*NO* Ape Escape & Bomberman Hero "Re:Dial (But When the Phone Rings, Let the Monkey Answer)"

[Emunator]

Contact Information

• Your ReMixer Name: The Vodoú Queen
• Your Real Name: Angélique Vodoú
• 
  
• Your Website: https://www.bandlab.com/vodouqueenxiii (the song is also on here and my SoundCloud profiles)
• Your User ID # on our forums: 37001

Submission Information

• Name of Game(s) Arranged: Bomberman Hero (N64) & Ape Escape (PS1)
• Name of Arrangement: "Re: Dial (But When the Phone Rings, Let the Monkey Answer)"
• Name of Individual Song(s) Arranged: 'Redial' (Bomberman Hero) & 'Oceana ~ Coral Cave' (Ape Escape)
• Additional information about game including composer, system, etc. (if it has not yet been added to the site): 

 

1. BOMBERMAN HERO OST; Track 3 - Redial; Artist: Jun Chikuma; Release Date: 1 June 1998; Label: NTT Publishing
2. APE ESCAPE OST; Track 19 - Coral Cave; Artist: Soichi Terada; Release Date: 18 November 2011; Label: Far East Recording

 

• Link to the original soundtrack (if it is not one of the sound archives already available on the site):

 

1. https://www.discogs.com/Jun-Chiki-Chikuma-Bomberman-Hero-Original-Soundtrack/release/5213495
2. https://apeescape.fandom.com/wiki/Ape_Escape_Originape_Soundtracks

 

• Your own comments about the mix, for example the inspiration behind it, how it was made, etc.:

"Curious George and his friends decide to have a lil' play around with human technology... :D"

 

I don't have much to say about this, other than I hope people enjoy it and something good comes out of it. That, and I had a blast making this for PRC 429, as part of the monthly / bi-monthly People's ReMixing Competition on the Compoverse (https://compo.thasauce.net/). The inspiration was to give a legitimate song a bit of humour, akin to the work of Silva Gunner, and I am unsure just how I was able to go about it. Just trying to improve my craft, I suppose.

 

Maybe I'll have more to say if I think about it more, but at the moment I'm so nervous from trying another attempt at this after the first time with my NieR remix...I'm at a loss for words. Apologies.

 

Sources

 

 

Edited May 31, 2022 by Liontamer
closed decision

[Chimpazilla]

What a fun idea you have here, starting out with nature and monkeys, then monkeys flipping channels, and finally your computer-voiced narration of the songmaking process.  This kind of thing is entertaining for SoundCloud or YouTube but not for OCR.  For OCR, just the actual song would be appropriate, as we have a rule against making a song (or in this case a large portion of a song) out of pure SFX.  The bigger issue is the production.  The writing parts are very simplistic and they repeat all through the track.  There are clashing notes and instrumental parts all throughout the track.  The piano begins clashing note-wise with the pizzicato strings almost immediately.  When the bass starts up at 2:25, the bass writing is so off from the other elements that it sounds like it is playing another song altogether.  The parts are just so simple, robotic (not-humanized), clashing in writing, and stepping all over each other in the frequency range. 

You're going to want to start by listening to the parts individually and in small groups (i.e. just piano plus strings, just strings plus bass, etc.) and look for clashing writing.  Ask for help if you're not quite hearing it.  Once the writing is cleaned up, you'll need to work on making some of the writing a little bit varied, so it isn't the exact same pattern for the entire seven minutes.  Then, the next step is to learn how to mix.  You'll want to watch tutorials or have someone teach you how to properly use EQ to make sounds fit together in the soundscape without clashing frequency-wise.  Reverb can be used to fit elements into the soundscape; as it is now everything is bone dry (the vocals and SFX are painfully dry).  Then, learn about creative sidechaining to make the whole arrangement breathe and groove.  

Lots of work to do here, but I want to highlight what you got right here: 

1.  Your storytelling idea!  This is so creative.  (not for OCR due to our standards, but you get credit for the creativity!)  You could still have monkey sounds or other small SFX throughout the track for OCR if you wanted to.

2.  Your sound selections (strings, piano, vibes, bouncy bass, fun drum groove).  The sounds you chose fit nicely together, they just need to be mixed better, play more interesting and varied writing, and sound much more natural.

3.  Your layering of sounds, dropping things out or adding them back here and there as the arrangement moves along.  That's probably the biggest way to keep an arrangement fresh!

This remix makes me smile!  I hope you will take my words to heart and learn how to address the issues I've mentioned, because your creativity deserves to shine!  Good luck and please let us hear back from you in the future.

NO

[prophetik music]

usually i really don't like the sfx approach to some things, but this pretty clearly handled in terms of what you were hoping to do. so that's kinda fun.

agree with chimps that there is a ton of overlapping frequencies throughout. the dance piano and pizz are in the same freq space, for example, and it's very confusing. there's some notes that don't work in the piano, as well, and the bass is all over the place (close to half of what it's doing are conflicting with the organ and pad). the concept is also really long without a lot that's measurably different - i don't know that there's really four minutes of music (after the intro) here, it's probably closer to 2.5ish. trimming down the extra would help a lot.

my suggestion would be to take out all of the sfx and vox, make a song that's able to stand on its own and submit that, and then maybe do an edit that has that in it for your personal pages.

 

 

NO

[MindWanderer]

That all jives with what I'm hearing.  EQ is a persistent issue, and there's a whole lot of not-music here.  It's fun and creative, but for all the reasons above, it's not the sort of thing we're looking for.

NO

[Liontamer]

On 5/7/2022 at 3:38 PM, Chimpazilla said:

What a fun idea you have here, starting out with nature and monkeys, then monkeys flipping channels, and finally your computer-voiced narration of the songmaking process.  This kind of thing is entertaining for SoundCloud or YouTube but not for OCR.  For OCR, just the actual song would be appropriate, as we have a rule against making a song (or in this case a large portion of a song) out of pure SFX.

Hold up there, not quite. Our Standards say, "Sound effects alone are not considered music, and submissions primarily consisting of them will not be accepted." What that rule mainly speaks against is constructing an wholly original music piece out of in-game sound effects or placing SFX & voice clips over an instrumental not based on game music, neither of which we count as VGM arrangement. There's nothing in this concept incompatible with OCR, including extended audio intros, just so that's clear to Angélique, the judges, and anyone else interested in the standards & guidelines.

As far as how I'd look at the source tunes being dominant, I'd just look for the source tunes to be referenced during at least 50% of the musical portion of the track, in this case starting at :49.

The gimmick is awesome, including the pseudo-voice acting with the song construction steps, which is supposed to sound robotic. I agreed somewhat with prophetik in that the overall development here feels limited. More could be done to make the steps sound like the track's evolving more substantially over time, but I also think there's enough done in terms of gradually adding parts here that can be taken in conjunction with the premise here.

However, you still have to have reasonably solid production, even if the premise is reviewing the building blocks of a song. I'd just say the samples mostly sound super fake, whether it's the pizz strings, piano, claps, or mallet percussion. Stuff shouldn't sound so exposed and unrealistic. The bassline brought in at 2:25 was off-key, but seemingly wasn't a problem once it switched to arranging Bomberman Hero "Redial" at 2:57. As this point, the groove is fleshed out some more, but very stilted with textures that are thin and not fully filled out. It wasn't until the string lead at 4:33 from :20 of Ape Escape "Oceana" that it felt like the song finally had some more body to it, but it was still hamstrung by all of the other previously mentioned issues, so I can't say that things actually gelled.

Until the instrumentation is humanized and given more body/realism, Angélique, this is a fun concept without the complimentary production execution. Cool stuff though so far, Angélique. Consider seeing what more you can do with it in terms of beefing up the production quality.

NO (resubmit)