*NO* Streets of Rage "Moon Synth Beach '83"

[Rexy]

 

• Genesis1983
• Gavin Lee
•  
• 36629-genesis1983

• Streets Of Rage
• Moon Synth Beach 83'
• Streets of Rage 1 Moon beach
• Originally composed by Yuzo Koshiro
   
  
   
• I grew up in the 80s and as such came into the 90s playing video games as a teenager, i remember the first time playing Streets of Rage on the Sega Megadrive and a friends house and the Moon beach level music being just became stuck in my head constantly, it made me think of sleazy 80s summers in california or miami and being a badass walking down the street with my jeans, sneakers and leather jacket on kicking ass. I've always wanted to do a basic synthwave remix of this track for nostalgia reasons and I feel happy with the outcome considering I'm not a musician. 

Hopefully you will consider this track as a submission.

 

Thanks in advance 

 

Genesis1983 

Edited May 20, 2021 by prophetik music

[Emunator]

Considering you've said that you're not a musician by trade, this is a pretty solid first attempt! There's a good deal of interpretation in how you adapted the original source to a slowed-down, vibed-out synthwave style, and there's a lot of creative sound choices to drive home that mood. I thoroughly enjoyed the bones of this track! However, the production side is not living up to the potential of your arrangement, as I'm immediately picking up on several mixing/sequencing issues that could be addressed.

First off, let's talk about the overall mixing on the track. This is VERY heavily compressed beyond what the genre calls for. I think I can best illustrate this with a screengrab of the overall track waveform, which can be helpful to evaluate the overall dynamic curve of your track...

What this immediately tells me is that you've slammed the levels of your instruments as loud as you can go, and you're engaging the limiter on your master track way too frequently. Especially when your waveform looks like this during sections like 1:40 or 2:49, where there's really only a few instruments going on, it's immediately obvious that the levels of your instruments need to be brought down so that there's some breathing room for the natural dynamics to show through. This especially becomes an issue with some of your high pitched bell samples, or the sound effects that bookend the track on the front and back - these are mixed so loudly, the high frequencies are physically painful on the ears. Rebalancing each instrument in your arrangement, and adding some high-end EQ cuts to certain patches would be an excellent starting point.

Aside from that, the second major issue I want to bring attention to is the velocities. It sounds like nearly all of your instruments are rigidly quantized to the beat and play at the same velocity for each note, with the exception of your plucked synth arpeggio and the bass. Now, I wouldn't expect the humanization in a synthwave arrangement to be totally realistic, but for example, the piano at 1:00 sounds excessively rigid. Even some slight variance in the timing/velocity of the notes would help that melody blend better.

Lastly, for lack of a better word, the kick drum just sounds weird in this context. It sounds like it may have been heavily time-warped, but the sample used is just not cutting it for me. For the first few bars when it is first introduced, it actually sounds kind of cool, but for the remainder of the track, the sample just seems like a strange choice that doesn't have an ideal frequency balance for this style. Consider trying out some new samples to see how it affects the overall sound of your mix. 

I am definitely impressed with what you were able to put together here, so please don't take the feedback negatively - this is an excellent first take. However, the mixing and sequencing need to be polished before this is ready for primetime. Good luck!

NO

[Jivemaster]

Firstly, @Emunator gives you some solid analysis as to this track's challenges. There is a master bus compression issue here that is making the mix pump in a weird way. The kick drum is quite high in pitch and feels somewhat out of place — I would definitely recommend swapping it for something deeper (or at least dropping it an octave). The main synth has a bit too much low end that could be dialled back to make it less dominating. After the initial build-up the ambient section has a somewhat pleasing atmosphere, albeit plagued by the same compression issue. Some of white noise (whoosh) FX seem to be cutting off abruptly, which is noticeable during the transitions, and sounds like an error. Although the arrangement is quite minimal in terms of instrumentation, there is a decent amount of variety between the sections. The vibe of the original is mostly retained, and I like the expansion on it. I think the mix shows promise, but has some issues in the mixing department. I'd focus on giving the instruments more varied velocity, and the mastering should be dialled back to give everything more breathing room. Let's revisit.

NO

[prophetik music]

rubber-stamping this one. everything's too loud, it's all over-compressed, and it all desperately needs EQ. also i agree that the kick drum sounds time-warped - try layering three or four different kicks in to get the sub-bass freqs and attack sound that you want. edit: emu end edit and jive laid out some great steps that will help you get going in the right direction.

your arrangement is fine, which is the hard part for a lot of non-musicians! now you just need to learn a bit of mastering technique, and vary up some of your instruments attacks some, and you'll have a really nice track. i'd suggest the workshop to get some additional ears on this before your next submission.

 

 

NO

Edited May 24, 2021 by prophetik music

[Gario]

pretty sure that's emu that commented on it with jive this time, not i

:3