ReMix:Silent Hill 2 "Broken Reflection" 4:35

Halloween can feel like a bad dream, but it's truly a good one, with more from Pixel Mixers' recent Silent Hill: Monochrome Dreams album! We "Promise" this one's nothing but positive, thanks to Chromatic Apparatus and newcomer Flávio Teles's beautiful trio performance (even with a music video)! Fear the gear:

Mixing done by Chromatic Apparatus in Studio One 6.5.0
Album mastering done by Erika Richards in Studio One 6.5.0
Cello:
- 2007 Romanian Euro "Standard Antique" (Peter Paul Prier & Sons)
- Recorded using two AKG C414 XLS in mid-side configuration through a Focusrite Scarlett 18i20 Gen 3
Piano:
- Recorded on a Roland FA-08
- Studio One 6.5.0 Stock VSTi, Presence: Acoustic Piano

While he does a great job when he's got nostalgia and personal connection to the source game, Chromatic Apparatus also ain't scared of games he's never played before!

""Broken Reflection" (a cover of "Promise" from Silent Hill 2) is a track featured from the new Silent Hill tribute album Monochrome Dreams by Pixel Mixers. It was fun to record! I confess I haven't played any of the Silent Hill games -- psychological horror games just aren't my cup of tea :'-D but, when I was perusing the tracks to see if I could work with something to participate on the PM album, this one track immediately jumped out to me. The simple, plaintive melody that the synth/guitar picks out over the rhythm guitar's ostinato got stuck in my head! I could "hear" an adaptation of the soft rock vibe into a more melancholic version, both more placid and more intense, featuring two live cellos (performed by me) and a piano (many thanks to Flávio Teles for his performance on keys). The feeling I was attempting to capture is the sense of solitude and self-reflection, and the intense, spiraling self-doubt, fixation, and turmoil that can come from being alone with your own thoughts for too long."

I'm a known bloviator, but I've got Halloween candy to get after with my kiddo, so we'll let CA do the heavy lifting, courtesy his extensive play-by-play of every twist and turn involved with his tag-team cello performance with Flávio's piano:

"The original track featured a standard soft rock instrumentation, with electric guitar, rhythm guitar, bass, keyboard, and drums. I reduced the band to just two cellos and a piano to give it a more intimate, pensive quality.

0:00 - The original's guitar-peggios are the left hand of the piano -- this ostinato will run through nearly the whole piece. There are no drums anymore, the piano functionally takes over the rhythm role -- this changes the vibe from a restless, bar-room melancholy, to something more isolated and self-reflective. I left the tempo alone -- it's one of those illusions of comparison. It feels subjectively slower (to me, at least), but it isn't.

0:13 - One cello enters, playing a short four-bar introduction.

0:26 - The main melody begins with the cello.

0:47 - The cello is playing in its tenor range here. I intentionally tried to keep the vibrato down here, even including open A-string notes (which gets beaten out of you when learning to play the cello) because it matched the raw, almost "pleading", sound I was looking for.

1:16 - In the original, the intro and melody is repeated again, with the guitar reprising its starring role. Instead of doing that with the cello, the baton is passed to the piano, and the cello pads (now with a buddy to fill out the acoustic space) during the tail end of the bridge.

1:39 - After the bridge, the main melody repeats again, the celli drop out here and the piano solos for a bit.

2:01 - One cello re-enters, playing in unison with the piano (albeit two octaves lower).

2:12 - The second cello enters during the second repetition of the wandering melody, harmonizing with the first cello.

2:24 - The big crash. In the original, this transition is less of an event than I wanted to make of it, with the introduction of distorted guitars, and more crash cymbal -- the acoustic space is fuller, but burying the lead a bit. I took it in a slightly different direction by punctuating it with an accent across the board, using intense vibrato in the first cello to draw focus, and having the piano pound away in the lower register (to keep some of that full distortion from the original).

2:44 - I loved the little gliss the bass guitar played in the original and gave it to the second cello here.

2:49 - The E section has the first cello copying the original guitar line, with the second cello providing a staccato chug just to maintain the intensity.

3:10 - In the original, the guitar starts harmonizing in thirds with itself, the original maintains this intensity through to the end, but I wanted to start backing the drive off a bit here -- instead of the punctuation heard in the piano and second cello from earlier, this section is calmer, and more legato.

3:22 - I added a little four-bar piano solo here on top the repeated phrases, just to add some contrast and interest as the cellos decay.

3:34 - The piano reprises the figure it was playing so intensely at the big crash (2:24), but now it, too, is calmer and more distinct, more haunting, being played in a higher register rather than deep in the bass wires.

3:46 - I love the little harmony the second cello plays here.

4:00 - We end as we began, with that arpeggio pattern. I decided to keep the stepped slowing of the original, rather than smoothing the ritardando out because I liked the mechanical-ish wind-down -- like a machine running out of steam."

Just like Lucas's piece before it, Chrom and Flávio haven't greatly altered the source's melody, but the tone, tenor, and character of "Promise" is presented in a significantly different way via the shift from rock to acoustic. Like judge Flexstyle said, "It's like a warm hug for my ears." Is it apropos for Halloween? It's not haunted house music, but, depending on how the weather's treating ya, Halloween can get HELLA cold outside while you're trick-or-treating. Does a warm musical hug work better than a Thermos of cocoa? I might be accepting a broken promise, but I'll try anything once! ;-P