Music Remastered

No, but we can certainly do the hell of a lot better than shitty MIDI-sounding synths, I have an entire set of $800 sampled orchestra synths that would be the hell of a lot better, and combined with real percussion, live piano and proper guitar, it would sound phenomenal.

 

Well, it is an option. I meant it would be way more difficult to record everything. The project would go to another level. But then, as you said, we could mix some real playing (like your sax) and programmed music.

That's the point
Well, and that's why I'm in favour of re-wrinting the music from scratch and then doing all the production stuff. So far the orchestral pieces I've listened to are awesome, but can be even better if we try to emulate the orchestra accurately with stereo spans and reverb.

Just in case I wasn't clear I do know standard midi sounds shitty. However, it has nothing to do with rewriting music from scratch to make them sound better afterwards. The thing is, I don't have any good soundfonts for now. I'm looking forward to listening to your samples

Here are my final versions for Drowning, 1UP and Continue Themes:

Drowning
MP3: http://www.fileden.com/files/2008/6/12/1956908/DROWN_NEW.mp3
MIDI: http://www.fileden.com/files/2008/6/12/1956908/DROWN.mid
Orchestral version of the original theme. There is some "artistic expression" with horns and brass, but I can remove it if you want.

1UP
MP3: http://www.fileden.com/files/2008/6/12/1956908/1UP.mp3
MIDI: http://www.fileden.com/files/2008/6/12/1956908/1UP.mid
Pretty much like the original. Horns join brass in the melody and the glockenspiel make the jingle a bit brighter.

Continue
MP3: http://www.fileden.com/files/2008/6/12/1956908/CONTINUe.mp3
MIDI: http://www.fileden.com/files/2008/6/12/1956908/CONTINUE.mid
I want to make the organ sound like the one in basketball matches. Maybe you guys in north amercia can tell me which organ type is that, as I haven't listened to it for several years now. Melody is played by a trumpet, but who knows what would sound better?

PS: Please feel free to mess around with the midis as you will!

 

Now THAT's what I'm talkin' about!!

Very nice. Sounds awesome. I think it could use a bit more tweaking (it's sorta weird how the main melody echoes slightly like that) but the melodies and stuff are pretty much spot on. Excellent ^_~

 

That's spot on to you? That's absolutely horrible in every conceivable way.

I think I'll take your ability to judge the quality of music with a grain of salt from now on...

 

Oh come on <_< He said it was lower quality. It was just a test. If he improves on the quality I think it'll be great.
He got the melody right, he got the "feel" of the song right, chose the right instruments, got the bustling feel of a neon-light casino down, all while staying faithful to the original.
Much better than all the other versions (aside from Canossu's anyway. they're both pretty even) by far, no offence to those people though, but the rest seemed quite lacking and shallow.

At least mention what you think is so wrong with it. Or how about you just do it? :/

 

I'll be honest, I'm not really a big fan of videogame music remixes, most of them would be the visual equivalent of remaking a sprite in crappy MS Paint quality and then adding tons of shine/gloss effects to it in Photoshop.

So here's a quick sample of my idea of mixing clean percussion samples and expanded bass with the original genesis sound chips music:
http://www.fileden.com/files/2008/6/14/1959574/ehzsmp.mp3

This is the kind of remix that I think that would be more adequate for this project.

 

That sounds too close to the original. Like you just added a drum kit from Fruity Loops and called it a day.

I am not for messing around with the arrangement much if at all, but I feel the goal should be to interpret the music as SEGA meant for it to sound. Not rehash it in Dolby 5.1. Some in this thread have come close to this goal, but this synthesized sounding stuff has to go. Half of it sounds like it could be played on the Mega Drive.

I'm not trying to keep anyone from contributing, but just listen to the original, listen to yours and then listen to some good VGM arrangements by some actual RL bands and compare.

 

Such as combining Casino Night Zone with the general sort of swing sound you'd hear in the Sing Sing Sing (With a Swing) instrumental, I would say. This is the sort of sound my rose-tinted memory interprets the very first time I heard the very first time I played CNZ, and it sticks with me; I think the tune should be made in the same style.

I wouldn't say that they have to be 100% note-for-note though; for example similar toms to those in Sing Sing Sing may sound quite nice layered in with CNZ's percussion, and would suit the style of music and the zone. As per what I have said in the other subforums of this project; don't merely copy, analyze and interpret whilst making good judgement calls on additions -- Sega had limitations in 1992. We, on the other hand, are in a far luckier position to not have such limitations and we should use this position to pay loving tribute to the original vision in the way the MegaDrive couldn't.

 

Well, that's pretty almost what I did, although I've manually redone all the drums and the bass expansion. It was supposed to be just that, the same music without the low-fi DAC sound.

 

Sounds cool except for that strange echo... But I think Cinossu's sounds a bit less MIDI-ish.

By the way, I think the versions in that site should be listed as possibilities, since most of them are quite good and faithful. Some people here might not even know they exist, and that would be a shame.

 

Yay, I finally I managed to get some soundfonts working properly.

Please express your thoughts on this Continue Theme:
http://www.fileden.com/files/2008/6/12/195...tinue_Theme.mp3
Drums, bass, church organ and trumpet.

 

Fred_PJ,

Ironically enough, your EHZ sample is the best EHZ remastering to date despite it not being anywhere near complete on the grounds that it is the only one that does not make any changes to the notes.

Ideally, if you were to plot the original songs onto sheet music, and then have the remastered sheet music, they should be as close to 100% as possible. The drums have been one of the biggest offenders on all the EHZ submissions so far, so thank you Fred_PJ for getting that down. Perhaps you could let others use it in theirs so we can get that annoyance out of the way :-)

Whoever mentioned about doing things the way Sega would have done it if they had the technology, truer words were never spoken. In fact, if we take a look at a time where they did that: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hhUC9nrYFu4...feature=related nothing was changed except that the instruments were updated.

That Green Hill example has an important lesson: Sega felt that to update the song they didn't need to try to add more feeling to the song by adding new instruments, or changing what the original instruments did to capture the feeling better. All they did was polish it up. Zero notes/keys/tempo were added or subtracted or modified. That should be the goal of the music for this project just as it's the goal of the art.

I understand that most of these problems stem at the MIDI level and so it may not be any of the contributor's fault, so mario's suggestion to keep watch at the MIDI level is important to ensure no extras creep their way into song.

P.S. Sometimes the original instruments are best for certain cases. Heck, even in Brawl's version of Angel Island they even reused some of the original instruments for some of the background synth stuff (at least from what I can tell, it could be that there's modern spot-on versions). Sometimes you need that original synth to keep the feeling (as is being discovered by the sfx people).

Hope this helps.

 

But the original with updated instruments is kind of boring! We might as well just use the originals entirely. The key is to find a balance between an updated remix/remastering and keeping with the original music's "sound".

 

Funny thing about Sonic Adventure 2's Green Hill Zone song is that the instrument set is completely different—in fact, it's not even remotely similar! Why people try and act like it's the same is beyond me.

 

The instrument set may be different, but that's not the point. you can have fun with the instruments, but don't have too much fun with the notes please. haha.

 

Cinossu's music is pretty good....for a Mario game I just think of Super Mario Sunshine while listening to his music. It's a pleasure to listen to though!

I want to have Tweaker's babies in the end though.


BTW, Can I sig this? "Whenever I capture the soul of a song, it's apparently not good enough because it doesn't have a orchestral masterpiece for a lead instrument." I fell out of my chair almost suffocating!

 

New one, I just put a fade out effect so the sound doesn't end too roughly:
Sonic 2 Original ring sound with a smooth end

 

Yeah I did say it was a test, not to mention I had to edit most of the midi cuz the two channels weren't matching (the latter one was done incorrectly). Also, the midi was a BS one, I added the drums so... :P , I pretty much made that midi lol

 

Can somebody please try recording it from an original Genesis 1 (ie., the one with better sound) NTSC system? If only for comparison.