*NO* Street Fighter 2 'The Bounce-Funk of Miss Li'

[Liontamer]

[Contact info]
Remixer name: chan-chan
Real name: Jasill Channer
E-mail: JC8701@aol.com

[Remix info]
Game: Street Fighter 2
The song: Chun-Li's theme
Link to the remix: (I uploaded it to a host where you can stream the song and or download it)

Comments:
I originally intended to do Magneto's theme from X-Men VS Street Fighter, but it gradually materialized into Chun-Li's theme. I did the drums first and then the main melody. The NES style synth actually happened by accident. I intended to have a Koto, but I came across this synth and liked the NES vibe it had. I'm glad I didn't go for the Koto as it's a predictable and obvious instrument to have for a Chun-Li theme.

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http://snesmusic.org/v2/download.php?spcNow=sf2 - "Chun-Li Stage" (sf2-10.spc)

I love it. Beats repeat too much, and the sounds aren't complex, but I'm feeling the groove bias and the writing of the beats is still excellent. They're creative enough where the repetition doesn't ruin the track. Too bad the treatment of the melody is relatively conservative.

Despite the beats never changing, the piece actually develops well and has some interpretation there. I love how all of the synths and pads work alongside the melody, rather than sounding like you pasted the Chun-Li theme on top of a wholly original piece. Good harmonization of the theme from 1:15-1:35 with that bubblier synth fading in. While the original ideas here are nice (love that bassline first used at 1:11 and the glassy stuff at 2:07), the Chun-Li theme could be developed and interpreted more substantially.

The production is also fairly fine but could be improved with some minor touches. The beats donimate over the track without ruining it, but the melodic content could still stand to be a bit louder without completely upsetting the balance. The glassy stuff starting at 2:07 should get louder at some point, either at 2:07 or 4 bars later at 2:23 to provide some contrast. It's so low, I feel like it can't be appreciated as much. But really all those are minor suggestions that don't impact the vote strongly.

If you can figure out ways to futher use (and more importantly rearrange/interpret) the Chun-Li theme and then integrate it into the track, I'd be a solid YES on this. Groovilicious shit so far, Jasill. I'm definitely keeping this.

NO (refine/resubmit)

[Malcos]

I like this piece, it's like ambient electronica hip-hop thing. There is an element of repetitiveness to it, but then there is the progression that makes it seem deliberate, I think the arrangement is excellent. It only goes for about 3 minutes, so it definitely doesn't outstay it's welcome by any means.

YES

EDIT: Plus there is sub-bass, which we don't get often.

[Vig]

I'm on the line with this one. It's quite a pleasant track, and it develops okay. My objections are first that the chun-li theme is only topically related. add any melody and the track would be just as appealing. the less serious complaint is that i'd like to hear it develop more, however it is acceptable the way it is. Id like to pass it, but chun-li just aint relevant enough.

NO

[zyko]

i dug the groove so much that i was close to auto-yessing it right from the get-go

once this picks up, though, i have to agree with vig that any melody on top of this beat would have sounded nicely. its like a chick with a killer body but no head.

develop the arrangement a little more. give the track a purpose... for being 3 minutes long, it really doesn't offer much outside of being chill and even then, for not long enough.

NO refine

[zircon]

Ooh, this is chill as hell. The first mix that immediately comes to mind as a base point of comparison would be SkyHigh's "Snow Motion" from Sonic 3. That mix had a very similar approach; lay down an awesome groove and let it carry the mix, with the source primarily being recognizable from the main melody and a few harmony parts here and there. Another similarity is the somewhat simplified chord progression from the original to the ReMix, which smoothes things over somewhat. I had to think pretty hard about it, but even though Snow Motion is an older mix, I think that precedent is a good one that I'm going to go by here.

The arrangement factor is clearly evident in this ReMix. The main melody is played several times, and not *quite* verbatim, which is the most obvious connection. Then at :40 you have the acid synth there in the background which is playing a variation on the riff right at the beginning of the original. The main melody and the riff show up later on as well, of course. As the piece progresses, more harmony parts are added that fit in with the adapted chord progression, just like how Snow Motion had the slow sweeping pads and synth stabs. The texture here is denser than that mix also. Changes to the layering of the groove - adding to the bass, drums, and pads - was welcome, and that to me served as the clearest indication that the structure is not just one idea on repeat. This is no different than what TO typically does in his ReMixes, which are almost always passed.

I do have a few production complaints. I don't think the main melody lead is pleasing, for one thing. It's so heavily highpassed that it's more on the grating side than the "smooth" side, something I'd expect to hear in a hard techno song than a chillout one. Also, it's used later on playing a simple octave riff on the tonic of the underlying chords, and it doesn't fit there either. The fact that it doesn't change throughout the mix is probably the weakest thing here. If this gets rejected and you decide to go back to it, I strongly recommend choosing another lead and perhaps using automation to give it more motion (tuning, filter cutoff, pulse width modulation). However, these things are not dealbreakers. The production was generally very strong. I thought the mixing was solid and the use of effects, panning, and EQ was excellent.

In short, I'm going to go with a;

YES

[big giant circles]

1:52 is total Unreal Tournalicious--the pads and the bassline around that general area remind me a lot of the theme in the red giant stage. Anyway.

I agree that the melody seems implied during parts, but it's plainly there for enough of the tune. The drums fit, and though they aren't obnoxiously so, they are extremely boringly simple. I'm not saying every OCR-quality song needs crazy-go-spaztic druml00pz or anything, but c'mon, even despite the cool chill/groove (which I did enjoy well enough), the one-measure and never-changing loop is kind of sub-par. Again, I'm not implying that the minimalistic approach to a drum track is an automatic NO, but really. There should be SOMETHING else in there.

Other than that, I really didn't have any major issues. I guess in terms of constructive objectivity, I'd say to focus more on the development of a couple things--the drums, of course for one. And as for the rest of the song, again, the minimalistic-chill seems to work pretty good so far for this, so I woudn't worry too much about sprucing it up a lot, but the whole thing just sounds a little too looped to me. At various places, the pads join in and sing along, but there really arent any sort of hooks in this one.

Great background music. Not all that great on the forefront. Really wouldn't take much more to tip me over to a YES. Just a little less repetition, and it'd be a borderline transition.

NO