Michael Jackson & Sonic 3

OK, well I did some comparing of them, and no, the beat doesn't match perfectly, but it is pretty close. I recorded the DAC samples of the Marble Garden zone music and put it on top of the Why You Wanna Trip On Me song so you can hear the similiarity. (I did have to slow down the MGZ music a little)
Marble Garden beat comparison


Also, I noticed a VERY close similarity to the opening beat of Carnival Night Zone with that of the opening beats of Why You Wanna Tip On Me. I know CNZ is already known to be similar to parts of "Jam," and I don't know if MJ uses that same beat in any of his other music, but it's almost exactly the same. Here's a comparison.
Carnival Night opening beat comparison

 

The ending of that Marble Garden beat comparison sounds a bit Knuckles Sonic 3 Music.

 

I feel that you are "looking" for a connection now, and anything remotly similer will be counted as a yes. Be causious.

 

I just wouild like to say that QJimbo has done more than a wonderful job compiling this video... and having a sexy voice too.

And to HXC for his usuals... and throw in Shade there somewhere.

Good Job! :D

EDIT: I need to start to get involved in this topic. It actually intrigues me and wants to do something.

 

About the Marble Garden mix... At a first impression I got confused, because the sounds from MGz fit that perfectly in the music that looked like the same.

 

If anyone else would like to experiment with testing other Sonic 3 zones with Michael Jackson music (carefully, and choosing the right words on how to express the result of each experiment), I'd like to recommend MP3.com's search result for MJ's Albums. No, they do not give the whole song for you, but they do give 30 second samples of his songs. Or perhaps Amazon.com's search result for Michael Jackson is the better pick...though there's many albums to go through.

 

I agree with HXC; It kinda seems like you guys are just trying to make connections now. The ones I made (Smooth Criminal and Stranger in Moscow) were completely coincidential; I didn't go listening to the albums with the mindframe "Hmm...Lets see if I recognize any Sonic 3 stuff." I just noticed it as I listened to my new stuff, sat bolt upright, and posted about it. Anyway, you are welcome to expirement, and I encourage listening to MJ by all means. I just don't want this to be flooded with a bunch of farfetched, mindless "connections" as a result.

 

I'm with you on this one, HXC. So many songs sound simmilar these days. You could probably find simmilarities in music from several artists. Tread lightly here, some songs will use the same beat, but that doesn't mean much of anything.

 

Drum beats alone mean nothing, people -- a lot of songs have similar beats in order to fit the swing of the song. Unless you can find a larger connection, like actual matching chord patterns or syncable melody, I see no reason to believe there's ANY connection AT ALL.

You should be checking the music of the other composers on the team. Chances are that MJ has nothing to do with it.

 

In that case, I've done some research on the composers mentioned on the 2nd page of this topic. Here's what I've found:

Doug Grigsby III, not registered with BMI, nor ASCAP. He was involved as a musician on the keyboard for the movie "Ghosts" (1997) with Michael Jackson.

Bobby Brooks (name might be "Robert Sharon Brooks") is registered at BMI and ASCAP. He too was involved with the movie above.

Darryl Ross, not sure about. Registered in BMI with middle names "Lee" or "Edward" or no middle name. At ASCAP, there's a writer named Darryl Ross Neudorf. According to IMDB, he was only credited as the composer of Sonic 3.

Brad Buxer is not registered with BMI, nor ASCAP. He too was involved with the Michael Jackson movie "Ghosts." He also did the movie "Dangerous: The Short Films" (1993) and "Black or White" (1991).

*Geoff Grace, registered in BMI with the initial middle name "R" and is registered at PRS (Performing Right Society) as suggested at ASCAP. At PRS, he is named "Geoffery Trevor Grace." According to IMDB, he is part of a "pre-production" movie "Fingers Walking" (2005) as composer.

Cirocco is registered in BMI as Adrion Charles Cirocco and is credited to composing original music for the movie "Tapped Out" (2003). It appears the only reason Cirocco appears on BMI is because Cirocco is also the name for "Jones Charles Edgar Blair."

+++

UPDATE: A website called Music Powers** has the following information below with two composers and Michael Jackson as the artist:

Artist: Michael Jackson
Song: ?The Water? Sonic Cues ? (levels 2 & 3)
Company: MJJ / Pebbles Music / Sega Corporation
Project: Sonic The Hedgehog ? Game theme music cues
Role: Programmer, Additional Production by Cirocco and Arranger-Composer (with Brad Buxer)

------------------------------------------------
*Incidentally, I've checked APM (Associated Production Music) and there is stock music by "Trevor Grace." Probably not the same person, but what I found is that Trevor Grace composed children's music for 'Carlin' (a production music library).

**Info first mentioned (throughout the topic) by LocalH, 6 posts below (March 27, 2006)

For the IMDB info on "Ghosts"
For the IMDB info on "Tapped Out"
For the IMDB info on "Fingers Walking" (pre-production)
For the IMDB info on "Dangerous: The Short Films"
For the IMDB info on "Black or White"

For the BMI info on Bobby Brooks and from ASCAP on Bobby Brooks
For the BMI info on Darryl Ross and from ASCAP on Darryl Ross
For the BMI info on Geoff Grace and from ASCAP on Geoff Grace (only the mention of "PRS")
For the BMI info on Cirocco

 

Hi,

I just saw this video on youtube (linked from Digg).

The songs sound only barely similar to me. Sure, a slow bassline might share a few notes, but that's a far cry from saying the same musician wrote the songs. The Jam style break/transition in Carnival is pretty common in lots of songs. The chord progressions you posted don't match up, they also don't have the same number of chords in. Also, if MJ was writing new songs (if he was a composer and doesn't get other people to do it for him) he wouldn't blindly copy his old songs anyway?

To be honest, I think you're dreaming. There's even someone on the youtube comments now swearing that Marble Zone music is a copy of a MJ song. It's all in your heads.

Entertaining vid though. I love crazy old game theories.

 

It has begun, Qjimbo :P

 

What has begun? The man has a point, and a good one.

That's why I've been inching towards the fact that it wasn't MJ himself who wrote these songs, but rather the varous composers that worked from him. Obviously, this isn't the first time they were meant to work together, and many composers take past pieces and use them as a base for new ones.

So I think if we can figure out who composed the Sonic 3 credits, we can find a way to track them to Stranger in Moscow. That's my thoughts, anyway.

 

I know that, you tard :P I actually do agree with your theory. I was refering to random trial members due to the increased publicity of the documentary.

 

I don't think it gets much more random than "Meow." :P

The random connections popping up are far worse than random trial members, though. I think we can safely say that if it's not in Sonic 3, you're nuts.

 

Well, the Cirocco that we're interested in definitely has the name Charles Jones according to musicpowers.com, so I think that's unrelated. Still, it's good to identify dead ends so that they can be avoided.

 

Congrats, QJimbo. Your documentary has finally made a substantial impact on the internet. It's on ytmnd.
Kinda.
It's chopped up, with no video, and barely any commentary.

On Topic:
I think some mention of the credited Sonic 3 composers and their connections with Michael Jackson would be a fairly necessary addition, since the video has now branched out into other communities. Musical similiarities on their own are interesting, but without a knowlege of the people behind them an MJ fan (or anyone else who stumbles across it) who watches the video can take it merely as conjecture. That aside, it's a very compact, thorough video. Good fucking job, dude.

Personal Opinion:
Not an insult to Michael Jackson fans, but personally I prefer the music from Sonic 1 and 2. It probably has something to do with nostalgia, but there are just a lot more songs that I can actually enjoy on their own, outside of the the context of the game. I always kind of thought that Sonic 3 songs sounded like 90s pop songs (see: Ice Cap, Endless Mine, Chrome Gadget, Launch Base). Now I know why.

Outside of 1 2 and 3K, I have little experience with Sonic, so I really can't make a broader musical comparison.

 

It's no surprise that Masato Nakamura went on to break the record for best selling album of all time in Japan and put out many platinum and number 1 albums. I wish he had stayed making Sonic music though. :P

 

Or they are more than welcome to ask me for any of the albums or songs; Though I don't particularly want to promote this whole "Hay lol mayb more MJ songs r sonic musics" thing that seems to be getting underway. Trust me, if there were any more that were substantial, I would have noticed by now. I hear all these albums on daily basis, and have the Sonic 3 tunes very firmly ingrained in my head.

I'll still share any requested albums/songs.

 

I searched all the above S3 credit names on World of Game Music, but to no avail. The closest I got was an "Edward Ross," but this doesn't seem to be related.