*NO* Test Drive 2 'Speeding Ticket'

[djpretzel]

First submission to OC ReMix.

-Contact info

Remixer name: Fleg

real name: Kjell Ivar Storstein

mail: kjellstor@yahoo.no

-Remix info

Game remixed: Test Drive II: The Duel

Song: Title Screen

Here's a link to the original amiga music:

http://exotica.fix.no/tunes/archive/Authors/Game/Hatlelid_Kris/Test_Drive_2.lha

And here's the C64 music:

http://exotica.fix.no/tunes/archive/C64Music/Hatlelid_Kris/Test_Drive_2_The_Duel.sid

I played the amiga version back in the day, so that's really the one I was thinking of when I did the remix.

But it can sometimes be a hassle to find a player for some amiga formats, that's why I also included a link for the C64 music.

I remember being chased by the police and getting lots of speeding tickets in the game. That's why I named the mix just that: "Speeding Ticket".

And now for the link:

-Kjell S

[The Orichalcon]

Thanks for providing the source.

Takes a while for this mix to get into it. We get car and police sound effects over a bassline up until 0:45. Then the drums come in along the bassline. Some fake rhythm guitar comes in around 1:00 but this sounds pretty good, at least until the long notes are held. Sounds like some volume tweaking on the notes or even some effects to get rid of that dry sound would have been beneficial. The melody plays along for a while sounding like a fairly dry organ, it sounds out of place to me and really bland.

The rhythm guitar keeps plodding along by itself with the drums up until 2:47 when the bassline takes over. The raw wave that comes in around 3:20 sounds pretty good. The song builds up into a really meaty section from 4:00 where the drum work sounds pretty good. The fake guitar is killing this mix for me though. It would be beneficial for the mix if the artist sought out a guitarist to do this guitarwork properly for the mix. You'd have a relatively good mix here. I could see some vocals over this too instead of the whiney organ-sounding lead used currently.

The mix also drags on too long, nearly reaching 6 minutes without presenting too many new ideas.

Overall, it's not a bad mix, especially for a first submission. The drumwork is a great basis for the mix, and you have a good sound going, you just need to ditch the fake and basic sounding samples and try to get some beefier and more realistic sounds going.

NO

[Liontamer]

http://exotica.fix.no/tunes/archive/C64Music/Hatlelid_Kris/Test_Drive_2_The_Duel_PSID.sid

DeliPlayer wouldn't play the .kh MOD file, and the SID file was a bust as well, so it was the PSID to the rescue, which I've linked to here.

Fine SFX for the intro here. Source fades in right at :11 while some additional SFX supplements things. Synth design is pretty weak as the lead is rather plain-jane, along with the beats/percussion coming in at :44. Some quasi-electric guitar synth had the same lacking feel at 1:03.

Melody comes in at 1:30 for the basic coverage. Whole thing sounds pretty dry, as TO alluded to. Fakey strings anchored the next section at 2:48 but didn't fill up the sonic space well. Some decent original writing to build off of the style of the source tune. Good use of the NES/chiptune-style sounds at 3:23, along with the SFX. Guitar returns at 3:46 and still has no edge and no power to it; it's a pretty lacking sample choice.

Track drives along a bit better at 4:03, even though the arrangement is pretty repetitive. The instrumentation is still so dry, dull, and lifeless that it makes the encoding sound more like 80kbps CBR rather than 131kbps VBR. zircon would have some good tips to improve a track like this. More arrangement ideas and better production are needed to have a shot.

NO

[DarkeSword]

That pervasive continuo line never really lets up througout the entire mix; it wouldn't be so bad if you moved it into the background once in a while; volume-and-levels-automation is your friend.

There's something about this track that makes it sound really muffled. This is another track I've judged tonight that could benefit from a WIDER sound. Everything sounds really tight and packed into the center of the soundscape, except for the percussion, which is the highlight of the mix.

Needs to be trimmed down; it's a bit long, without needing to be. I'd work on tha, tweaking levels, and mastering.

NO

[zircon]

Pretty cool concepts here.. I think I'll talk mainly about the production. One thing is that the mix IS mostly centered. That heavy synth guitar detracts from things, not because of the timbre but because of how it is used. It sits in dead center with most other things and really just takes up tons of sonic space as well. You need to work with the EQ there (and on other instruments) to make sure it does not take up so much space. Giving it some stereo reverb and delay will help too. I would also suggest perhaps automating some filtering or EQ on it to give it a bit of motion, as the very dry, centered tone begins to get grating after awhile.

Your grooves are pretty cool. I like them; I think you could build 'em up even more for an added effect, and perhaps compress them so that they are more to the forefront. But that's personal opinion. They're definitely strong as is. The bass instruments here are a little on the weak side in that the tone just does not change. You want some sort of motion to all of your sounds, either from multiple oscillators interacting with eachother, or LFOs on the filters/pulsewidth, or whatever else you can muster up.

I also think that while you have some great percussive variation going on, the arrangement is a bit repetitive, and the fact that your sounds mostly stay the same does not help. I think you could be more varied with your synth tones. Changing up the bass/guitar will help, but adding even more harmony instruments or perhaps having a more 'cutting' lead would sound good, in my opinion.

This is a cool song. It is very close to passing, let me make that clear. Just make a few changes so that it's more dynamic and you are set.

NO