Zhi Le's: Boosted the middle frequencies to make everything sound more bright. Cut off noise in bass. Also decreased everything by -5.0dB (right bar) because his on the loud side compared to Alphonse's.
Pre-EQ modification
Post-EQ modification
Alphonse: First striking difference was the volume. So I boosted it across all frequencies. To show the contrast, there's a screenshot of all 3 sound waves later.
Zooming into Alphonse's piece. I boosted the bass as I think it was a nice bass and gave the song more depth. I also liked the instrument that is doing a panning sound (the arpeggiated one I think), but it's very soft compared to the melody, so I decreased the high frequencies as well.
Pre-EQ modification
Post-EQ modification
Vincent's: Vincent's song was also decreased across the board to better match Alphonse's volume. Vincent's bass was also too boosted, some frequencies peaked a lot (see screenshot), so I reduced the bass frequencies. Also discarded some of the random top frequencies, taking care not to chop off too much because his song has fillers that use that frequencies.
Pre-EQ modification
Post-EQ modification
And now here's how I combined them (will talk about the three versions but two main ones will be posted):
This is the first version. Zhi Le -> Alphonse -> Vincent.
The reason is because Zhi Le's was the most upbeat and energetic, hence I wanted to start with his and get the listeners engrossed and hyped up first. Alphonse's was kind of like a cooling down after a party kind of vibe (but still at the party) so I thought it would go well after Zhi Le's. As for Vincent's it was a clear finale song because of the soothing touch (the 'ooh' voices, the slow/very few notes of flute on the melody line, the shimmery sound, and the way it loops). It was calming and suitable to wrap up the playlist.
At first, I put the songs back to back with no overlapping (version 1). However, I really did NOT like the way Alphonse's song comes in after Zhi Le's with a long and slow introduction. 4 bars of only drums, bass comes in next 4 bars, panning fills come in next 4 bars. Then only verse starts. 12 bars of intro was to long given the sudden drop in energy from Zhi Le's song. The long time it takes to build back up to a middle-energy range did not sit well with me. I overlapped 4 bars so there was still some intro to the chord progressions (4-8th bar), and a bit of the panning sound which I liked.
From Alphonse's to Vincent's, I added a 1 bar break because both their songs ended on the dot. Anyway, here is the playlist merged as one song because of the overlap/breaks so I can't put it into a playlist (version 2).
However, I am not sure if we are actually allowed to do an overlap... And I wanted to play around with the songs more. Finally, I decided on this arrangement:
Alphonse -> Zhi Le -> Vincent.
The reason is so that I can keep all 3 songs as their original form without cutting any parts. The order is inspired by the standard story telling form! Namely, Introduction -> Climax -> Resolution.
As mentioned above, Alphonse's song has a long and steady introduction. Therefore, it is appropriate as the first song.
Old energy level: starts on a bang -> steadily decreasing.
New energy levels: steadily increases from nothing -> peaks -> steadily decreasing
While the introduction now is less energetic, I think it's a good build to Zhi Le's and Zhi Le's piece serves as a good climax tying the songs together. The energy is more balanced through the playlist, not concentrated and over with the first song. With that, here is the final playlist.
1 comment:
There's really too much mid and high mid-range in Alphonse's song. The lead lines stick out too far and the support isn't there. It was an odd choice to not use multi-pressor. These needed more than EQ could do alone. I would also have faded out before the sloppy ending.
Zhi Le's song is better, though the leads are still a little too far out front. His song ends very bright, but the last song begins much darker.
You need to listen to the set as a whole as well as individiually.
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