OceansAndrew Posted October 23, 2011 Share Posted October 23, 2011 Contact Information Remixer name: ATIO Real name: Anthony Higham Email address: kickflipto5050@hotmail.com Website: www.soundcloud.com/anthony-higham www.facebook.com/DjATIO Submission Information Name of game arranged: Sonic The Hedgehog 3 for Sega Genesis Name of arrangement: Ice Cap Zone (ATIO Remix) Name of Individual song arranged: Ice Cap Zone (ATIO Remix) Comments: I created this version because I just love the style of sonic music. I have made many songs not pertaining to sega or sonic, but listeners have told me to submit them to video game companies because of their video game (sonic) sound. I think you will enjoy this because it has an electro/dance feel to it that can be easily played in a dance club or in a video game environment. I have added some of my personal sounds by playing around with the chord progression, and bass line. I also created my own melody and counterpoint on top of the original melody to add more dynamics/fullness and less repetitive than the original. This particular remix is definitely different than any other remix of this particular song. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
OceansAndrew Posted November 10, 2011 Author Share Posted November 10, 2011 The opening chimes and hats were super rigid and not a great first impression, but once the percussion and synths came in full force, I was a lot more impressed. There is some super nice counter melody work that is both subtle and effective, and really emphasizes the strength of the original melody. Once this gets going full steam, it's straight up fantastic! Solid production and balance, pretty good soundscape, instruments that I feel are gelling well, it's all there. There are some nice original verse sections that add something new and break up the action a little, but don't feel so dominant that the source is secondary. The main issue is how rigid the opening is. The vote would be a lot easier for me if it was smoother to open. Minor issues are the repetitiveness of the beats and the general lack of transitions, but enough is happening melodically that it doesn't detract too much. Overall I think this is over the bar, but there are a few minor details you'll want to address in additional subs. Yes Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DragonAvenger Posted November 13, 2011 Share Posted November 13, 2011 I dunno, the rest of the song is pretty good, but that is probably one of the weakest openings I've heard in an overall good submission. I am pretty tempted to ask for a revamp of that opening. On the good side of things, the soundscape is pretty full, and you've done nice work combining new sections with the original. Love the 'wabuzzb' bass, beyond that fact that it's fun to say . Plenty of good details overall. For now I will give this a conditional, and think about changing my vote given the next jooj's advice. YES (Conditional on opening) EDIT: Changing to NO (resubmit) since the amount of work is longer than a conditional yes. Get it back to us though! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Emunator Posted November 17, 2011 Share Posted November 17, 2011 Sorry guys, I'm not nearly as sold on this one. The issues with the intro has already been covered, so I'm not going to dwell on that, but the chord choices and the rigidness of both the e-piano and the hi-hats hurt. I'm not gonna beat much around the bush, that just doesn't sound good on the ears I think you can get away with using the e-piano with those chords later in the mix but when it's super-exposed in the intro and then a few other points later in the song, it just sounds rough and borderline-dissonant to me. Once the leads come in, things go a lot smoother, but I still feel like you've got a lot of stuff going on and, thanks to your super-phat kick, not a lot of room to work with. A lot of the time you've got 3 or 4 melodies playing simultaneously in the higher registers along with all of your other instrumentation, and it's all panned toward the center. The new writing is solid and really fills things in and helps this stand out as an Ice Cap mix, but you've just got a cramped soundscape going on, so it's rare that anything actually stands out. Some panning tweaks, easing off of the kick slightly in the mix, or repurposing some of the leads to play during some of the less-crowded sections are all ways to get around this issue. Either that, or you can just cut down on the number of lines you've got playing at once. Aside from that, another issue I'm noticing is the lack of drumfills. I hate to be this harsh on a track that is actually a pretty solid arrangement, but I'm hearing literally only one drum pattern in this entire song. Even with a track like this where you've gotta maintain a steady beat, it's important to have breakdowns where the kick either takes a breather, and also to use drum fills to aid with your transitions between sections to make them more interesting. I'd take a listen to some professional-level dance/club tracks and pay attention to what the kick/percussion is doing, and I think you'll be able to pull some inspiration that will help you change things up with your loops. In all seriousness, you've got some great pieces to work with. All of the lead writing rocks hard and I can see why that alone might warrant a YES from some of the other judges, but for me I feel like the foundation that this track is built on needs to be stronger so that all of the good stuff in the mix can shine better. tl;dr version: Variations in your drum patterns, particularly with your kick so there's more fills/transitions/breaks, use panning or simplify your writing to make your leads more clear and dominant, and fix up your intro somehow. You can definitely do it, I wanna hear this one again, but as it is it's definitely not above my bar. NO (resub) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nutritious Posted February 2, 2012 Share Posted February 2, 2012 Won't beat a dead horse on the intro. It's quite a contrast with the rest of the track, though, which is much more solid. Yeah, I totally agree with Wes, there's a lot of compression once everything kicks in, which is squashing everything down. Like he mentoined, the likely culprit is the percussion work here. See if you can balance things out a bit more reasonably before mastering and try to keep your compression reasonable enough to not flatline the cool synth work. He also brings up a good point about the autopilot drums. Dance music isn't known for its variation in beatwork, per se, but I agree that some variation & fills here would really help. So, this is close in my book. There's the glaring intro, the straight up looping drums and overcompression. But overall, thing are clicking very well when all of the elements combine and the arrangement work is VERY cool for a source that's been covered a bajillion times. I'm sitting between a resub and a conditional here.... .... gah ok fix up at least a couple of those 3 things and I'll be good to go Yes (conditional on production/intro fixes) DarkeSword Edit: Per new judging practices, conditional votes will only be used for small, quickly fixable (2-5 minutes) problems. Changing this vote to a NO (resub) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Liontamer Posted February 23, 2012 Share Posted February 23, 2012 The key change of the intro took me a second to wrap my head around and initially just sounded pretty ugly and out of tune, but after one iteration to get used to the notes, it made sense. The chimes actually had a kind of Genesis throwback feel to me for some reason, so I didn't mind the rigid sound. It's a strange intro, to be sure, I just wasn't thrown off by it at the end of the day. The compression's definitely an issue worth pointing out, though not a huge deal. The groove DOES plod, but the melodic arrangement and personalization of the theme ended up carrying it at the end of the day. Not quite a borderline YES, but not too far above that given the autopilot beats pulling this down some. There have been more creative IceCap arrangements out there (BGC's "Eastern Ice Field" and Joshua Morse's "Ice Cold Retro come to mind). If the main beat hadn't been so repetitive and there had been some more development of the core beats, this could have been even better. But what's there gets the job done. Hopefully we can get a 192kbps copy that at least sounds a bit cleaner, but I wouldn't mind Anthony taking about pass at the mixing. That said, this was still pretty solid. YES Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
halc Posted February 25, 2012 Share Posted February 25, 2012 gotta agree with my fellow judges, that intro sounds completely amateur-ish, however the rest of the song is pretty solid. not really blown away by any particular aspect. I agree that the beats got repetitive and the soundscape could have changed up a bit more throughout the piece, but the arrangement and production both hold their ground. YES Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
zircon Posted February 26, 2012 Share Posted February 26, 2012 PRODUCTION [X] Abrasive sound choices [X] Generic/cliche sounds [X] Overcompressed (pumping/no dynamics) [X] Mixing is muddy (e.g. too many sounds in bass, middle or treble) STRUCTURE [X] Not enough changes in sounds (e.g. static texture, not dynamic enough) WHAT I LIKE ABOUT THE TRACK [X] Creative arrangement ideas NO Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DarkeSword Posted February 27, 2012 Share Posted February 27, 2012 Just gonna echo what other judges have said. Love the arrangement, but I think you need to fix up the production, specifically compression, dynamics, and balance. See other judges' crits for more info. Hope to see this on OCR soon. NO (resub) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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