SuperiorX

I really like the overall groove you have going on here. It's really upbeat and got me into the song quickly. There are enough change-ups throughout to keep things interesting too. Now a few critiques... the dubstep elements throughout sound pretty weak. The bass in particular, feels reserved and bland. It needs something more to make it pop. Not sure if it's the sample or how you're doing the effects, but it just doesn't feel as "in your face" as I would expect from the genre. The lead synth could use some filter lovin' as well. It sounds like it could be EQed a bit better so it has a crisper, cleaner sound. Also some additional LFO effects, like vibrato, tremolo, or some pitch bends, could serve it well to make it sound more dynamic. I hear some of that going on already, but I feel it could use more. Overall though, I enjoyed this. Nice job.

Cool! Yeah I'm really looking forward to seeing what everyone picks... there are definitely tons of great themes to pick from!

Well ok, but we'll see. Hopefully everyone who wants to mix will get the chance! Awesome! Now I just gotta hope everyone doesn't pick the same few themes so we don't end up having to do a bunch of tiebreakers

IT MEANS IN ONE WEEK THE OFFICIAL COMPO THREAD WILL APPEAR IN THE COMPETITION FORUM AND WE CAN PICK OUR ZONE THEME! yay! And then the actual mixing will start on May 5th. I will send PMs next Saturday to remind everyone who was interested.

Yeah, I think the Zone themes will give us plenty to work with though. Plus, some of the boss themes are pretty similar. And... ONLY ONE WEEK LEFT UNTIL RECRUITMENT BEGINS!!!

I wholeheartedly agree, this is really beautiful. The instruments mesh well great together and create a nice atmosphere. I enjoyed your previous mix here on OCR a lot too! The intro doesn't sound bad to me, the fade-in sort of works. And since you're such a big Sonic fan... you should check out this Sonic remix tournament I'm going to be hosting very soon

Sounds very... interesting Also... a lot of people need to go get their vote on.

Done! We've got quite the list of interested people going now

Oh, that's handy! I actually just sent you a PM with some other questions I thought of. Thanks again, I appreciate all your help with this!

Awesome, thanks! I kind of assumed that's how you did it? Pick names out of a hat or some similar random method. Did you have another way?

Yeah we'll have 2, 16-person brackets (hopefully) that mix on opposite weeks. I'll figure out the original brackets and matchups by just drawing names out of a hat (or something) to be fair. From there, we're off!

Awesome, yeah the more the merrier! I just checked out some of your stuff on soundcloud too and it's pretty good. You should come around here more often! As for the themed stuff, yeah I have pretty much all the guidelines in place now. As for themes to include... any "zone" theme (i.e., Green Hill Zone, Chemical Plan Zone, Crisis City, Speed Highway, etc.) from a core Sonic platformer game is allowed. Sorry, no boss themes, special stages, or menu/title themes. Both Sonic CD soundtracks (as well as both Sonic 3D Blast soundtracks) will be allowed. When I start the official compo thread in the Competitions forums on April 14th, all the details will be clearly laid out. I'm not sure I understand half of what you just said, but yeah awesome!

Listened to the first couple tracks streaming so far. Sounds really good. I plan on purchasing this soon! Your tracks with Jillian are always my favorite, the two here are great too. Nice job!

Yeah I bet you'd get a lot more exposure having in the General Disc forum, since this is sort of an album preview. Maybe even post each of the tracks in the Workshop forums, since you sampled the 8-bit tunes they could be considered "remixes" too. Anyway, yeah awesome stuff. Upon a few more listens I realized how well done the vocal layering is. Great job there! Also I was curious, could you post the lyrics somewhere? I understood most of the stuff, but I was wondering who the two characters were in Mega Man Killas. I couldn't quite tell what they were saying when they did their introductions. Props on the Angry Sons angry sun logo. It's slick. Does that mean there is going to be a Mario track in there sometime?

I think a lot of really good stuff gets overlooked in the "Post your Originals" forums, I know I at least rarely look through it. Anyway, your sig made me curious as to what the "Angry Sons" were and after I already commented on your OoT thread, I looked this up and found there was a thread for it... Anyway, yeah I just wanted to say how awesome this is. Particularly Mega Man Killers (since I get all the references). The integration of several 8-bit Mega Man tunes was really well done and the lyrics are absolutely amazing. From a quality standpoint, they are top-notch (some other nerdcore I've heard has some pretty questionable quality vocals), and the lyrics themselves are genius. Very clever and funny as hell. I like how you spanned various games in the MM universe too. Great work, I'll be interested to hear what else you come up with!

Nice. I like this one a lot. I'm digging the minimalist approach overall. The vocals are a little hard to hear/understand when they first come in, due to all the effects, but I like how it contrasts the cleaner vocals that follow. You have some slick lyrical stylings going on here too. Good work! EDIT: oh and your "Angry Sons" in your sig intrigued me... and the website link provided no more information than your sig did, so I had to download myself and find out. and just wow LOL Mega Man Killas is absolutely ridiculous. Awesome job.

Well you don't actually need real instruments I record with my MIDI keyboard, but it all runs through various VSTs anyway to emulate different instruments. In fact, you'll find most people here don't actually play any instruments, everything is computer generated by just writing midi tracks in a DAW. The soundfonts and presets in FL will be a good start, but then you can always obtain additional VSTs in the future to expand your musical library. I wouldn't try to think that the song needs to fit in a Sonic game. Music can be reinterpreted and arranged in any way you see fit. Even your mix for example sounds drastically different than the indie rock original version. Just try to think about different ways you could interpret the source tune in your own style. Just by listening to your vocal mix here, for example, I could imagine slowing down the tempo a bit, adding in some driving piano harmonies to accentuate your vocal layers, maybe some held strings to add a bass presence, and maybe a bit of hand percussion for beat/time-keeping purposes. I'm not sure how familiar you are with all the music here on OCR, but a lot of our remixes sound quite different from their originals. If you are new, take a look around the Music Composition & Production forums. They have a lot of helpful topics from really helpful people on how to get started on all aspects of music production. It can be really beneficial, regardless of your level of familiarity with VSTs, DAWs, and other random acronyms

Ahhhhhh the annoyances of piano humanization. It's really not all that bad once you get used to it. I've recorded with a MIDI keyboard and with a mouse before, and there are benefits to both. Whenever I MIDI record I end up tweaking stuff by hand anyway (cause I'm not that good of a piano player). There are a lot of things you can do to mouse point-and-clicked piano to make it sound more natural, like editing note velocities and adding little imperfections (like having notes overlapping, making some notes ever-so-slightly offbeat, etc.). As for your song itself, I'm not familiar with the source, but I like what I hear. You do have a very good voice, but (to me at least) it's quite clear that this was recorded on a poor quality mic. I think you owe it to yourself to record it with a studio mic! Adding some piano, some strings, and maybe even some hand percussion (depending on the direction you want to take it) would definitely be awesome too. I like Liam's suggestion of doing an acappella intro and then adding instruments over time. Great start!

Hah! The vocal samples are 100% corny! Creating an over-the-top tribute to early 90s awesomeness was entirely the point. I'm glad I succeeded And yeah I may sub it just to see what the judges say. I agree, I may be biased, but this thing is infectiously fun. Thanks Pete! A few other people commented on the ending, so I'm a bit torn. A more upbeat ending might be more in line with the rest of the song, but I also really enjoy the current ending with each of the instruments dropping out over time. It's kinda meant to go along with the last vocal clip "Drop it", referencing that stuff is winding down, plus it mixes things up a bit IMO. Maybe I'll mess around with it and see how it sounds another way, but I'm kinda ready to move on to something else now. Thanks guys!

Spacedance. EDIT: a lot of interesting things appear when you google image search spacedance...

Ohhh, ok. You can add your own lyrics to anything, just ask AkumajoBelmont

Yes, yes you have. Your name is on the list in the first post And in two weeks (Saturday, April 14th) the actual compo thread will appear in the Competitions forum and then we can all start selecting our Zone themes. Yay.

Well everyone has to pick one of the "zone" themes (i.e., Green Hill Zone, Chemical Plant Zone, Hydrocity Zone, etc.) from one of the core Sonic platformer games (i.e., Sonic 1-3, S&K, Sonic CD, Sonic Adventure, etc.). Themes like title screen music, menu themes, boss themes, & special stage themes will be excluded. So I guess they will all be "theme" songs, if I understand what you're asking correctly.