[Liontamer]

Remixer Name: Pumpkin King
Real name: Joe Dumpe
Email:
Website: soundcloud.com/pumpkin-king
youtube.com/pumpkinking872
User ID: 48065

Name of Game: Sonic the Hedgehog (Sega Genesis)
Name of Arrangement: Drifting Through the Surreal
Name of song arranged: Special Stage
Original Composer: Masato Nakamura

Link to source track: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lWvuTyFysFg
My arrangement is included in the attachment.

This is a piano arrangement for the special stage in Sonic the Hedgehog from the Sega Genesis. The stages are very surreal. It's almost as if you are in a dream. It is so surreal. The backgrounds change from underwater environments, to environments high in the sky. So I think that the style that I play in very often fits with the feel of the environment, and the ethereal sounding song. So I played to it with my signature style (hard to explain) and added good reverb and some stereo echo effects to capture the feel of being in another world. I ended it with the original style of the tune to give it more of a satisfying closure.

I used Garageband and Logic Pro for my DAW. I used the Galaxy Vintage D library for the piano sound.

[Liontamer]

The piano sample is pretty good; not anything one would mistake for a real piano, but the distinct lack of realism of the sound doesn't bother me after a few listens.

Absolutely love this piece in a vacuum, Joe. But the arrangement is too liberal and much of the middle was basically improvisation over a super stripped down 2-note chord progression. One could argue the arrangement's too indulgent when keeping in mind that the source tune usage in required to dominate the arrangement.

Giving this as much credit as I could, here's all I eeked out for overtly hearing the Special Stage theme in play:

:00-:01, :09.75-:18, :23-:32, :45-:52, :54-1:01.75, 1:03-1:10, 1:11.75-1:17 (loose), 1:28-1:35, 2:42.5-3:09

Counting gaps or not, it just doesn't add up so far to anywhere near 50% of the length of a 3:38-long track.

If anything can be done to use the Special Stage more directly and not just go on crazy (awesome) runs that go way too far off the beaten path of the source, I'd love to YES this. But what this shows off in technical/performance prowess, it lacks in overt source usage. If we can never post this in some form with revisions, it's a great piece, just not one that falls under OCR's standards.

NO (resubmit)

[Emunator]

Hah, the production style reminds me of WillRock's "Above the Sky" remix. Dig it

Overall, this piece shows a lot of technical skill (though things can get a little bit muddy when the runs start to enter into the lower octaves.) I love this too, but I agree with Larry that it just goes a bit too far off the rails for me to sign off on this. I think you'd need to reign in the performance a lot to get things more recognizable and I think that might actually hurt the piece overall, so I don't know if I'd advocate a resubmission on this. It works great in its current form, but just not quite what we're looking for, I think.

NO

[halc]

unfortunately I'm gonna have to mirror the other votes here.. I absolutely love the composition, it's quite beautiful, but I'm also not hearing enough distinct source usage here, although the way it was used (when it was) was extremely tactful and intimate imo. I thought I was hearing some little allusions to other Sonic melodies, but that could be my mind running wild on me as I can't place my finger on any.

as Larry said, if this can be reworked somehow to be more grounded in the theme, then I'd love to see this passed, but otherwise I will greatly look forward to your next submission.

NO

[Liontamer]

Yeah, I'll just say again, if our ONLY standards were posting music that sounded awesome, and we didn't care about the strength of the connection to the original VGM, this would be approved without hesitation, Joe. But for the first half, there's got to me more overt usage of the "Special Stage" theme rather than (essentially) improvising over a very loose chord progression. Definitely don't be discouraged, and let's hear from you again with a revised take on this theme or another VGM arrangement. :-)