[Dissident93]

Elektro-Omega, on 08 December 2011 - 06:05 AM, said:

I totally wish that you could mute specific tracks such as certain instruments or vocals.

You can for emulated music formats such as VGM, SPC, NSF, etc.

Or, you can find leaked master tracks; or the format Rock Band uses for their songs (.mogg)
But other than that, you can only make pseudo instrumentals or vocal rips. : (

[Falk]

SegaLoco, on 07 December 2011 - 11:42 PM, said:

I wish that they had stuck masters in the game and had it actively master the audio as it plays to aid with looping and crap (mostly to my benefit of grabbing the bass track for practicing purposes ) but also to better manipulate the audio. Think NiGHTs into Dreams and it's sound engine for levels.

You actually mean stems. 'Master' is a word that gets thrown around incorrectly a lot. (I mean, yeah, language is what people make of it and all that, but "master" (and "mastering") mean completely different things as far as the professional industry is concerned)

It actually does nothing to help looping the way the game does its soundtrack, but stuff like that defo can be used for a shit ton of interactive music tricks. :V

This post has been edited by Falk: 08 December 2011 - 06:50 AM

[Dissident93]

Aren't stems just some of the multitracks set aside during mixing/mastering, for the sole purpose of having them available for remixing later down the line?

[The Growler]

There's something I've been recently wondering about with the lyrics of Escape from the City.

Who exactly IS the "me" (and we) in the main chorus: "Follow me, set me free, trust me and we will escape from the city. I'll make it through, follow me"? Is the lyrics of this song breaking the 4th wall here?

ie. Is the "follow me" Sonic (but we're controlling him, so how can it be Sonic we're following if we're directing him where to go?); the "set me free I guess is Sonic. But then trust me could be the player telling Sonic that I, the player/controller, is in Sonic's hand - hence why it says "WE will escape from the city" - together. Am I making any sense here?

From the context of the rest of the lyrics it sounds like Sonic is 'singing' here, but there still seems to be a few discrepancies that's puzzling me.

This post has been edited by The Growler: 08 December 2011 - 08:48 AM

[KeebeeNacho]

I think the lyrics were suppossed to be vague anyway. You can't really put an exact meaning on "follow my rainbow".

[Falk]

Dissident93, on 08 December 2011 - 07:00 AM, said:

Aren't stems just some of the multitracks set aside during mixing/mastering, for the sole purpose of having them available for remixing later down the line?

Stems generally would sum to the pre-master, and its main purpose is remixing, yes. It's also become the industry standard term (... as far as two companies go. They're pretty much the entire industry anyway. Oops, wait. One. Guitar Hero is no more) for what eventually are the files that get distributed on games like Rock Band and DJ Hero.

In this context of wanting instruments, or at least logical parts separated, yes, the same stem term applies. Especially when used in an interactive context which is pretty much on-the-fly automated remixing.

edit: Being a little more true to my nerd self, the industry standard description for 'master' is- the final stereo (or 5.1, or whatever) track, which is sent out for duplication, produced by a mastering engineer. In that context, any further changes to it means it's not a master. Constituent parts are similarly not considered a master (or masters), as typically summing them won't yield a bit-for-bit duplication of the master, (since the master was processed by the mastering engineer).

Also on that note a mastering engineer works with a stereo mix. If you're lucky, he works with a vocal-off + vocal track. No more constituent parts than that. The process of mastering describes taking a pre-master stereo mix and making sure that it plays back as well as possible on a widest variety of playback systems, and is of appropriate volume level. A 'remaster' is taking that stereo file and doing another mastering pass. Single stereo file being key, as the process of mastering is basically the final-step cherry on the cake. Someone re-mixing (not remixing) a track from its multitrack doesn't make a 'remaster'. He makes an alternate mix. Even further back in the pipeline, someone rendering an existing midi using another set of soundfonts/instruments does not make a remaster. He makes a new version.

Further nerdreading: http://en.wikipedia....Audio_mastering

This post has been edited by Falk: 08 December 2011 - 11:52 AM

[prettyugly]

KeebeeNacho, on 08 December 2011 - 10:54 AM, said:

I think the lyrics were suppossed to be vague anyway. You can't really put an exact meaning on "follow my rainbow".

The song was specifically composed to be a gay anthem hence the "follow my rainbow" lyric.

[KarrotKonvoy]

When I heard those extracted vocals I knew I just had to mix them with something.



I imagine just about any song about escaping, cities, cities escaping, etc. could use these lyrics.

[Falk]

You sir have just unlocked some gold medals/emblems/whatever

[Boinciel]

The Growler, on 08 December 2011 - 08:48 AM, said:

There's something I've been recently wondering about with the lyrics of Escape from the City.

Who exactly IS the "me" (and we) in the main chorus: "Follow me, set me free, trust me and we will escape from the city. I'll make it through, follow me"? Is the lyrics of this song breaking the 4th wall here?

ie. Is the "follow me" Sonic (but we're controlling him, so how can it be Sonic we're following if we're directing him where to go?); the "set me free I guess is Sonic. But then trust me could be the player telling Sonic that I, the player/controller, is in Sonic's hand - hence why it says "WE will escape from the city" - together. Am I making any sense here?

From the context of the rest of the lyrics it sounds like Sonic is 'singing' here, but there still seems to be a few discrepancies that's puzzling me.

I always took it to mean that Sonic is singing a song with the 20 animals that he's rescuing from under cars and inside boxes and drainage pipes. Sonic says "Follow me", to which the animals ask him to set them free. The rest just sort of falls into place from there. The "follow my rainbow" clearly means "follow the sparks that my brand-name grinding shoes make when I grind down all these rails".

[Falk]

[disclaimer]This is third degree hearsay.[/disclaimer]

An acquaintance of mine who was neighbors with Johnny Gioeli says Johnny's children wrote a lot of the English lyrics in that era. I know Ted sang City Escape, but in an overall sense there's some believability to it, at least.

[ShenziSixaxis]

KeebeeNacho, on 08 December 2011 - 10:54 AM, said:

I think the lyrics were suppossed to be vague anyway. You can't really put an exact meaning on "follow my rainbow".

Well...

[The Growler]

I don't remember seeing any in City Escape, but a more sensible idea would be this sort of thing:

[Hendricks 266]

"Cuts Unleashed SA2 Vocal Collection" includes karaoke versions of the game's vocal tracks. I tried applying sound inversion to isolate the vocals but apparently the tracks had separate analog recording sessions so there were always some distorted remnants of the instrumentation. The range I got best results in was to mix the inverted karaoke track at 0.15375-0.154 seconds into the vocal track.

[Ch1pper]

Which tracks did you try, out of curiosity?

I remember trying Escape and E.G.G.M.A.N. which at best gave me a few seconds of isolated vocals that would quickly phase in and back out, as if they couldn't quite be lined up properly. I didn't exactly go too in-depth though, so work could easily still have had to've been done.

I had some damn fine luck with Throw It All Away, actually -- you could still hear things like the scattered tech percussion a little bit, but they were at such a volume that they'd easily end up drowned out by anything else if used in, say, a remix or something... that is, up until the final chorus with the ambient synth pads. Those totally double up for some reason. Other than that though, the vocals were pretty audible as-is. It was cool.

I'll have to give it another shot at some point.