Kid Chameleon: "Pursuit of Safety" [Chase Scene]

[DrumJ8]

Kid Chameleon will have its day in the sun, and I will stop at nothing until it does. I mean, I started this remix today partly because I believe this game doesn't nearly get as much attention and love as it should and I LOVE this game and the music. I only saw one ATTEMPT at a KC remix on this site, which ended up being rejected for now, so here's my attempt to bring some love to this game.

Please help me make this track better and develop my skills. Thanks.

My Remix:

http://soundcloud.com/drumj8/pursuit-of-safety_2012-06-16

Source:

[Phonetic Hero]

I'm drunk as shit right now, but I loved KC. I'll give this a listen when I'll be more useful to you

[Troyificus]

Pretty impressive so far. I especially like that parts at around 43 seconds and 1 minute 20; that's where the actual tune comes out for me. Good start

[Phonetic Hero]

Yeeeaaahhh man, cool stuff. Some of the sequencing sounds a little awkward, and the soundscape in general seems fairly dry for the environment you seem to be trying to portray.

First of all, organs, especially church organs, have a pretty long attack and release. For that reason, quick sequencing is pretty unrealistic. The sixteenth patterns you've got going on sound really inhuman and strange. My suggestion would be to use the organ for some dark backing chords, and pick something else for that lead part. Also, stereo separation and reverb work WONDERS for organs (especially screwing with the wet/dry ratio on the 'verb).

At :45, I'm hearing a GIANT verby synth lead taking that melody, and again at 1:09. Might be fun to mess around with

The drum programming is pretty badass, I suppose that's where you're name comes from Even the orchestral snare sample is awesome itself. However, the sequencing could use some velocity alteration (I'm also a percussionist), especially on the rolls, just a little bit higher velocity on the first note than the second. Given the nature of the source and the remix so far (and because I'm a whore for this sort of thing), some glitching would be wicked awesome. Particularly for the drums, but the transitions could be pretty cool with a bit of glitching. I use GrossBeat from Image-Line, but dBlue glitch is free, and I'm sure you can find it around the internet pretty easily.

This thing is sounding pretty cool so far dude. Needs more spices though, some big cymbal crashes, noise sweeps on the orchestral snare breaks for transitions, anything you can come up with to make the thing more tense and hectic. Great start though. Also, since you seem to be pretty new around OCR... welcome aboard

[DrumJ8]

Pretty impressive so far. I especially like that parts at around 43 seconds and 1 minute 20; that's where the actual tune comes out for me. Good start

Thanks Trism. I hope other ReMixers follow suit. My favorite composer is Nobuo Uematsu hands down, and I understand and love that there are so many FF remixes, but KC needs some love too.

Yeeeaaahhh man, cool stuff. Some of the sequencing sounds a little awkward, and the soundscape in general seems fairly dry for the environment you seem to be trying to portray.

First of all, organs, especially church organs, have a pretty long attack and release. For that reason, quick sequencing is pretty unrealistic. The sixteenth patterns you've got going on sound really inhuman and strange. My suggestion would be to use the organ for some dark backing chords, and pick something else for that lead part. Also, stereo separation and reverb work WONDERS for organs (especially screwing with the wet/dry ratio on the 'verb).

At :45, I'm hearing a GIANT verby synth lead taking that melody, and again at 1:09. Might be fun to mess around with

The drum programming is pretty badass, I suppose that's where you're name comes from Even the orchestral snare sample is awesome itself. However, the sequencing could use some velocity alteration (I'm also a percussionist), especially on the rolls, just a little bit higher velocity on the first note than the second. Given the nature of the source and the remix so far (and because I'm a whore for this sort of thing), some glitching would be wicked awesome. Particularly for the drums, but the transitions could be pretty cool with a bit of glitching. I use GrossBeat from Image-Line, but dBlue glitch is free, and I'm sure you can find it around the internet pretty easily.

This thing is sounding pretty cool so far dude. Needs more spices though, some big cymbal crashes, noise sweeps on the orchestral snare breaks for transitions, anything you can come up with to make the thing more tense and hectic. Great start though. Also, since you seem to be pretty new around OCR... welcome aboard

Thanks Phonetic Hero. My ear has been improving but as far as effects go, everything is new to me--but that's why I'm here. I just gotta do some studying. The organs having a long attack and release makes total sense, but I didn't even think of it being a problem so I'll try out other instruments for the quick parts. I'll look into the other stuff like glitching as well. Thanks for the feedback!

I occasionally lurk in that Sonic Zone Remix Competition thread. Nice work, your stuff was always really good.

[Damashii!!]

once i get back from work tomorrow morning i'll post my thoughts, but for now daaaayyum man that is some juicy percussion you've got going on.

0:32 through 0:36 has a sick groove to it. i like it, you should bring that quarter note hihat back (or that entire drum pattern) later on in the song, but yeah i'll have more collected thoughts for tomorrow.

[DrumJ8]

once i get back from work tomorrow morning i'll post my thoughts, but for now daaaayyum man that is some juicy percussion you've got going on.

0:32 through 0:36 has a sick groove to it. i like it, you should bring that quarter note hihat back (or that entire drum pattern) later on in the song, but yeah i'll have more collected thoughts for tomorrow.

Thanks Sir. I like my remix so far, but after hearing yours, mine definitely sounds a bit too ordinary. I want to incorporate the feedback I'm getting here and explore/experiment more with it, make it a little more strange and less straightforward.

[Damashii!!]

my bad for the late reply, was mad busy babysitting and working extra hours.

i'ma say the same disclaimer i gave in another thread, feel free to pimpslap these suggestions out of your face. in the end, it's your mix and some of my suggestions are probably just nitpicking.

some suggestions:

1) panning

my immediate thoughts from listening to this was picturing one of those cliche B-film abandoned warehouse horror chase scenes (yeah, i know, it's the title of the darn song).

if you listen to just the sfx and music during those scenes you can hear a bunch of sporadic, intense panning (knocking over a trashcan in the Left side, the pursuer clangs against some echo-ey pipes on the Right side, etc).

i can't explain this with proper text so i'll just do it with drummer onomatopoeia lingo.

during some of the heavy poly-rhythmic patterns you could play around with the panning on some of the accents of the left and right side. (and of course, center and various surround panning)

ex., 0:16 through 0:24 would come across as doomadooma kah! doomadoo cha! badoom chikkah!! doomadooma brahhtt! doomadoom cha! badoom chikkah! dooma brakka chakka biddibowmuh dooma cha, etc.

pretty much play around with the panning A LOT. don't just have it panned somewhere and leave it like there for the whole song, it may just be my preference but for a song style like this it wouldn't hurt to be sporadic and even a little relentless with the panning of some percussion parts and blips.

2) breakdown/growth

dude, i'm digging the sound right now but it feels so much like the music is begging to grow or become even more intense and aggressive later on in the song, especially at that groove break around 0:30 through 0:36. the most obvious routes would be breaking it down into either "metal" or "dubstep" or something like that, but it would be icing to keep this "chase scene" feel and maybe have it shift/break into an industrial, dark, mangled aphex twin kind of vibe (but still keeping that doomadooma cha groove to it). dunno if that makes sense, i'll try to find an OCR example later if this isn't making any sense.

long story short, the music is good now but it feels like it has a bunch of room to expand and be even more aggressive later on in the second half of the song.

3) melody

yeah, this is a more rhythmic kind of song, and heeeeell no i'm not suggesting that you slap a wanking synth lead on top of it, but that organ just comes across as a backing sound, and even the bass could use more juice later on in the song (like explained above).

just experiment with adding some even thicker, abrasive sounds later on that basically say "yyyyeeah this is the melody." there's so many ways you could bring this melody out whether it be making the main riff juicier (think "Muse" or

typical main riffs) or adding some more meat and "oomph" to the bass line and percussion.

yeah, that's pretty much all i can think of for now. pretty solid mix as is, but there's so many routes you could take to expand it even more. i hope at least some of rambling helps a bit.

[DrumJ8]

Thanks Sir, your feedback was hilarious AND helpful .. I'll work on it some more and consider everyone's feedback. Although I did not TOUCH a midi file for my remix, my recent work has been straightforward and coverish so I will work on breaking out of that and being more exploratory. Even though the original was a pretty short loop, it gets pretty crazy in a short amount of time, so I feel a ReMix should be even crazier .. btw, where did you get your KC SFX from?

Good luck with your resub.!.