OCR04354 - *YES* Command & Conquer: Tiberian Sun "Hypervigilance"

[Rexy]

Name: Michael Hudak

Name of Game: Command & Conquer: Tiberian Sun

Name of Song Arranged: "Lone Trooper", by Jarrid Mendelson (https://www.discogs.com/Frank-Klepacki-Jarrid-Mendelson-Command-Conquer-Tiberian-Sun-Soundtrack/release/585794)

Name of my ReMix: "Hypervigilance"

Link to OG:
 

 

Aside from brief stints with Roller Coaster Tycoon and the first Sims, the Command & Conquer series were the only PC games I played growing up in the 90s and early aughts. My family didn't have a gaming PC, just a basic Gateway something-or-other we got in 1998. Peripheral controllers were over my head, but my next door neighbor showed me the first C&C: Red Alert one day after school, and I loved how you could micromanage everything with just a mouse and couple shortcut keys (kinda like a DAW, now that I think of it...). I was then hooked on the whole series for years. I loved the music; not only did Frank Klepacki compose full tracks for each game with unique titles and intro-chrous-verse structures that you might hear on rock radio, but you could select what track you wanted to hear from the pause screen, which was a first for me. 

 

I loved Frank's stuff from these games, but there were a handful of tracks in Tiberian Sun that really stood out amongst the others. They were more synth-heavy and quite melodic, more 80s soundtrack-y and less 90s industrial metal. After some digging, I found out that these songs weren't Frank's at all, but were composed by someone named Jarrid Mendelson. Apparently he never did much game music, but I really love what little wound up released, especially Lone Trooper, which could pass for a somethingwave track today. If he's out there somewhere, I gotta say thanks for the cool tunes, because they made teenage me really happy. Big ups to Frank too, of course. No sleight on him.

 

Anyhow, this ReMix was an experiment in combining uncomfortably close noises with equally uncomfortable and threatening distant sounds. There's not much in the middle ground; If there's reverb on anything, there's a lot of it. I wanted to convey the feeling of a soldier alone in a vast and extremely inhospitable environment, where almost everything is trying to kill him. Or get him killed, as is the case with his radio orders near the start. I was actually thinking of the guy on the front of the TIberian Sun box, with his helmet acting as a comms radio before it gives out, and then he's truly alone. I feel like the original tells a similar story, so maybe my ReMix is a kind of reboot as well. There's a lot of compression on the impact sounds here. Adding compression to explosions or gunshots is a common practice for sound designers in war films and FPS games to make everything that much more intense, so I wanted to try that here. In many cases, I created sounds from layering multiple samples, but adding different compression settings to each layer, rather than grouping them to a buss and using the same settings on all of them. Tons of high frequency sounds, but hopefully filtered back enough to prevent ear fatigue for the layperson. I reigned the panning in a little from some of my previous work to keep the beat moving, but there's almost no sidechain compression as I didn't want this to come off as danceable. Less fun, more sheer mortal terror, please. (I also think SC compression is starting to sound a little dated). There is some manually drawn volume automation ducking here and there to keep a pulse, but with slightly randomized slopes of db reduction, so no two instances are exactly the same. 

 

Breakdown:

The original song drones in C for a whole minute before it gets going. For my arrangement, I really wanted to keep the original keys, so the subs are in C1 at first, which is honestly too low for most music, but I think it works for how heavy I wanted this remix to be.

 

0:00 - 0:33 in source = 4:22 - 5:17 in remix.

0:44 - 0:51 in source = 1:39 - 1:47 in remix.

1:00 - 2:01 in source = 0:38 - 1:38 in remix.

2:19 - end in source = 2:03 - 4:21 in remix.

 

I love how this turned out. Time to end this long write-up. Thanks a ton to all the judges, as always. Very much appreciate all the feedback, positive and negative. 

[prophetik music]

hmm, the second Lone Trooper remix on the panel in the last month for me, neat.

as expected, a ton of weird stuff from MH. this takes some time to get cooking, but it's familiar once it gets going. the link from 0:38 to about 1:09 is tenuous, but from then on it's more obvious. one thing i appreciate about michael's music is that it regularly uses lots of space to allow things to develop naturally, and that happens here quite a bit. it isn't until after 2:00 that we really get an obvious correlative melodic line, but it doesn't feel too late at that point.

the section at 3:20 is really great. it's got such an odd vibe with the combination of the heavily effected guitarish synth next to the pulsing of the drums. it fading to just the pulsing synths (reminiscent to the alert sounds at the beginning of the original) is really neat too.

looking at this from a content perspective is tougher than normal because there's a ton of sfx work here that i'd argue essentially shouldn't count towards the main body of the work. i'd want to toss the first 35ish seconds and the last minute or so. from there, the connection at 0:38 is recognizable but so heavily distorted it's hard to hear. from there it's clearer in the more melodic (i use that word tenuously at best) sections. i think ultimately there's enough here to count, but i recognize that other judges may timestamp this differently. this is a tough one to timestamp because of how much of the original is just unpitched stuff or sfx, too.

overall this is a really interesting work. the care taken with some of the more distorted sections is clear, and there's some really unique approaches taken here that i think really dovetail well with the game. this is a pass in my book.

 

 

YES

[MindWanderer]

It starts off weird, but then gets pretty melodic and---dare I say---normal for a Hudak piece.  Takes that 80's PC game sound and turns it into an 80's cyberpunk sound.

I don't subjectively see a problem with source here at all.  It might be hard to make a case for the first 30 seconds and the last minute---although I think you could make a case for that last minute, see 0:23-0:34 of the source---but there's still 4 minutes left if you take that out.

The audio design is both clever and well-executed, and the piece is engaging throughout (which is not always easy for tracks with a lot of space for effects and non-music content).  I wish more of Mike's stuff was as easy to wrap my brain around as this.

YES

[DarkSim]

Sometimes a ReMix has a title which bears little or no resemblance to the music itself, but ‘Hypervigilance’ perfectly describes this piece. The slow pace and sparse instrumentation helps the listener focus on each individual sound at different points. Combined with excellent sound design, you have these moments of tension which are punctuated by new stimuli that draw your attention, as if scanning a horizon for new threats. It’s a very well thought-out creative process here, and the execution matches the ambition.

The idea of near and far is subtle, but feeds into the overall theme of the track. Those very hard-hitting and erratic kicks to open up felt like a soldier’s heart skipping beats as they prepare to embark on a high-risk mission. Use of filters, distortion, and bitcrushing are evident throughout, but perhaps my favourite is the guitar that comes in at 2:05. It’s got such a grittiness to it, and the timbre fits the piece perfectly. The lead at 3:25 is also excellent, adding more higher frequencies and reverb to give it its own distinct character.

If I were to find one nitpick with this, it’d be the kick sound at the beginning. I know what you were going for by compressing the impact sounds, however I think the transient on this particular sample could be shaped better to provide a more interesting overall sound.

I’m also in agreement with proph and MW about the beginning and end being too long, but as a package I found it very cinematic and surprisingly visual - probably due to the amount of ‘filling in’ my brain was doing whilst listening. Certainly a cerebral experience, able to evoke paranoia and those feelings of mortal terror you so explicitly tried to conjure. Job done!

YES

[Liontamer]

A more accurate source breakdown would have been:

0:00 - 0:33 in source = 4:22 - 5:17 in remix
0:44 - 0:51 in source = 1:39 - 1:47 in remix
1:00 - 2:01 in source = 0:38 - 1:38 in remix
2:19 - 4:11 in source = 2:03 - 3:35 in remix
4:11 - end in source = 3:35 - 4:21 in remix

I can't say I recognized any elements of :00-:33 of the source in the ending section, but there was more than enough source usage throughout. But that said, a well-developed and dynamic rendition of the original!

YES