine."
Awesome, thanks! By the way if you've got a Wii I definitely recommend Tri. Easily one of the best Wii games out there.
"The introduction is amazing, and the first set of chills comes as soon as the build-up reaches its peak. It just sounds so majestic. Every single one of your samples sound absolutely amazing."
They're not the best out there, but they're pretty high-end! I guess I've got to get something for spending nearly 600 EUR on them, right?
Glad you liked the intro. Majestic is exactly what I was going for! And a bit of epic too, needless to say...
"Your transitions are smooth and perfect, and there's a nice, continuous story being told all throughout."
Well, at least a few people like the transitions. I think they work but they're not as smooth as I would've liked them to be. If you listen to the track quite a few times you get used to the transitions and they end up sounding alright, but even then the flow isn't as smooth as it'd be in a normal song.
"The dynamics of the track are amazing. I'm not sure if that's the appropriate term in English, but I'm talking about your... uh... volume control? In lack of a better wording. You really got that down to near perfection. The song can catch you off guard at times, but I can't decide whether this is a good thing or not, it really flows nicely with the track overall."
Dynamics don't necessarily mean volume control. I think dynamics of a song refers to the variety of moods/intensities, loudness, etc... Volume control is probably mastering :P. But yeah I get what you mean. I'm glad you liked it!
"This is amazing, I get equally surprised every time I hear some of your tracks. They're just so well composed and produced that it's hard to believe it's a one-man project."
Well, I wouldn't say it is. If it wasn't for all the support and feedback I got from other people this would've never existed :P.
Thanks again for the review! I appreciate it!
I started this review when this song has 3 listens, including mine. >.> ...then I had to go on a car ride out to the mountains, where I fortunately had internet to post this. LUCKY ME. :D Anyway, yeah, I listened to this multiple times to get this review done over a long time. One downside was that in the car, the bass frequencies are cut out some from the drone of the car against the road. :< I did my best with that though.
I'd do this as a time-sectioned review, but I see this is intended to be one package, so...
THE GOOD:
-Intro's fine.
-Transition at 1:12 to the next tune (since it's not at 1:07...) works great, fits fine.
-This honestly sounds as if real people are playing it. I like that. :D Kudos for it!
-That transition at 2:51 (not at 2:41...). So. Good. I love it.
-Your sounds, mixing, and overall 'feel' is good as always.
-I actually love the feel at 3:45-4:09 right before the disappointing drop. The little rolls and the tiny arpeggio at 3:51 sounds amazing.
-Like how you brought it straight back to the beginning with the reiteration of the main theme of the game.
THE NOT-AS-GOOD:
-The harmonies at 0:39-0:43 don't quite work as well as they could. They seem slightly off and dissonant in a way that isn't as tasteful as it could.
-The transition at 1:42 isn't all that great, surely there was a better way than simply fading everything out and coming back in.
-What I can only assume is the jaw harp coming in at 3:02 doesn't quite fit. I mean, the 'doingy' sound is cool, but it could have been placed better, I feel. :< Same goes for 4:30.
-The transition at 3:44 (hey, it's the time you said this time xD) is *very slightly* off. I do mean very slight, it's not much.
-The drop at 4:09. Sorry, it just doesn't really work. This also goes for the weird little drops before going into the end of the tune at 4:24-4:30 and 4:44-4:50. While those two are a cool idea, it just doesn't work, and really kills my 'groove' and movement of it.
-There's a note in the tune from 4:51-4:59 which seems off-key, it's at around 4:54. This goes for the second time it comes in as well.
-The drop at 5:16 is SO anti-climactic. D: It again kills the feel I had, similar to the drops at 4:24 and 4:44.
-Transition at 6:38-6:40 has the same problem as 1:42.
-This one's actually not for you but for me. I didn't feel like going through everything and commenting on all the good bits, only the ones that I thought were particularly amazing. Bad Skye. You shouldn't just comment on all the tiny not-as-good things without commenting on the tiny good things. D:
NON-NITPICKY-NOT-AS-GOOD-THINGS: Yeah, I made this its own section because I felt like it, shoosh. >w>
-ONE: Stylistic issue. The whole thing is 'epica', with only relatively tiny breaks to calmer more restful bits. Granted, this makes those little bits so much more precious, but it would have been nice if in, say, the town section, things calmed down a little bit more so people have a chance to take a breath in this 8-minute-long song. This is in contrast to the 'boss' section, which was a lot calmer than the town section, oddly. ...calm being a relative adjective, since it's still 'epica' style.
-TWO: Panning. Ok, I know you can't do much about this, and I apologize, but what would be REALLY nice is if you had the instruments in their proper places for an orchestra. To fix this even while you have a mono sound (as I assume you have so you can hear everything) is difficult, I know, but here's an idea. Look up where the instruments of the orchestra are in relation to the conductor, and then twiddle the knobs so they'd be "pointing" toward the instruments of the orchestra if the conductor is in the middle of the knob.
Ok, I have only 15 characters remaining, so I'm going to have to say bye now! :D Honestly, this is a REALLY good song, and I can hear how much effort you put into it. Don't let all my poking, prodding, scratching, clawing, and biting get you down - it's far better than 99% of the music I hear on here. Definitely better than mine.
Good luck in the future! :D
-Swint
Damn, this review is incredible. I could not have asked for more feedback than you've given me in this review. I regard you as one of the most capable reviewers on Newgrounds and this review just proves it! Thanks so much man!
Again I'll quote bits and pieces of this review because character limit.
"...out to the mountains"
Hope you enjoyed that, haha. I went to mountains while I was staying in Canberra the time before last that I went to Australia. I remember throwing snowballs at my little brother (who was 8 that time) and he'd keep on trying to make a snowball to throw it back to me but his hands were too small so he wasn't able to. Then my mum made him a snowball and he ran towards me excited to take his revenge and while he ran the snowball fell from his hand and dropped uselessly back in the snow!
"Transition at 1:12 to the next tune (since it's not at 1:07...) works great..."
Mhmm those two had similar melodies so I thought it'd be a good idea to add them. Also, we're both wrong, it's at 1:11. *smartass-face*
"That transition at 2:51 (not at 2:41...)"
It's actually 2:41 believe it or not! At 2:36 I started inventing my own melodies and then at 2:41 I added a melodic phrase that's found in "Song of Triumph" not the village theme, so strictly speaking it starts there.
"I actually love the feel at 3:45-4:09..."
Oh, you noticed the arpeggio, sweet! And yeah I couldn't make that part much longer since that's roughly how long it is in the original. You should check out the original songs by the way if you liked my renditions of them in this remix. I can safely say the originals are better than my remixes, haha.
"Like how you brought it straight back to the beginning..."
Mhmm, that was a structural idea I had while at the beginning of the melody. The thing about that main theme is that it has the most epic ending ever and I couldn't just finish the whole medley with another melody. I HAD to finish it with that.
"The harmonies at 0:39-0:43 don't quite work..."
Hm, I'll look into that.
"The transition at 1:42 isn't all that great"
I promise I tried as hard as I could lol. Everything I made for that transition didn't sound good. In any case, I split the song into 'parts' and used that excuse for the bad transitions, since as you probably noticed the transitions within one part are good and the transitions from one part to another are not :P.
"..the jaw harp coming in at 3:02 doesn't quite fit."
Man, I like that jaw harp. You're probably right but jaw harps sound fairly awesome so the most I'm going to do is edit it to make it fit more rather than remove it entirely.
"The drop at 4:09. Sorry, it just doesn't really work."
A lot of people don't like those drops. Others do. I personally like them, but maybe they just take getting used to, I dunno!
"There's a note in the tune from 4:51-4:59 which seems off-key"
Well, whatever it is, I'm fairly sure it's in the original so NOT MY FAULT :3. Although I may have just figured out the melody of the original wrongly, my ears are just as musical as a slice of pizza.
"Stylistic issue."
You're right about that, but I knew that if I made a lot of one part or a whole part soft, then it wouldn't have as much of an effect as the busier ones since I'm crap at making soft music. Although yeah I really need to give soft music a try.
Also, the boss music is relatively calm because the battle is split into three parts. Part 1 is when you enter the area and see a glimpse of his massive body in the water, Part 2 is when you follow it to the area where you battle it (and it's pretty passive and calm here so it doesn't fight much). Part 3 is the actual battle (http://goo.gl/rIv13), and I remixed just Part 1 and 2 since when I tried Part 3 I failed miserably.
"Panning."
I'm probably being lazy here because I know that whatever panning I do won't affect me so I just leave it out :P. I might give that a shot!
Overall, thanks a million for the FANTASTIC review. Sorry for not addressing everything you mentioned but it's surprising how quickly 4,096 characters get depleted!
This piece was beautifully done, I have to say. I haven't actually ever played the game before, but I will trust that if anyone, YOU of all people would be able to get this right. Every single instrumentation seemed to be masterfully done, being able to fit together so perfectly. There's only a few hitches that held things for giving you a perfect five:
- The transition from the more classical vibe to a tribal vibe (in other words, from the end of Part 1 to the beginning of Part 2) was kind of....strange, I must say.
- In my opinion, it just sounded like you threw in a few random instruments that had no earthly business being there in the first place.
- The constant changing from a more mezzo-piano dynamic to a fortissimo dynamic was kind of odd in some parts (I'm not saying that this kept on happening throughout the entire song, it just sounded as if this was the case).
But in all other cases, you made a very smooth transition between most of the parts of the piece. The different vibes kept things fresh throughout, and I loved, just absolutely loved listening to it.
~Review Request Club~
I love RRC reviews. Thanks a lot for the review!
"This piece was beautifully done, I have to say. I haven't actually ever played the game before, but I will trust that if anyone, YOU of all people would be able to get this right."
Haha thank you! There aren't many Monster Hunter Tri remixes out there, and I don't know of any medleys, so I thought this would be a good project to take on.
"Every single instrumentation seemed to be masterfully done, being able to fit together so perfectly."
That's probably thanks to the expensive VSTs I've got, namely East/West. It's amazing software for orchestral music.
"- The transition from the more classical vibe to a tribal vibe (in other words, from the end of Part 1 to the beginning of Part 2) was kind of....strange, I must say."
Mhmm, that transition isn't very good, I know, haha. You're right.
"- In my opinion, it just sounded like you threw in a few random instruments that had no earthly business being there in the first place."
Hm, I'm not sure which ones you're talking about.
"- The constant changing from a more mezzo-piano dynamic to a fortissimo dynamic was kind of odd in some parts (I'm not saying that this kept on happening throughout the entire song, it just sounded as if this was the case)."
Not sure about that. I tried to make the dynamic changes make a bit of sense, but what you might be hearing could be coming from the background strings. Sometimes I automate the volume of background strings so that when the song is supposed to reach a more climatic melodic phrase, the background strings get louder and deeper. It might be that I messed around too much with its volume and it ended up shifting from those different dynamics :P.
"But in all other cases, you made a very smooth transition between most of the parts of the piece. The different vibes kept things fresh throughout, and I loved, just absolutely loved listening to it."
That's wonderful to hear. Thanks a million for the great review!