KVR Audio

austere · Post by **austere** » Fri Jul 02, 2004 2:43 pm

hi!

we just finished this track and we're wondering what you people think of it. Comments, suggestions & (constructive) critism is very welcome!

glowfish - lost in a hideout
http://members.chello.nl/m.e.schenck/gl ... sh.tk).mp3
size: 9.54mb

the song is based on a videogame of which the music has inspired us for a long time already: Metroid. we figured out a couple of themes from the game and tried to forge them together in a consistent Metroid-style. however, the themes inspired new themes and we took some pretty significant detours in getting from one Metroid-theme to the next, and the second half of the song is only "inspired by" the music of the Metroid games, instead of being "based on" it...

there are some pretty weird time-signatures in there. one of the metroid-themes we used is in 13/8, sometimes throwing in a 12/8 to confuse. (really, between a bunch of 13/8's a 12/8 actually sounds way weird...). and some of the parts we conjured up are bordering on the thin line between complexity and chaos... or way over it. like a riff which looks a spooky lot like two 15/16's followed by a 61/32 (?)...

we're content with the composition, but the sound is not optimal. it lacks a bit of bass sometimes, and due to web-space limitations we had to cram it into less then 10 megabyte (which is obviously quite distatrous for a 10:25 minute song...), so it's encoded in (don't faint) 128 kb.s mp3. A lossless (flac or shn) version of the song is available upon request though.

for people who know the metroid series: we used both the Brinstar themes from Metroid 3 & the 2nd Hideout theme from Metroid 1. the rough part is inspired by boss themes from Metroid Prime (with an Ebonylake-style guitar riff), and we threw in a sample from Metroid Fusion and a tiny primitive NES percussive noise from Metroid 1.

sugar, spice & everything nice,

glowfish
( = austere & lappenpop)

Sicklecell666 · Post by **Sicklecell666** » Fri Jul 02, 2004 3:07 pm

very epic sounding & Looonngg, which in this context is good. You have to lose a few points though for not using the Norfair music in S.Metroid

Blue Days · Post by **Blue Days** » Fri Jul 02, 2004 3:22 pm

This was a nice listen!
Was a big fan of the metroid series, and I bought the GC version aswell..

-Blue Days

Sicklecell666 · Post by **Sicklecell666** » Fri Jul 02, 2004 3:25 pm

Blue Days wrote:This was a nice listen!
Was a big fan of the metroid series, and I bought the GC version aswell..

-Blue Days

both gameboy versions shred as well

japut_99 · Post by **japut_99** » Fri Jul 02, 2004 3:54 pm

This rules. There is not a metroid I've yet to conquer and I'm dying waiting for Echoes. Great piece. Brings a lot of tense moments just like the game. I just may have to play through fusion or zero mission while listening because this is epic length.

Edit: You guys should get in touch with Retro studios.

austere · Post by **austere** » Fri Jul 02, 2004 4:05 pm

thank you for listening! It's very nice to read that you enjoyed it!

You have to lose a few points though for not using the Norfair music in S.Metroid

Norfair in Super Metroid? maybe next time. we considered it, but somehow it seemed long enough as it is

and Maridia themes also definitly deserve a remix...

both gameboy versions shred as well

which both of the three? There is Return of Samus, Fusion & Zero Mission.

we looked at themes from Metroid 2 as well, but they're so weird that we couldn't quite figure them out...

but they're musically insidiously interesting!!!

by the way, did you guys ever notice that the "secret-room" melody in Metroid 3 is different from the original melody in Metroid 1? the notes are the same, but the rhythm is far more erratic in Metroid 1... we completely forgot to list it in the first post, but that one's also in the song...

Thanks!

anyone got any tips for mixing and mastering? we still lack quite a bit of expertise in that field

DevonB · Post by **DevonB** » Fri Jul 02, 2004 5:49 pm

sickle666 wrote:
Blue Days wrote:This was a nice listen!
Was a big fan of the metroid series, and I bought the GC version aswell..

-Blue Days
both gameboy versions shred as well

Too bad Fusion and Zero Mission were so short... but it did allow my to sell Zero Mission a few days after I bought it and get all my money back.

Devon

smart · Post by **smart** » Fri Jul 02, 2004 5:59 pm

pretty cool!

btw, for anyone who's a fan of metroid music, check out the Relics of The Chozo. It's an mp3 album of remixes of tunes from Metroid freely available for download.

http://www.public.asu.edu/~arasulin/

Echoes is going to rock

DevonB · Post by **DevonB** » Fri Jul 02, 2004 7:57 pm

smart wrote:Echoes is going to rock

I hope so! Prime was EXCELLENT, and still one of GC's finest.

Devon

Rellik · Post by **Rellik** » Fri Jul 02, 2004 8:50 pm

Yeah, Relics of the Chozo is pretty cool... nice to see a reference to it over here on K-v-R. Check www.ocremix.org for even more Metroid remixes! Among others. Lots and lots of others.

Too bad this one is over 6 MB, otherwise you could try submitting it to OCReMix. Don't know if it would get in, even so. I listened to Lost in a Hideout, enjoyed it, but it was a little too esoteric for my taste, I guess. It seems to have some mixing issues, especially noticeable in the parts with the electric guitar (that's Slayer, right? cool!).

mystahr · Post by **mystahr** » Sat Jul 03, 2004 5:09 am

To my ears it sounds a bit strangely mixed. Quite much high end, and a big (reverbed it seems) low end, leaving the mid section feeling a bit detached to my ears at times.

As for the mixing; the only way to really get a grasp on that is to tweak, try and enjoy. (And share here for some tips offcourse

)

I think its interesting to hear these separate sequences binded together, where the part round 9 mins to me was the coolest part. Also the part round 6 mins with the piano was cool and tempered.

smart · Post by **smart** » Sat Jul 03, 2004 5:16 am

DevonB wrote:
smart wrote:Echoes is going to rock
I hope so! Prime was EXCELLENT, and still one of GC's finest.

It's one of my favorite games. The action is perfect and there is so much discovery!

I got stuck somewhere though that I was dying every time, and after trying like 20 times I gave up on it for a while

Sicklecell666 · Post by **Sicklecell666** » Sat Jul 03, 2004 5:59 am

[quote="Rellik"]Yeah, Relics of the Chozo is pretty cool... nice to see a reference to it over here on K-v-R. Check www.ocremix.org for even more Metroid remixes! Among others. Lots and lots of others.

quote]

hmm..the files that download don't open in anything..

I've been playing Metroid since the very first release..Super Metroid was the ultimate for me, every aspect of it just oozed quality.

Zero Mission was a nice homage to it.

Now that we've paid tribute to Metroid, how about thenext giant; the Castlevania music, hmm? The Super Castlevania & Symphony of the Night games were the only thing that came even close to touching the Metroid tracks, IMO..fantastic stuff.

Jesus, I sound like such a fuckin geek

austere · Post by **austere** » Sat Jul 03, 2004 11:06 am

Whoosh! Metroid is populair in here.

Thank you all for listening & commenting!

Rellik wrote: I listened to Lost in a Hideout, enjoyed it, but it was a little too esoteric for my taste, I guess. It seems to have some mixing issues, especially noticeable in the parts with the electric guitar (that's Slayer, right? cool!).

It is Slayer indeed. It was very difficult for us to make that part of the song sound even remotely balanced. There are so many instruments happening there that everything overlaps & collides with everything.

Mystahr wrote:To my ears it sounds a bit strangely mixed. Quite much high end, and a big (reverbed it seems) low end, leaving the mid section feeling a bit detached to my ears at times.

There are not so many low notes in the composition and we've boosted the low-frequencies a bit when we were mixing it but it's still a bit low on low. Next time we should try to put more low in the composition already.

There is a lot of reverb in there, a bit too much for my taste but lappenpop is big reverb-junkie and she won't allow me to use less reverb.

This being our 2nd song to be recorded & 'finished' (we've got a bunch of complete compositions though) we don't have much experience yet on the mixing and mastering. Hence i guess we did indeed leave the mid frequncies pretty much unattended. Thanks for pointing that out.

Rellik wrote:Too bad this one is over 6 MB, otherwise you could try submitting it to OCReMix. Don't know if it would get in, even so.

we've posted the song on the OCR forum but we've only got 11 views & 1 reply so far. a bit disappointing actually.

sickle666 wrote:hmm..the files that download don't open in anything..

Relics of the Chozo files are distributed in ogg format. By default it can be played by the lastest few versions of winamp. A little while ago they also released the original wave files of the song which distributed through bittorrent. So now you can enjoy it lossless quallity, which really helps. Our lost in a hideout truly suffers from the mp3 compression rape. There is no excusing our bad mixing it does sound a whole lot better with all the frequencies included...

sickle666 wrote:I've been playing Metroid since the very first release..Super Metroid was the ultimate for me, every aspect of it just oozed quality.

me (lappenpop) too!

and we 100% agree that Super Metroid is still the ultimate Metroid

austere & lappenpop

crazed one · Post by **crazed one** » Sun Jul 04, 2004 4:43 am

This is an epic tune!!

I haven't commented on any tracks in a while

little lazy on my part. I had to drop a line and say good work. I like this a lot! I don't have any big suggestions for the track except the high pitched tones coming in at about 9:14 are a little ear piercing. Besides that I have to listen to this a few more times to soak it all in.

a little homage to Metroid by glowfish