Sonic orchestral arrangement: Labyrinth/Hydrocity

[thomas_kresge]

I have a project that I work on whenever I have spare time where I am arranging all of the music from Sonic 1-3 and Sonic & Knuckles for orchestra. I have every song done in rough midi forms (finished a LONG time ago), and know I'm working on getting it all put into a realistic sound library. Currently, I've more or less finished two songs. The second one is a medley (called Water Zones) featuring the Labyrinth BGM from Sonic 1 and then the Hydrocity BGM from Sonic 3 (with the drowning jingle tossed in the middle).

Water Zones

The first song in the project, Mystic Cave from Sonic 2, can be found here.

Mystic Cave

[superjoe30]

Water zones:

Interesting concepts. I like the drowning one. The piano rolls sounded nasty, for example at 1:35. I think that sound needs to change somehow. The whole song seems kind of like a midi-rip with instrumental sounds. Not enough remixing going on. The instrumentation is beautiful though. For the most part. There are some sounds that just don't fit, for example like I said that instrument that is doing the rolls. (Piano?)

Mystic cave:

Nice intro. This is good stuff. I think the lead instrument should be solidified a little, so that the listener can "follow" the song. I feel uncomfortable when I lose track of the melody. Overall this piece sounds less like a midi rip. Nice work.

[Ghetto Lee Lewis]

Mystic Cave: Well, sounds like anything but a "mystic cave" type of theme (although I'm not too familiar with the source). I hear some dynamic issues. Correcting most of these will make it less blatantly obvious to the listener that this a sequenced orchestral arrangement.

The flutes in general sound too loud. I can barely hear the bass/cellos (the ones playing the bass line). They definitely could use some stronger attack for more oomph. Some of the percussion doesn't sound right. The cymbal splashes/crashes should be louder. The gong should be much louder. The harp is probably a touch too loud (harp is not a loud instrument). The brass could be louder (it is brass after all). I'm not quite sure how a glockenspiel overpowers an entire trombone section. A glockenspiel is a relatively small and weak instrument.

The piccalo towards the end sounds a bit annoying. Maybe the sample is bad, needs sharper attack, and some eq to make it fit in better.

Arrangement-wise, this piece seems pretty solid. It's very thematic, and you seem to have a solid understanding of orchestral scoring. However, it needs much work on the mixing side.

Water-zone: I'm not familiar with this source material either, but the first minute does sound like a midi rip. It doesn't sound like something that would actually be played on those particular instruments, it sounds very mechanical (non-human), and you seem to overcompensate the bad samples by adding tons of reverb.

The water-death song is quite nice, but has a couple of issues. I think the gong sounds out of place playing by itself at the end. Maybe you could use a trumpet to simulate a drowning noise or something.

The song that follows the water death seems much like a midi rip also. The instruments don't sound mixed well, and with all the reverb, bad attack/decay times, it sounds very muddy.

The Mystic Cave song is a much better production overall.

[thomas_kresge]

Thanks for the replies.

I realize my mixing needs TONS of work, I just don't (yet) have the tools to get into the song and mess with that stuff, but at least I have an idea on what I should look at when I actually do get the tools. (I'm looking to by Sonar so that I can truly start to sequence, I've just been putting it off and trying to find a cheap price for it.)