*NO* Sonic the Hedgehog "Green Hill Samba"

[Rexy]

CONTACT INFORMATION

ReMixer name:
        Obscure Reference Band (O.R.B.)
Band members:
        Joseph Brenneman - clarinet
        Liz Woolley - electric piano
        Nicholas Terelle - guitar, mixing
        Matt Murphy - drums
        Bradley Mellen (userid: 18643) - electric bass, arrangement


SUBMISSION INFORMATION

Name of game(s) arranged:
        Sonic the Hedgehog (Sega Genesis)
Name of arrangement:
        Green Hill Samba
Name of individual song(s) arranged:
        Green Hill Zone


(Recorded October 2019)
 

 

Edited August 27, 2021 by MindWanderer

[Emunator]

Are those opening chords supposed to be riffing off of the "SEGA" jingle or am I just imagining it?  

Right off the bat, there's a great amount of warmth present in the mixing, which is subtle and subdued while still allowing all the parts to be clearly heard. Panning and reverb is on point to give everything a sense of place. The clarinet is a wonderfully unconventional choice of lead instrument that I loved, Joseph nailed the performance there. All of the solos are great, in fact!

However, therein lies the problem I'm hearing with this track, at least in context of OCR's submission policy. It's pretty much all soloing. The explicit usage of Green Hill Zone, to me, feels pretty minimal outside of two sections. 

:14-1:07 - 53 seconds

3:17 - 3:37 - 20 seconds

Out of a 4:45 track (285 seconds) I'm only getting maybe around 25% of the track actually being directly tied to the source. I'm also willing to give a bit of credit to the ascending clarinet run at 4:29, which seems like it might be loosely adapted from the opening riff, but even still, we're not even close to considering the usage of Green Hill Zone as "dominant." 

I'd love to be proven wrong if I missed something - I love the track and the synergy between your band, but this type of arrangement isn't quite what we're looking for here. I would love to hear another submission from you guys that had more dominant source usage!

NO

[prophetik music]

for the first minute plus, the track is much heavier in the left ear. a little too much panning - you could use half what you did and still get a good clarity of soundstage, i think. noticeable again around 2:30 through 3:10ish.

agree with emu on the source usage. the chords are definitely the same, and that's solid, but there's simply not enough melodic source to call it the same track. unfortunately jazz combo's a tough sell for a track on the site simply because the norm is thirty seconds of the head, ten minutes of ramen, and then back to the top twice for a recap. 

fantastic tone on the clarinet, especially the upper left hand stuff, really stellar. i've always preferred a clarinet tone in jazz that has more pitch variation (vibrato, lipping, etc) - i can hear you doing some really fun stuff around licks, but maybe consider it on your sustains. your tone is so clear that i don't think a heavy goodman-style vibrato is a good idea consistently, but some color at the end of your sustains would add a ton of vibrancy to what you're playing.

this is a rubber stamp unfortunately. there's simply not enough source to pass this. as much as i want to lean towards the "this is pretty good source for the style!" argument, the reality is that the standards are genre-agnostic, and so we need to be as well.

 

 

NO

[MindWanderer]

I'm willing to give this a little more credit, source-wise.  The backing and chord progressions are consistently lifted from the source material. 1:19, 2:02, 2:22, 2:33, and 2:54 are all points where the connection to the source can be made, albeit with difficulty.

But while there's a case to be made for more than 25% source usage, getting up to 50% is extremely dubious.  I like this a lot for what it is, but I agree that we need something that's a bit more consistently obvious.

NO