The Last Ninja - Level 1

[Chris Abbott]

Threads like this kinda make me wonder if it's even worth continuing with BIT 4 (i.e. the Martial Arts one). That would contains LN, LN2, Fist, Fist 2 and other oriental stuff, but I get the feeling that doing it may be a no-win situation. For instance, I have a nice LN subtune 3 (Wilderness loader) going with sweeping orchestral statements alternating with simple periods of rustic ethnic charm, giving the feel of a lone Ninja trekking through various landscapes on his way to enlightenment (and killing people). Is it just going to get slagged for doing LN again? Are there doomed to be very few Last Ninja subtunes on CD because RKO is full of them? Should the morass of the many prevent further attempts? I dunno. I don't fancy spending all that time on a CD and then seeing it dissed because the track listing is too familiar (as opposed to previous CDs where they were dissed for having tracks no one had heard, such as BIT 2).

Or do I just go with my heart and make sure that as much of me goes into each cover as possible? Somehow I think content quality matters very little when the prejudgement of art goes solely on its name.

Chris

[tas]

>People tend to be harangued for having the audacity to muck around >with the original arrangements, too - something that I find truly bizarre.

Craig, excuse me for being nosey, but what do you mean by that exactly? i'm just a bit curious really.

[tas]

Chris, I think it's nothing to worry about concerning a CD production. I think your idea is exciting. I think we are mearly pointing here that the substand or average tracks are boring when it comes to many many of the same tunes. In a CD production we know we aren't gonna get MR average.

I think it's a different mater when guarentee'd quality comes into practice.

[CraigG]

Or do I just go with my heart and make sure that as much of me goes into each cover as possible?

That would be what I'd like to see. Personally, I reckon the bulk of R64 fans *like* having recognisable tunes, and only a few speak out against doing the same thing again and again. However, I feel I should perhaps expand on the point I made. By "swapping instruments", I didn't mean to the extent that you would for BIT4. What I meant was the remixers who take a fairly standard arrangement and very slightly rejig it, thereby ending up with a remix that is almost indistinguishable from various others. I assume that BIT4 would have ideas of its own (like 3) rather than being a recycle project.

(Also, again from a personal point of view, the Exploding Fist and LN stuff are among my favourite tracks, so I'd love to hear BIT4.)

>People tend to be harangued for having the audacity to muck around
>with the original arrangements, too - something that I find truly bizarre.

Craig, excuse me for being nosey, but what do you mean by that exactly? i'm just a bit curious really.

I mean that, quite often, when a remixer strays from the original SID arrangement, people complain that the result isn't authentic. This tends to happen all the more when the original is used as the basis for a remix, so the end result only partially resembles the original music. Now, I know I'm generalising here, but it's happened enough times for it to be mentioned.

Personally (again - a word I seem to be using a lot!), I prefer remixers taking more risks and playing around with the original tracks, using the hooks and sounds as the basis for partially new compositions.

[Subzero]

For all the haters (you know who your are neil ), I am still learning this remix biz - and im doing the tunes I want to try first, I could easily say im doing it for myself, but that would be a load of bollocks, I want other people to hear my tunes, and if you dont like it - fine, just delete it and thats that. Easy enough, but remember that one day I might actually get good at this

[Chris Abbott]

Hey Subby,

Could you possibly use a more static avatar? That one really slows my computer down when it's displaying.

Chris

[Feekzoid]

Subzero:Playing your mix just now..

I have to say these arguments really annoy me. I've spoken aboot it before. Most remixes are created by people who for some reason or other have "something" about the piece they're remixing. I would imagine its rare that its done specifically to appease an audience, and that works both ways. On the one hand you have the "My Ninja tune is best!" (lol, My Kungfu is strongest!) and by that I mean that someone has decided to cover a known piece, and by known I mean a mainstream/classic. Its funny if you look at it that way, think of everyone in the root C64music folder as the "heavies" or mainstream lables, and everyone else in the various/demo folders as "indie"

A remixer is faced with producing a piece for public recognition - ergo they will go for a mainstream track in order to garner the most public opinion, but there are those who will go for the indie tracks either because - again - there's something that has a meaning (nostalgia?) for them or perhaps because they want to show their music prowess by arranging a less known piece possibly because they can f*ck around with it more than normal? I dont know.

For myself, I don't arrange C64 music because its C64 music, hence why you really wont see my trawling through the various folders looking for something cover. I cover C64 music because whatever track I do has an emotional resonance for me. This includes my own work. On the flip side there are many demo tunes that I always liked, but I doubt I would cover any.

Waz is entitled to his opinion, but I think immediately discarding a guys work simply for being "another" Ninja cover is unfair. Its all to do with the listener. If you look at Waz's own C64 tunes from the early days, a lot of them were very unusual in that they covered - dare I say it - Indie songs!

For me, there has not yet been a cover of The Last Ninja first level that surpasses the original. I wouldnt touch it with a bargepole myself, simply because I cant think of how to better do it.

[/rant]

Sub:An authentic take on the theme, some of the instruments dont really do it for me, but as mentioned above, I'm a bastard when it comes to this piece! :) Quite listenable tho :) More so because its authentic following of the original.

Question tho: What did you use to create it?

[tas]

I have to say that me personally may have a biased opinion as ironic as it sounds i'm not really a retro guy. I don't go back to the c64 and play the games for example. Retro does nothing for me at all. In a way that sounds a bit wierd since i'm obviously part of a retro scene.

For my nostalgia i listen to the original sids (Thats nostalgic). But from a remix i prefer to go down the path of more modern interperations of the tunes. A tune that does play around a bit with the original sid, something that doesn't follow convenentions and certainly something which has a bit of the arrangers own personality in them.

So when i hear Last Ninja, i don't want to just hear last ninja, i want to hear the arrangers own personaility in there. I find the creative process of bringing a sid into modern life is much more interesting than staying with the principles set by the original.

I don't think it's a particular suprise that the top 10 tracks at RKO have that stamped authority on them... Firelord/gordians tomb (Typical of glyn, there's a heck of a lot in both of them tunes that isn't in the original sid). Without listing the rest, they all follow that principle in different ways.

I may be going a wee bit oftrack here;)

[Waz]

For me, the old classics are from the time I was active on the C64 (1984-88)

It's the same for a fair number of people, depending on when they owned a C64. Of course the games you played and the demos you watched at that time are the ones that influence you in later life, I'm pretty convinced of that. And it's always those you're going to feel emotionally attached to.

Many of the newer ones I never heard untill I stumbled upon SIDPlay again after many years away from the SID (AMIGA and PC took over). Therefore, these newer tunes is not nostalgic to me in any way at all.

I'd like to ask you this: if you had listened to them on a C64 rather than on a SID emulator, would you have felt about them any differently? I only ask this because I was lucky enough to watch many 90s demos on a real C64, and hence for me a new generation of SID artists came to the fore. Even now I'm still checking out new demos to see what people on the C64 can do artistically and musically.

Many are good indeed, and many are technically better done than the old classics, but they don't "take me there".

I think like you mentioned above, this is partly down to not hearing them on a real C64. However, musically, you also have a point in that even though technically they may be innovative, for you it's not just about that - it's about melody too. A good thing to consider when remixing any tune, no matter what it is. Does the melody make you feel something? In the cases of people like PRI, Jeff, Vip, Mitch and Dane, Taki, PVCF and many others, it does. That's why back in the day I tried to get as much of their stuff in HVSC as possible to try and bring that music to a wider audience. After all, awareness is a key thing to musical success. If a few radio DJs hadn't have been brave enough to play stuff from Norah Jones' excellent CD, would it necessarily have had the same impact in terms of awards and sales? Maybe. Maybe not.

I seem to remember you did a really neat remix of a tune by Sami Saarnio (Nutcase) and I think (if it was you that did it) that in that case, the melody caught your ear and you thought "wouldn't mind having a go of this!". And if anyone's reading, check out that remix.

Also, are there such a thing as the "perfect remix"?... Is there really a state where a whole community can say: "Yep! ... It's there! It cannot get any better!"?.. I don't think so.

I agree with you. After all it's down to the remixer's own interpretation of how they see it, but you can always tell how much they love the tune by how much effort goes into making that remix good, no matter what tune it is. Some interpretations work better than others.

Personally I'm not much into rock, and the only remix I've heard of Bombo tune 1 is a rock-like remix. I can hear that it's darn well produced, but should I withdraw from making a Goa Trance style remix of it, because the other is already well done then?... I don't think so.

No, but you have to make sure that the mix is exciting enough to entice listeners to wish to listen to it more often. To me it doesn't matter how you do it, it's the quality that counts ultimately.

With many of the so-called "classics" this is not the case. There's too many that just go through the motions of remixing tune X because it was popular at the time. These days if someone's going to do Last Ninja, they have to do it with quality and (if possible) some innovation. To a degree Sonic Wanderer managed that recently, and unless someone remixes LN as good as that, in whatever style they choose, it won't be worth listening to.

May I just say though that you put across your points very well, and it's nice to see that inadvertently (I didn't intend this, honest guv!) it's sparked more debate.

[merman]

Chris, this discussion isn't really about the remix CD's, more about the tunes linked to from this forum. Personally I feel an Oriental-themed CD *will* be a big hit - of course, Reyn set a high standard with his "Asian Legends" track, and we're expecting big things from you!

Sub, don't be discouraged by what's been said here, stick at it. Your remixes are improving.

Waz, as ever you are articulate and interesting when it comes to debating a subject. Maybe smaller doses of sarcasm in future?

[Razmo]

Hi again fellows! :O)

Nice to see that a debate about music is so constructive! :O)
Music is a very abstract phenomenon, and I'm almost sure that people cannot agree on all terms. With this said, I'd like to thank all for commenting me, it surely have got my mind rethinking here and there! :O) ... Perhaps I'm not the best of persons to give feedback because of my Social Anxiety problem (tend to want to please everyone), but I'll do it anyways! ;O)

First I'd like to say, that I'm a SID phreak! :O) ... I've collected several SID chips for my HardSID card, just to listen to the originals, and frankly put; I hate the emulation sound, mostly because I've heard "the real thing". So to the question about me having heard them tunes on a regular C64, no! ... but I've heard them on the SID chip alright. And when it comes to technical SID wizardry, I'd choose DRAX (bass), DAF (Techno) as some of the more interresting ones for me liking. Some of them skilled composers fiddle with the SID filter so well, you sometimes wonder if it's worth trying to make it better! (I certainly felt like that when remixing Galways Terra Cresta!).

There has been so many things said since I last responded to this thread, and I can understand the point of all peoples statements. I guess the reason I replied in the first place was, that I felt sorry for Sub because I know that he wanted some honest creative feedback on his mix. I'm certain he knows he's a novice, and that he cannot compete against the REALLY good remixers here, but he had the guts to SHOW YOU what he did... He even put his work on a seperate server just to show them to you since his tunes get rejected at RKO. I'll take my hat off for that enthusiasm!... I just feel that if you tell someone that their work does nothing for them, he could also explain what's wrong so that you can use the fair enough critisism for something in the future, instead of just guiding him towards "less known tunes". It's like being told that you are not fit for messing with the "big boys tunes".

It's a delicate subject this thread, just remember that Sub's a novice, and that he of all, need some help in understanding what's good and what's bad. He might know it's bad, but he will not know how to fix it, if he is not told what you feel about it and what's wrong with it. So I find Tas' reply fair enough, as long as he tell the "unlucky" guy what he could do better. As Tas said, Infy has really improved! ... I (me razmo) rated his FEUD remix "Very Good" because it WAS very good to my ears! ... Sub should have the same chance and help to get there I think.

The conclusion for all this is, that I thought Sub deserved some constructive feedback... that's all really.

Hope I did not offend anyone with my responses. Let's rest this thread, I'm sure Sub will prevail some day! :O)

P.S. Subzero! a few questions before I give you my opinion:

1. What software do you use?
2. How long time did you spend on your work?
3. Did you use SID2MIDI for anything? (no trick question! ... I use it if REALLY necessary, just try to scribe the One Man & his Droid chords without using SID2MIDI!!!)
4. What part of your tune do you particularely like?
5. What part of your tune do you NOT particularely like?

[Razmo]

P.S. I did by the way not remix the "nutcase" tune. If you want to check out one of my (only one until now) VARIOUS remixes, search on RKO (when it's back up of course) for "Tiikerihai". I remixed this AMJ tune a long time ago. I'm definitely not ditching any unknown SIDs! ... I've been thinking about diving into some of DAF and SAGE. Especially I'm keen on trying Sage's "Afterlife" which I find damn good! (listen for yourselves! :O)

[Waz]

I guess the reason I replied in the first place was, that I felt sorry for Sub because I know that he wanted some honest creative feedback on his mix.

Well, my sarcasm wasn't aimed at him to be honest (and I apologise if you took it that way), just the fact it was another in a long line of average LN mixes that I've had to listen to and that unless someone comes along and blows my socks off with that tune, then it isn't yet worth doing. Quality, ultimately, is better than quantity.

As I mentioned, there was a good choice of instrumentation in the mix, and that at least showed some ambition on his part. However for me the execution wasn't to scratch, but it could possibly be for many reasons: lack of equipment, lack of time, things like that. None of which though can be taken into consideration if we don't know what resources he had available at the time.

Ultimately there just wasn't enough emotion or feel in the piece to make it stand out for me. You see, if someone really loves a SID tune, when they remix it you can tell the love that's gone into that as well. I'm quite sure Subzero does like the tune a fair bit, but as I said, there were parts of the tune that didn't quite seem in synch with each other, or where an instrument dominated proceedings, drowning the rest out. However, these things take time and effort to do just on a single mix and that's a learning curve and a half.

[XGener8or]

Threads like this kinda make me wonder if it's even worth continuing with BIT 4 (i.e. the Martial Arts one).

You bet it's worth I would even love to have a whole CD just with Last Ninja tracks As long as they're all good. I never get tired of Last Ninja