Top Gear (SNES) - "The Legend of Barry" (Track 1 - Las Vegas Remix)

[blaggles]

So I used to play Top Gear to death as a kid, and its composer Barry Leitch used heavy arpeggio and really influenced my own style, when I think about it. I was in the mood this time for some overcompressed dance music and this particular theme from the first track of the game (or each four-race country cup in the game) happened to be stuck in my head.  Mostly I left the original tune intact, except for some artistic license here and there; I added harmony when there wasn't before, a little pitch bend at times as an accent, kind of embellished on the original percussion track, and I tried to make the bass synth sound like a car engine in a few spots. 

I did fire up my old cart and play it for a little while. Top Gear was pretty much just a rehash of the Lotus series from the Amiga and Genesis, I think. It was a decent racing game for its time, but Top Gear 2 and especially Top Gear 3000 were better games, and I feel are both severely overlooked.

Honestly I've spent many, many hours on this already, and it's pretty much done, but I could use some feedback regarding production (I have some minor hearing damage that makes production notably more difficult.)

Link

Original track on YouTube

[djRyoji]

I don't know the game or the song, but from what I heard it's a nice remix! I wouldn't really know what to say to improve it though, better leave it to someone more experienced.

[Somewareman]

On 11/1/2018 at 3:46 PM, djRyoji said:

I don't know the game or the song, but from what I heard it's a nice remix! I wouldn't really know what to say to improve it though, better leave it to someone more experienced.

I'm with Ryoji on this one. I'm certainly not as experienced as other remixers on the site, but I know what I like. You've got high energy arps and that nice crunchy bass that i can't get enough of. Keep it up!

[Rozovian]

eval

Well, I like it. I like the sound design. The arrangement is indeed much like the original tune, so as an ocr style ReMix it's likely a no go. But as a sound upgrade, it's a rather good one.

The reverb is much too heavy, the snare is really weak, the instruments crowd out each other in the frequency spectrum. I think some general mix techniques would be useful for you. You know, cut lows from where they aren't needed, decide which tracks are foreground and which ones are background and give them levels and frequency range priority accordingly. This is stuff I don't expect hearing damage would prevent learning and using, since most of those operations would be in the <5kHz range.

This wouldn't pass the panel. Not in its current state, at least. I don't think something this conservative in terms of arrangement would pass, despite the added harmonies and embellishments.

So, a decent sound upgrade that also serves as good mixing practice, but probably not an OCReMix-style arrangement.

[Rozovian]

[This is an automatically generated message]

I've reviewed your remix and have returned it to Work-in-Progress status, indicating that I think there are some things you still need to work on. After you work on your track and feel that it's ready for submission to OCR, please change the prefix back to Ready for Review and someone will review it again. Good luck!