*NO* Sonic Chaos & Sonic 3 'Endless Mind (Lost in Here)'

[djpretzel]

Very cool; some production nitpicks but uber-creative arrangement, good vocal, catchy stuff. I found the intro odd... just kinda "starts"... not bad, just a bit unusual.

 

-djp

---

 

Contact Information

ReMixer name: ladyWildfire
real name: Elizabeth Carter
website: https://soundcloud.com/ladywildfire
userid: 11659


Submission Information

Name of games arranged: Sonic Chaos (Game Gear), Sonic 3
Name of arrangement: Endless Mind (Lost in Here)
Name of individual songs arranged: Aqua Planet Zone, Endless Mine Zone

[DragonAvenger]

Dave is right, Miss Wildfire's arrangement is really creative! I love the two vocal lines intertwining later in the mix. I have a couple issues overall. First is that for the most part I can't really make out the words. I know part of that is me (I generally have difficulty making our lyrics), but some of the processing makes it difficult to hear the words. Working on projecting more while singing will help that as well. Layering multiple takes is another thing you can do to strengthen the vocal parts.

Another issue I have is with the repetitive and stiff backing. I'd love to hear you work on humanizing and varying the background to keep things more interesting and help support your vocals more.

I think there's a great start here, but you need to polish up the parts a bit. This would be a great candidate for the WIP forums. Good luck!

No (resubmit)

[Jivemaster]

Beth you're certainly progressing as an artist with every track. Vocals in this mix are quite solid, and with some great use of effects to change certain sections up. You also make decent use of sound placement in the stereo field. Your synth sounds have a light touch to them, but fit into the mix well.

A couple of challenges here. 

• The main beat stuck out as being repeaty in this, and the shuffling percussion hat/tamb sound felt a little sharp frequency wise (not quite piercing, but certainly a bit strong in the highs and would benefit with some EQ). I do think the sounds here could be refined and varied a bit more so it doesn't feel like they're on loop repeat.
• I agree with Deia that the backing is quite similar all the way though and doesn't evolve as much as it should, and could do with some creative tweaks to strengthen the arrangement side.
• The mix maintains a fairly steady vibe throughout and when it gets to the end, finishes pretty quickly, giving it that feeling of not having a discernible intro and outro.
• I didn't have many issues with the vocal parts, they're were soft but performed well for the most part, but I can understand where Deia is coming from with regards to their volume and the ability to recognise them. I don't think these need an overhaul but it would be nice if they were clearer (perhaps all that's needed here is to pull back on the effects a bit to let more of the clean vocal though).

I believe this would work with some arrangement and mix tweaking. Certainly potential here, and I'd love to see you work on this a little more and resub.

NO

[Sir_NutS]

Source Breakdown:

0:00 - 0:15 : Bass groove is a derivation of Endless' Mine
0:15 - 0:30 : Percussive element plays a variation of Aqua Planet Zone's Main melody
0:30 - 0:46 : Vocals sing the Endless Mine first lead melody
0:46 - 1:40 : Endless Mine's second verse
1:47 - 2:07 : Aqua Planet
2:07 - 2:18 : Mostly original
2:18 - 3:20 : Vocals sing the Endless Mine first lead melody, different variation.
3:20 - 3:40 : fading out, same source elements as in the intro

More than 90% is some variation of the sources so we're good to go.

I don't mind the sudden start, but try to start your song loop a few miliseconds before the first measure before you export it if you're going to do this, because it does eat up a fraction of the starting loop.

I remember this song from the Sonic Zone competition a while ago.  There are some issues that I'm confident you will be able to fix now because this song was done quite a while ago and your abilities have improved.  

First, I liked the effects on the vocals and they fit the mood of your song, it's almost whispering, like a beach breeze. But they could benefit from better clarity.  As mentioned by DA some words are difficult to make out, specially when going up in pitch.  The tamb/hats sound lo-fi, not in a good way.  Given the latin-house feel of the track it would benefit from better quality samples instead of lofi ones.  They are also not getting along very well with the higher vocal frequencies and there's a clump of sound near 4k-7k hz.  The kick is very flat sounding.  It does has presence which is good, and when it plays by itself you can hear the sub which is absent throughout the song, which means the bass' sub frequencies are interfering with its clarity.  Try some sidechaining and EQing there.  The overall mix balance feels very biased toward the mid-highs.

The glowing aspects of this song are in the arrangement.  I love the implementation of both sources and the adaptation to the genre.  It sounds tropical for sure and now I'm thirsty for a Piña Colada.  The lyrics work well, and the vocals don't feel tacked on.  You changed the melody to better fit your vocal range which is smart and also helped the arrangement.  I have to agree with the other judges regarding variation, even though I did hear small details that you included to differentiate between similar sections, more should have been done. 

Lovely remix, as Djp said "Uber-creative", but needs fixing in the aforementioned production issues, and a small push in the arrangement front. As I said at the start I'm confident you can pull this off, so I'll be asking for a resubmit.

NO (Resubmit)