OCR02807 - *YES* Super Street Fighter 2 & Street Fighter 2 'Stepping Out'

[DragonAvenger]

Hello guys.

Sir_NutS over here with another submission. This time from the Street Fighter Competition held by Darkesword not too long ago.

This is a remix of both Ken and Cammy's themes from Street Fighter. This isn't the competition version of the song, as I made further changes to it before submitting it.

For this song, I wanted to make some really aggressive dubstep in the vein of Excision, Noisestorm, and other dubstep artists that make some really aggressive-sounding songs. My objective was to make some subwoofer-destroying drops, with some really dirty and growling basses. I wanted to make the song feel like a fight, and the street fighter samples helped enhance that effect.

I know with the popularity of dubstep you guys must be receiving a swarm of dubstep remixes lately, and well I guess there's not much I can do about that, but this was actually my first try at the genre and I must say I absolutely love it. I'm more of a production guy: I have the most fun creating sounds, and the genre lends itself to lots of crazy stuff and I had tons of fun building all the sounds for it.

This mix was made in Reason, and all of those growling, wobbling, bending and gritty sounds you hear were made mostly with Thor. It's an incredible synth and I had a lot of fun just completely destroying the sounds with it. I mastered the song in Sonar though.

I know you guys must know the sources by heart but here they are anyways:

Ken:

Cammy:

[Liontamer]

Starting with the negative first, the layering of Ken's theme over the Cammy theme from :41-1:05 had little, if any, synergy and just seemed to be drowning Cammy's theme out. Also, the notes from 2:09-2:10 & 2:23-2:24 were intended to be stylistic, but just sounded like a mistake. I'd love to hear those sour notes altered, and it would improve the track, but I'll live.

Aside from those two issues and some the non-dubstep sound design feeling bland for the first minute's buildup, I thought this was solidly put together. The sections with dubstep elements had a good deal of power behind 'em.

Props too on the usage of the heavy damage version of Cammy's theme for a big portion of the track, a theme I loved back in the days when I played it on the arcade.

Short and sweet, it gets it done.

YES

[Emunator]

For being your first foray into the genre of dubstep, this is really solid and doesn't fall prey to a lot of the same issues that plague newcomers to the genre. Your wobbles are well-synced and actually keep the momentum going instead of making the track feel too disjointed. The synth-centric 4-on-the-floor sections are classic Sir_NutS material and keep the track varied and interesting. Very engaging writing and sequencing makes up for any blandness in the sound design itself.

I dig it, not much else to say. I thought the "sour" notes that Larry pointed out were fine. Maybe not the best-executed pitch bend, but it doesn't sound accidental to me, either. If anything, the stutter at 2:57 felt clunky, but I could just as easily see other judges not having a problem with it. A lot of it is subjective, I guess. Either way, the questionable moments are isolated and don't really have any impact on the track overall. I'm down with this.

YES

[Vig]

I'm not super crazy about the hi hat patterns. Throws me off. I'd love a simpler beat in general. The lead at 2:00 is flat. Everything else about the track is pretty tight, so I'm not too mad.

YES

[Palpable]

Yeah seriously, for a first dubstep track, this is quite enjoyable. I think you could have used a few more tweaks in those sections, for maximum craziness, but what's there is solid. Even the non-dubby sections were well executed. Pretty much I'm right in Larry's court on this one: the intro is the weakest part, and the two themes didn't mesh that well, but weren't bad together either. The good outweighs the bad by far, so a YES it is.

YES