*NO* Silent Hill 'Why Won't You Die'

[Chimpazilla]

Hi, this is my first submission and my first production.

Your ReMixer name: Shut Up With Me
Your email address: 
Your userid: 33031

Name of game(s) arranged: Silent Hill 1
Name of arrangement: Why Won't You Die
Name of individual song(s) arranged: All, Die

Composer: 山岡晃
System: Playstation 1
Year: 1999
Link to the original soundtrack: https://youtu.be/vpExfM_pVjM
Link #1 to my remix: 
Link #2 to my remix: 

I started learning how to produce music a couple weeks before I began making this remix (starting from near-0 knowledge on the subject), and completed it in about 4 days. This was created almost completely in Ableton Live 9 Suite, with a few clips recorded using my Blue Yeti microphone, 2 knives, and a cheesegrater. Silent Hill is one of my favorite games, and the soundtrack is one of my favorite albums ever, even outside of game music.

I really like the sound of the album, and I wanted to recreate it in this track. One of the challenges was deciding which instruments to make sound synthesized, which to make sound acoustic, and how far to go in either direction. I favored realism in the forefront and attempted a hellish, live-performance sound in a garage or metal crate. I hope the listener enjoys it.

 

Edited June 8, 2016 by Liontamer
closed decision

[Chimpazilla]

This may be the creepiest thing I've ever heard.  Does it count as music?

[Sir_NutS]

Tough one.
Very hard to pinpoint source usage in a purely percussive and atonal track.  Though there's a very small tonal pad section in the source that lasts for about 2 seconds at 0:39, so I'm just going with source usage from the percussive elements which is the majority of the elements in the original:
1:03-1:41
2:51-3:13

That's clearly not enough source usage.  But to answer Kri's question: yes, this is very much music.  But I'm not sure purely percussive/atonal music is something we're looking for at OCR.  In my opinion, if source usage was more prevalent, and the main percussive sections were used in inventive ways this would be a YES for me.  This mix definitely shows creativity and it even sounds like it belongs in a Silent Hill game.  But since we're not getting enough source this should be automatically a NO.

I liked the sound design, specially since it was something you sampled and transformed yourself.  If other Js concur that this type of submissions is something we accept at OCR, then I would ask you to make the elements of the source more prominent in your mix so you comply with our source usage rule (50%), and play around with variations and derivations of it, as right now it's pretty close to what the original presented.  If this is not something we're looking for, then I still applaud your sound design and creativity with this.

For now though,

NO (resubmit)

[DragonAvenger]

Yes, we're cool with percussive-only music. That being said, listening through I do agree with Sir Nuts that the amount of the track that is recognizable to the source is pretty low, pretty much at the two points he mentioned. Unless someone else has some other sections they can point out then I'm going to have to go with a NO on this. 

I do however want to mention that this is a pretty cool song you've done, and it really conveys a ton of anxiety. Really nice work for 4 days and little experience!

NO (resubmit)

[Gario]

Damn, that's an awesome track, and I want to see this on OCR badly - the staple pure percussion piece, while phenomenal, is the only one of its kind on the site, so far. I think we need a track like yours to help fill that gap. The production is precisely what it needs to be - clear and strong. There's a lot of power behind this that I absolutely love, too, as well as moments of tension that you just can't get with a more traditional song.

That being said, it's true that we can't accept a track that has about 70% original writing in it - hard to call that an arrangement, at that point. I do have some suggestions, though, that may help. In a percussive piece like this one, there are a few elements that you can pull out of the source without taking away the subtlety of the sections you provided. Timbre and instrumentation is one thing that you can pull (the taiko drums and washboard are significant int he source, for example), and that pulsing 3+3+2 rhythm is something that you can utilize in more subtle ways in order to link back to the source, or you can even reference the two measure 3+2+2+2+2+5 pattern that happens at 0:10, for the sake of variety. You can do a lot of things with recognizable patterns of rhythms in order to evoke the source appropriately enough. If you want some other really good ideas for what you can do with pure percussion, study some African drum circles, or listen to some of the more percussive music from Steve Reich - clapping music is a great study on what you can do with something as little as a rhythm, for example.

I love it, and I hope you take some of this advice to heart and kick some ass with a resubmit. We need more music like this.

NO