Music Remastered

Well of course, everybody's biased towards their own music. =P

I do agree that scubaSteve's attempt is the best so far, though.

 

Not to mention, Japanese singing and love songs don't exactly say "Sonic the Hedgehog 2" to me... :P

 

Well, can either of you elaborate what you see as (not so good) in mine so I might perhaps go back and change it?

Appreciate it sir.

 

Why not? Tails is a girl, after all. :P

 

Don't know if Tweaker has seen this so I'm bumping it. Am I getting ignored here? <_<

 

Sorry, I'm just really not too hip about mixing guitar in right now. What I'll do right now is render a guitar-less version of the song so people can record and layer guitar over as they please. Once we've got the relevant guitar sections, I can merge them into my master copy.

In addition, I'll render a version with only the guitar parts so it can be used for reference in playing guitar. Sound good?

 

Well, yours is pretty good, but it changes a few things from the original.

From what I can tell, most of the problems are just minor variations that differ from the OST. If we're striving to be as faithful as possible:

1) The first few seconds of the song don't have the percussion that the rest of the song has, I know it's supposed to be an intro, but I think that percussion is an important part of the SH2 soundtrack and sets the mood properly.
2) At 00:33 and 00:40 into the song, the percussion once again goes out.
3) Actually, now that I notice it, then the next part from 00:41 until the looping point have a lessened percussion.

It's a good version, just don't add/remove too much from the original as far as instruments and their power in the song.

 

Sounds good to me Tweaker.

 

Talk about timing—I just finished uploading!

Here you go. All three songs (no guitar, guitar 1, guitar 2) in one package.

 

I'd encourage people make as many different kinds as they want, even if it's all guitar riffs. Having a large selection of custom downloadable soundtracks will help the game. People love options.

 

Out of curiousity, how come there's only one record scratch instead of three for each record scratching section in the song?

 

Yeah, that's very noticeable... Has nobody been able to replicate that sound faithfully, yet?

Anyway, I don't think all the stuff in "MTZ_Guitar1" should be guitar-based. Some of those parts (namely, the one that repeats from the beginning) didn't use that guitar instrument in the original (I think).

Agreed. Except for those "imperfections", it sounds quite good.

 

I think it's a big mistake to use these effect pedals when recording guitar parts for later mixing. Effects are things you'd like to put on afterwards - they can't be undoed. How much of each effect you'd like is something that needs to be tweaked carefully together with the rest of the song parts. What one would like to do is connect the guitar to an amplifier, then mic it up with one or (preferably) two microphones.

 

Emerald Hill Zone is going to be the toughest one to choose. It's my favorite song, but it's also the first level's song, so it needs to set the pace for the rest of the game. Honestly, none of them capture the exact same spirit as the original. Everyone here seems to love Tweaker's, but it just has too many little things that weird me out.

Tweaker's version:
1) The drums don't pop as much as they do in the OST, it kind of changes the feel of the song
2) There's this overwhelmingly strong reverbed chorus that fights with the melody. SSNTails did a better job on that instrument and its power.
3) The instruments in general don't sound right, they sound more techno-y than 90s synth. This is especially true for the bass instrument. It looses its power in the new version because it just fades into the rest of the techno noise. The main instrument also doesn't sound close to the original. SSNTails was better in this regard.

SSNTails version:
1) The drums also suffer from not being as strong as the original.
2) at the 00:31 mark, the instrument that just goes up the scale should be more lighter in sound, almost like a wind instrument (synth of course), Tweaker's version better captures that instrument's feeling from the original.


Both versions:
The percussion! For most of the song, the percussion follows a 1 2 1 2 format, with some fancy stuff happening 00:16, 00:23, 00:30, but all the other versions so far take too much liberty with the rhythm doing fancy stuff the whole time (e.g. Tweaker at 00:05, 00:09, 00:12, etc. and SSNTails also at around the same times)

I really don't aim to offend either person, as I have no talent at creating this stuff, but I figure if the art people get to complain about 1 pixel differences, then the music can get the same scrutiny too :-) I just want it to be as high quality as possible for everyone's sake.

Honestly though, good job. Tweaker, your 2P EHZ is awesome except I would suggest a maybe different brass instrument, but that's about it.

 

I completely agree. Please leave the liberties for the "arrange" mode, as cool as they might sound.

 

Chemical Plant Zone:

About ScubaSteve's... eh, I'm sorry, but I really am not digging this much at all. Parts of it sound incomplete and the instrument chosen for the lead doesn't give me the same vibe the orignal did. Instead of sounding like I was racing through some bustling chemical city, it sounds like I'm supposed to be in some kind of cartoony haunted castle.

DJ Playuhh's is definitely better in my opinion, except the pitch bend is still quite off. Other than that, it does sound quite good.

Blaze still has my vote though.

 

Quite frankly I think Scubasteve did a fabulous track with CPZ.
It's really great and refreshing, hope to hear more from him!

 

I should probably apologize for posting so infrequently, but seeing that I just finished high school today (WOOHOO!), I should have some more time now :D.

I'll agree that my rendition doesn't have exactly the same feel as the original, but really? "Cartoony haunted castle"? Rock drums and slap basses have never reminded me of haunted castles, or cartoons :P. Besides which, I've found that it's very difficult to nail the original feel of these songs while updating the instruments... The problem is that the twangy FM sounds of the Genesis's synth is what lends each track much of its feel and personality, and trying to duplicate those sounds exactly creates tracks that sound... well, horrendous. (I ditched my first version of Special Stage within no more than an hour because of this.) And besides, CPZ has always been one of my favorite Sonic tunes, and I wanted to give it an energetic kick in the pants .

Good timing.

Casino Night

This is basically a straight-up jazz mix, and I gave a little bit of a "live" feel.


And finally...

That's my music monkier for anyone that was wondering. Not that I'm doing anything professionally yet, though. (And I may never, but a guy can dream :D)