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The "Sonic The Hedgehog 3 & Knuckles" Quest for Music Composer Research

Discussion in 'General Sonic Discussion' started by T.Q., Nov 18, 2019.

Choose your favorite soundtrack version:

  1. Sonic The Hedgehog 3 -- Prototype / PC

  2. Sonic The Hedgehog 3 -- Mega Drive / Sega Genesis

  3. Sonic [3] & Knuckles -- Mega Drive / Sega Genesis

Results are only viewable after voting.
  1. Been out of the loop on all this...

    Regarding the soundtrack, I'm glad that we have a bit more conformation on who wrote what in regards to MJ. I always thought he got way to much credit for the S3 soundtrack with the mainstream audience. Hopefully this will change things a little, and more spotlight on the original artists.

    Great to see all this new info come out, just when you think it's all over, the scene comes out with another banger!
     
  2. Vangar

    Vangar

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    If I get some time, should i make recordings of the music right from hardware? I've been listening to some of the tracks on you tube and they don't sound quite the same, i don't think. Guess they were recorded through an emulator. In particular the competition mode music sounded better on hardware.
     
  3. Loop

    Loop

    Pure of Heart. Dumb of Ass. Member
    Some members of the sound programming team surely had to be close to MJ’s producers — the final game includes audio samples for majority of MJ tracks, namely snares, toms, a vocal sample from “Jam”... it would’ve taken quite some time to compress them from the respective original sources, and program them into the game. I do agree that the music heard in the prototype comes from an earlier iteration of the game, also considering that some tracks (Sky Sanctuary, AIZ2, Death Egg, for example) differentiate in the mix and instrumentation.
     
  4. PhotonSeek

    PhotonSeek

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    I feel what happened with the music made by MJ’s team was that one of them sent the sound data for the tracks they had worked on to the sound programmers, and whoever programmed them (either Setsumaru, Kashima or Nagao) had to try their best to preserve them in SMPS, so they even retained and compressed the percussion and vocal samples (except for the competition menu music). Apparently they were also sent tapes of MJ beatboxing - perhaps they got used in Carnival Night?
     
  5. Alexbt

    Alexbt

    TheRetroHobbyist Oldbie
    Not necessarily. MAYBE just for Carnival Night though.
    It has been proven that some of the samples we've thought were MJ are NOT MJ, but from a commercial samples library from the time period.
    Back in the main thread, SpeedStarTMQ posted this, with the full quality samples inserted.
    https://soundcloud.com/tq_nintynoe/sonic-3-mini-boss-real-v2
     
    Last edited: Nov 20, 2019
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  6. Alexbt

    Alexbt

    TheRetroHobbyist Oldbie
    Also just played through the sound test of the beta on real hardware. Much more of the soundtrack is complete than I'd realized, especially the S&K level music, and most of it is a bit further along than I'd first thought from watching some playthrus. Some missing voices, different voices, voice levels are off but a lot of it is closer to the final than I thought (and expected, especially from the S&K songs).
     
  7. jbr

    jbr

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    Just out of interest, has this been proven? I certainly won't deny that they samples sound correct and it's likely that these were the samples used, but why are we so sure? SpeedStarTMQ didn't go into any detail about where this library was found or anything.
     
  8. LockOnRommy11

    LockOnRommy11

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    I made the discovery and few years ago culminating in me hastily throwing that track together as a concept. I’ll run through my posts and see if I can find the sample library name.
     
  9. Vinnie

    Vinnie

    Member
    This guy on YouTube covers a fair few of them apparently from an AKAI sound library:



    I watched this a few months back, not specifically for Sonic 3 funnily enough but because I was studying the sequencing for Driver 2. Sonic 3 is covered from 10:45-10:55 in the video.
     
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  10. LockOnRommy11

    LockOnRommy11

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    Weirdly the video above isn’t showing for me, but I did find my source:

    Norman Cook’s Sample Library.

    You can find quite a bit of stuff on YouTube and google about it - I’m pretty sure I managed to download samples for free from somewhere legitimately, though it was so long ago now I can’t remember. I may even have just recorded them from YouTube.

    Edit: I just put the link in to my browser instead and it worked, and the samples in the video are indeed the same samples I found and used.
     
  11. Laura

    Laura

    Brightened Eyes Member
    Isn't a vocal sample of 'Jam' in Carnival Night though? Or at least in Sonic 3. That can't be from a sample library surely.
     
  12. LukyHRE

    LukyHRE

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    This guy apparently recorded the tracks on a Model 2, but I read in TCRF that they prefer recording in a Model 1 (or an accurate emulator like BlastEm).
     
  13. Azookara

    Azookara

    yup Member
    Most of the samples in Sonic 3 (particularly the "come on!", "GO" and "WOO") come from Skip to My Loops by Norman Cook (Fatboy Slim), which was released in 1992; later re-released in 1998. It's a sample pack that Sega's sound team has also found use in with Sonic CD JP, Sonic Rush and both Jet Set Radio games.

    I don't have the sample pack on my computer anymore, but I can confirm they were there. Also home to the classic "hue" of Stardust Speedway, fancy that.

    As for the "hey" featured in the Knuckles beat and Ice Cap, I'm not sure. And IIRC the sample at the end of the Carnival Night loop is straight from the song "Jam" itself; the part where Heavy D comes in. Someone made a demonstration of that once long ago, but idk if it's still on the internet, is it?
     
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  14. Loop

    Loop

    Pure of Heart. Dumb of Ass. Member


    This video (@ 0:30) shows the sample that is included on Sonic 3, and yeah, straight from "Jam". Too much of a coincidence to have a similar bridge section and then a sample from the base track I think...

    "Jam" is credited to MJ, Bruce Swedien, René Moore and Teddy Riley on its single release. Make of that what you will.
     
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  15. jbr

    jbr

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    Awesome, thanks for this! Assuming this is the Norman Cook, it gives Sonic 3's music yet another interesting and somewhat bizarre dimension which isn't widely known - that the soundtrack has links to both Michael Jackson and Fatboy Slim, who was huge in the 90s (at least in the UK).
     
  16. SEGACast

    SEGACast

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    Reposting this comment by me from another thread here for convenience:

    I saw a comment a hour or so ago talking about how the Unused Music from today's prototype sounds a bit like the song Something About You, by Level 42. (You might have to speed the song up by about 1.25 to get a more accurate tempo, as it's slow by default.)

    That wouldn't be odd as the song came out in 1985, which was about 9 years before the release of Sonic the Hedgehog 3 in 1994, this would also be interesting due to Ice Cap Zone's final theme being from Hard Times, by The Jetzons.

    Hmm, I wonder?
     
  17. Qjimbo

    Qjimbo

    Your friendly neighbourhood lemming. Oldbie
    Appreciate the effort, but lets try and avoid trying to find links between random songs and sonic songs for identifying composers. The Jetzons has a solid link - Brad Buxer was on keyboards in the group and he is credited in the Sonic 3 credits.

    Interesting, so this links the vocal sounds to the "Music Store Einstein 1" AKAI library. I'm surprised because in the Huffington Post article, they describe how they actually cut up Michael Jackson beatboxing for the game, guess that wasn't the case for all of the vocal sounds.

    Perhaps I need to put all the vocal Sonic 3 DAC samples up on the wiki and we can try and identify the origin of them as well.
     
    Last edited by a moderator: Nov 20, 2019
  18. Black Squirrel

    Black Squirrel

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    Yes you do ;)

    If I had a means of ripping every sample and sound effect in a automated and reliable way, I'd have put everything ever on the wiki, and then have a side-by-side comparison with as much as possible.

    And I'd do the same for the 34803294032 games on Sega Retro. Because everything matters.



    We could compare every Sega jingle ever!
     
  19. Azookara

    Azookara

    yup Member


    Here's where the "come on" comes from, by the way. Before it became a sample, that is. ;)
     
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  20. Loop

    Loop

    Pure of Heart. Dumb of Ass. Member
    Knuckles' Sonic 3 song's percussion is identical to MJ's "Ghosts" (released 1997 on Blood On The Dance Floor). Relevant artists credited in this song are
    Doug Grigsby III (Drum Programming, Keys & Synthesizer), Bobby Brooks (Additional Engineer) and Brad Buxer (Keys & Synthesizer) — the three of them are listed as Music Composers on the credits of Sonic 3 (in-game and manual). Wouldn't doubt giving these guys credit for it...

    Additionally, S3's Mini-Boss theme features a piano melody that resembles "Is It Scary" (from the same album) — but unfortunately I couldn't find any relevant information from the track. However, both Brad Buxer and Geoff Grace are credited as arrangers for HIStory and Blood On The Dance Floor. Furthermore, from the Music Composers listed on S3's credits only Cirocco Jones is nowhere to be found on a MJ album or single release, so he only joined his team for the game. Here's a list showing which albums they worked on respectively:
    • Brad Buxer - Dangerous, HIStory, Blood On The Dance Floor, Invincible, MICHAEL
    • Bobby Brooks - Blood On The Dance Floor
    • Darryl Ross - HIStory
    • Geoff Grace - HIStory, Blood On The Dance Floor
    • Doug Grigsby III - Blood On The Dance Floor
    • Scirocco - none
    On another note, it wouldn't be farfetched to link Azure Lake with Brad Buxer, given that the harmony sounds similar to "Black or White" from MJ's Dangerous, where the Bux is credited for drums & keys; and Carnival Night as well, he's credited on "Jam" for keys & synthesiser.
     
    Last edited: Nov 20, 2019
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