Yes, the "extended" version is a fan edit. You can hear it snap where the sections were pasted together every now and then. I remember talking with Tweaker about it a few years back when just chatting about music and being somewhat disappointed a proper full version doesn't exist. Not like it's a TERRIBLE attempt (you can do far worse hack jobs in Audacity), but it has some compositional choices in its arrangement that are questionable. Putting it in a not so snobbish way, it lacks flow.
Think I snagged a "remix" track I found from somewhere that seemed like the artist restored a good portion of South Island before it goes on and does its own thing. I don't think that's what anyone here is looking for but it was the highest quality I have ever heard South Island. EDIT: Welp it was the first thing I found typing in South Island Remix. I don't think this is what anyone was looking for though. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jQsV2wqOniU
Here's my South Island MIDI, fixed up very slightly. If anyone else is good with transcribing, feel free to take a stab at the techno percussion. I sequenced this years ago when I was on Windows XP, and the MIDI program I used back then is incompatible with 7. I'm still running a trial version of Mixcraft which does everything but save your work, and I just haven't had a real need to upgrade yet. If this link isn't working, or if anyone else wants to host the file or whatever, let me know.
Anyone remember I did this? I almost managed recreate Land of Darkness. http://forums.sonicretro.org/index.php?showtopic=25825
You say there is a generic theme in the menus for the DVD. Do you mean just one track or different tracks in different parts of the menus? If so, maybe someone could rip it from the DVD?
It's far from perfect, but I took a stab at it years ago. I'm almost entirely certain the strings track is wrong in spots.
It's that one theme from when they're just panning the camera around that city outside the Presidential Palace near the beginning of the first half. It's either that theme or a part of Look-a-Like.
I'll check. EDIT: Main menu plays the start of Look-A-Like. "Scene Index" plays the music from the part when they are going to the President like Gene said. "Language Selection" plays another part of Look-A-Like ("I was born..."). "Special Features" once again plays the music from the part when they are going to the President. "A.D.V. Previews" plays the same music as "Language Selection". And that is it.
Sad news. Monster Island was ADV, ADV became Sentai, but there's almost no chance that Sentai would have anything from those days considering they had to dissolve before becoming a new company. I think the only chance to get the recordings in their truest forms would be one of two methods: Getting a japanese-speaker to get in contact with the original composer Trying to recompile the music by taking the english and japanese audio tracks and trying to transpose them and remove the dialogue. I'd love to see it happen, but I'm not optimistic. edit: IMDB lists the musical staff as: Junji Fujita - Music Production Riyu Konaka - Vocalist/Lyracist (Sang Look-A-Like) Mitsuhiro Tada - Arranger
It's truly a shame. I absolutely LOVE the soundtrack. That's why preservation is so important, so great things like this aren't compromised.
Wait - Charles Campbell? He Old Man Owl's VA right? After this occured, OKei (I believe it was him) popped up on Twitter to ask Tada about his music. He responded with (I'm paraphrasing) Engrish-y "Thank you", "It was fun", and when asked about releasing it now, something along the lines of "You'd have to ask Sega about that!" Of course at the time no one had thought of asking him if he remembers what kind of synthesizer brand he used... The M1 Piano means it was likely a Korg of some sort... but clarification as to what particular model would be great.
Perhaps a tweet requesting the specific model of synthesizer would be in order? Or an e-mail? This could get us one step closer to a faithful recreation.
Hah, this is great guys, dunno how much real headway we'll get but I'm happy to see there's lots of interest in this music. Here are the ancient OVA MIDIs I have: http://sudden-desu.net/_dump/sonic_ova_midi/ No idea where I picked them up, on some site or forum over the years. I unfortunately don't have a good midi setup right now, I just grabbed the basic foobar midi plugin. They sound alright, but I imagine they would be awesome with the right VST or soundfont. I can't really contribute much else as I lack music skills. I do own the original Japanese VHS tapes of Sonic OVA though, so if for some reason we need original, non-ADV audio rips, I can help... edit: Or this. I could help with this.
A high-quality recreation will probably use MIDI as a base. To try to explain it shortly, MIDI just sends data of what notes and how to play them, not how it actually sounds. That end result will be entirely up to your sound hardware/DAW/equipment/etc. If you can find decent enough samples that sound close to the originals (or heck, finding even the original instrument samples wouldn't be too far-fetched) , I don't see why not. The OST was clearly synthesized in the first place (and, likely, used MIDI). Sorry if that's too confusing, I am a big nerd when it comes to that topic. Edit: okay ignore me, browser was not properly displaying the page and did not see the further discussion. Good luck on your efforts on contacting the composer, I would love to see what comes of this if anything.
Sorry to bump an old topic, but I thought you'd be interested to know that somebody has been releasing some of the tracks in high quality to their YouTube channel: -Theme of South Island / Metal Sonic Fight: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KjGG88PSlWo -"Establishing Shot!" Theme of Planet Freedom: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vG4i4I-Slf0 -Don't forget that "Look Alike" was officially released on the "True Colors" CD recently.
That's not high quality, it's just more fine-grained splicing. There are noticeable volume fluctuations and this track does not actually match the music in the original parts they replaced to remove sound effects.
I'll just leave this here for you guys: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jQsV2wqOniU Download: http://www.mediafire.com/?bp6idxorykentee Back in 2008, someone made a really badass remix of the South Island theme that happens to be the cleanest one you'll find. He left a download link to the audio and someone, besides me, saved it and actually reuploaded the song with a download link when the original guy closed his account.
...screw it, I'll take that South Island splice. Could be cleaned up a tiny bit more, but that's likely the closest we'll get to it unless someone is talented enough to compose it on their own with the exact synths. Protip: VERY few have even come within acceptable range over the years. Most screw up a little part in Land of Darkness.
