Sonic 3 and Knuckles: Lava Reef Zone Act I

[Selby]

This is a work in progress, I've been working on for a little while now. Its the Sonic 3 Lava Reef Zone music. It has a sort of apocalypse theme to it.

Song

What do you think?

[Spakku]

I think you stabbed the melody over and over in the face. You gotta work on that.

[Ralphis]

This song conjures up images of baby murder

[DjMystix]

This is a work in progress, I've been working on for a little while now. Its the Sonic 3 Lava Reef Zone music. It has a sort of apocalypse theme to it.

Song

What do you think?

Honestly, you need to drop the whole idea and re-do it from scratch. I noticed a few instruments playing on a different scale which didn't feel right. Also, what's with out-of-rhythm lead and why is it soo much in the background?

[Xenon Odyssey]

For OverLooked ReMiX, I see this as in need of some humourous sound clips/fart noises. Otherwise I'm sure we'd accept it.

For here at OverClocked, you should probably start from scratch like people have said. Not to discourage you or anything, but it doesn't seem like you know what you are doing in terms of arrangement. You've just thrown the melody around assuming it fits anywhere, when clearly that's not the case.

Get some new ideas and then try toying with the arrangement.

[Selby]

Well, thanks for the feedback guys! I found the lack of constructive criticism other than "start over" (which is fine) to be out of place to me. I feel it wasn't completely awful as you said, but I do see that there are more bad spots than good.

Cons:

Melody overused

Out of Key in several places

Bad arrangement

Pros:

Drums

Thanks for the feedback.

(Baby Murder XD)

[SoulinEther]

Yeah, "bad arrangement" is a strong con. In this case I think it's a fair assessment, since it seems to meander, and it strikes me that you've just inserted the melody into chaos.

Try to give the piece some structure and order. I'd argue that even pieces that attempt to convey disorder, chaos and panic have an underlying structure and order to them - or perhaps they wouldn't have a strong melody. This seems.. uncertain to me.

I can see this working, sorta. I might try breaking up the melody a little bit, to make it sound disjointed (if this were my piece).

[Neverback-Music]

You can listen to my remix here :

You can comment or send me a mail for tell me your advice.

Bak.R

[Nabeel Ansari]

Try keeping the source melody DOMINANT.

As in make it what everyone wants to listen to, the STRONGEST PART, what stands out the most.

Like that electric guitar. Make something like that for the source melody.

HOLY CRAP, dude.

I listened to your other youtube mixes, they are absolutely phenomenal and realistic.

You need to sub every single one of them.

You've no excuse for not being a posted remixer

[Selby]

Part of my reasoning for the melody being in the background in some parts is partly due to the fact that, in my band class, our director will have us quiet out the lead parts a bit so the audience can hear the background parts, which I also like to hear as well.

[Nabeel Ansari]

Part of my reasoning for the melody being in the background in some parts is partly due to the fact that, in my band class, our director will have us quiet out the lead parts a bit so the audience can hear the background parts, which I also like to hear as well.

You are misunderstanding why your director does that.

Yes, so the audience can hear the background stuff. But if the audience can hear background stuff, they should be able to hear the lead stuff too. Don't make the background stuff DOMINANT, just keep it AUDIBLE. In other words, don't play piano chords and have somebody ten miles away play the melody, there's no point to having a dominant melody if it's not even dominant.

You can do it sometimes, just don't do it ALL the time. It's called a "lead" for a reason. (If all the stuff is in the background, the background turns into the lead. And if all the stuff turns into a lead, there is no background, it's just a big mess of instruments fighting)

[Pippi Longstalker]

While I don't think it entirely necessary to trash your work and rebuild from the ground up, it would be a good idea to step back and think about what you're trying to do with this piece.

You say it's got an "apocalypse" theme going for it; what makes it "apocalyptic"?

There are two ways I can see the theme driving your piece:

1st is the post-apocalyptic; literally, "apokalips" in Greek means "revelation" as in God reveals himself to mankind and punishes those who are not his followers. The reason post-apocalyptic stories are always of people struggling in ghost-towns is that, culturally, we assume the apocalypse to be an event that wipes out a majority of humanity, and while the survivors are not necessarily blessed, they did survive the event.

With this, I would take your percussion and chimey-synths in the direction of Stomp, much like the music in Tank Girl when the mutant kangaroos are dancing around before attacking Water & Power.

I would pull the "dun da-dun-dun dun-dun da-dun-dun" chords out of the bass register or at least give them a sharper attack, they are carrying the piece and need the strength of clarity to do so. I'd recommend also finding a different synth pad for part of the melody, it's too breathy and is forever lost behind the cymbal crashes.

2nd is peri-apocalyptic, where the arrangement can begin clean, but gradually fall into disarray as fireballs rain from the sky and put heavy distortion (but mind the clipping) on everything. If you check out Tokyoplastic's Drum Machine video, the distortion on the bass drums is what I'm thinking about.

In reference to my title, you also have to think about how you want the piece to sound. Do you want it to be a performance song, or just something that comes and goes. If you want it to be a performance-style song, you can't just build and build and build to a cacaphonic crescendo and then stop, you have to have dynamic movement within the piece, like having one or more instruments drop out to allow the listener to focus on other instruments they might not otherwise hear (this is one of the functions of a break-down)

I feel that this community strives to make performance-type re-arrangements, rather than just remaking the in-game looped background music, though I would not say that re-arranged background music does not have a place. There are a number of OC Remixes I would love to have in-game to listen to while playing.

All-in-all, your piece as it is, kind of sounds like it doesn't go anywhere. It kind of sits itself down and says to the listener, "I'll be here if you need me, feel free to come back whenever you want because I'm going nowhere."

[TheHands]

Agreed with Pipi, it stagnates as it goes. I would push for more of a solid structure, keep the melody mostly dominant, and let the chaos come more from how you work around the rest of it. If you want more of an apocalyptic feel, why not make it minor?

I also agree about the pad changes and register shifts, it seems very out of place. I don't feel that the whole project needs to be scrapped, but it does need very, very heavy revision. If you're looking for chaos in music, I'd say to listen to the soundtrack/style from Artstyle: Aquia. It builds and gets nuts as it goes, taking a simple melody just built around a simple scale and turning it into a monstrosity with vibrant energy once you get to the end.

That's chaos in the best way possible.