Music Remastered

First thing's first:

Mystic Cave Zone

Ok, sorry once again for disappearing -- the day I was going to post the above song, my computer's power supply exploded. Go figure. Anyway, there's something important I've been wanting to address. I think it would be a huge help for all of us contributing music to know everyone's general level of experience. Because to be frank, most of the submissions here are very hit-and-miss in terms of mixing, instrument selection, etc., and some of them are just downright ugly. Now, I don't mean to put anyone down, and I'm not claiming to be an expert/professional either. In fact, I'd love to help everyone out. I've been making electronic music for almost four years now (my usual genre is psytrance, though I also love a good genre-mashing), so if anything, I know a decent amount about mixing, synth programming, etc. Basically, all the technical stuff .

Also (slight tangent): I believe I officially have the worst luck in the world. I wasn't even going to bother mentioning that I got an ear infection (probably the most anti-music-making illness) just after resuming work on my S2HD tracks, but now, not only is FileDropper barely working, my entire internet connection -- which works flawlessly 99.9% of the time -- has just gone down. Good lord.

(I'm finally posting this four hours after I wrote it. And FileDropper's fine now, too! :P)

Ash Fox: I second kcowolf. There are several incorrect notes and timings throughout, especially on the lead. Also, the drums (especially the snare) are too bright and could use some more mid-range.

 

Whereabouts in the song, which instruments, which notes? I appreciate you're trying to help me guys, but it ain't gonna happen if I'm not given a little more direction than that.

May as well edit this in also.

Quite liked the Mystic Cave mix, you've made some good choices on instruments and stuff. About the only thing I'd change personally is the tremolo on the synth at the start - it detracts a bit from how close this sounds to the original, and to me sounds a little cheesy (no offence ;p)

As far as experience goes... well, I've only been composing/re-arranging/re-mixing for about three or four years, off and on. That said, I've been playing music since I was a kid (anyone needing a talented guitarist for anything? Haha).

May as well add my own two cents on bitrate for project music, as I've some relevant experience for that too (I know a fair amount about programming and the like, having studied Computing & Networks at Uni ;p): there's gonna have to be decent compromise reached between sound quality and processor load. Granted, something like Sonic 2 isn't going to push most computers all that hard - or at least, if it was the original game it wouldn't, but having taken a look over the art thread as well, I'm a little more concerned about how much is gonna be happening - the gorgeous sprites and art that are gonna be used will take their toll on processor and memory usage, and in a games project graphics and music are usually the things that bump up file sizes and CPU stress the most.
I read that music should be in mp3 or ogg format, so I'm guessing the programmers are wanting to use one of those formats for the music in-game. My guess would be probably ogg, if only for it being a little easier to work with and (from what I've seen) less intensive on the processor side of things. That'd be my choice at least, if only because in personal experience I find ogg retains sound quality better at lower bitrates than mp3 does, and it tends to make slightly smaller files, so if it is the case that they're using ogg, we can probably have a reasonable bitrate on things.
As far as the impact of bitrate on actual sound quality goes, I'd advise on avoiding anything lower than 128kbps if possible, and ideally nothing below 192kbps - reason being, below 128 things really start sounding rubbishy and the artefacts from lossy encoding really become noticeable. 192kbps should be passable. 320kbps would be utterly ideal, but the two reasons I'd give for avoiding that are that for one it'd make the music files huge and for another most computers will hate you if you try making them play gorgeous high quality music AND display pretty graphics at the same time. I'm not saying it's impossible to do so, just that if we're really wanting the project to do that, it's probably going to take a while. Granted, I've not had a play around at all with any of the code involved myself, I'm just making an educated guess based on past experience.

tl;dr version: It's HD, yes, but we'll have to carefully decide how HD the music is. ;p

 

Wow! What a refreshing result scubaSteve!!

I really hope you'll be doing many other quality S2HD tracks! :D


P.s. I'm sorry for your ear-infection, that's definitely bad luck for music making!

 

Since my last mix didn't go over so well (I still like it), I'm searching for sounds that embody more what I feel the original Chemical Plant Zone song was going for. Since this is the case, this arrangement that I just posted is not anywhere near mixed or mastered. I'm just looking for some confirmation that I have the right kinds of sounds before I spend days or weeks tweaking.

http://www.zshare.net/audio/14133248b20d88d7/

 

scubaSteve. I love 90% of the song. My only pet peeves are the lead instrument doesn't sound too close to the original (yet you use an instrument that sound like a perfect replacement towards the end of the loop) and yeah the intro need a better instrument. Maybe you should have used the brass instrument instead of the slap bass.

 

Just played through it again and compared it to the original; here are the ones I noticed.

00:12-00:13 - the bass line doesn't match (there might be other places where the bass is different; this is just the most obvious one to me)
around 00:16 - melody line, sounds like it goes B B B C#, should go B A B C#
around 00:20 - percussion is different
00:33-00:34 - the background voice slurs (sorry if that's the wrong word) up to A, then go G#; original slurs up to G#, then to F#
around 00:55 - lead instrument goes from F# to E and then stays on E, the original goes back up to F#

And then it loops around there, so a lot of these get repeated.

 

Wow. I have absolutely nothing bad to say about Mystic Cave. It is absolutely stunning! Amazing work!

There is one thing that's a bit different... after the lead sort of stops elevating when doing the main melody after the song starts, there are a couple of short chords that play moving up in the scale. However, instead of doing chords, you seem to have simply done the same note on two octaves with a trumpet. Have you thought about listening to the original song again and working this into your cover?

I can post a quick MIDI excerpt of the section I'm talking about if needed.

 

A little update...

Mystic Cave Zone v1.2

I basically just took everyone's suggestions and made some tweaks, namely:
- Gave the first lead a more "vocal" sound to match the original
- Added more emphasis on a couple parts near the end
- Fixed the chords you were referring to, Tweaker. (Good ears, by the way :P)

Well, my gut would say, "OGG 192!", but since LAME mp3 is also quite good I figured I should look for some proper comparisons. I found a really good one here:
OGG vs. LAME
It's a bit of a long read but there's some interesting results. Based on that... I would still say OGG 192 or maybe 256 (though apparently LAME is a tad better at 192kbps.) I really think that size isn't a huge issue, though -- if the final decision is for 320kbps, then so be it. But, to 95% of people out there, 192kbps will sound CD-quality.

Also, Ash Fox made some good points above that 320kbps might be unnecessarily hard on the processor... so, it would be a good idea to consult the programming team as well.

 

Updated again. Took on board the feedback from folk - sorted the little errors here and there. Also did some work on the overall sound, so it should probably be more fitting now.

Feedback appreciated :3

 

Why isn't Scuba Steve in charge of the music, because the man only produces awesome.

 

Keep up the great work Scuba Steve, I'm really enjoying your mixes so far and look foward to more. I like The Final Boss, Chemical Plant, and especially Mystic Cave. I'd love to see what you do with the Boss, Emerald Hill 2P, and Metropolis (my personal favorites from Sonic 2) should you end up doing those.

Ash Fox, I'm sorry, but the instrument choices seem to be greatly off to me.

 

Yes, specially at the beginning...

Also, I think the previous "flute" (or whatever it was) should return. The saxophone sounds way too different.

 

Im my opinion the bitrate should be 320kbps, if it's the best you can get then so be it, download size is not an issue these days anyway.

One important tip for everyone:
PLEASE DON'T DROWN YOUR MIXES IN REVERB!
Don't fall into that common mastering mistake, just a hint of reverb is good, too much reverb is not! Don't make it sound like a bad early 90's album! :P

I think that only one person should be making the remixes. Why? For mastering reasons. I mean, things like the main volume level, mixing volume levels, equalization or sound effects all sound different when created by different persons. If you want an even sound they should be made by only one person, using the same base instruments and sound mastering.

About the sound effects ripping, I haven't forgotten about it, I've just been very busy with work, I'll try getting it done this weekend.

 

Speaking of sound formats... Why not having the option of using FLAC instead of OGG (and specially MP3), since it's lossless?

 

Yes, lossless formats are the way to go.

 

Uh, guys? Since when are we getting super anal about sound quality? Something like 192kbps MP3/OGG is more than sufficient... no need to branch outside of the "standard" formats when it's not a necessity.