Streets of Rage - Stealthy Steps Remix "Hydraulic Beat"

[gravitygauntlet]

Hi OCR! I've been posting WIPs in the discord for some time but this one is far enough along that I wanted to post to the forums to get some last-minute feedback before submitting.

Here's a link to the source tune:

Genre-wise I didn't want to stray too far from the original so a lot of the instrumentation are FM synth recreations. The more faithful instruments are being recreated in either FM8 or FMDrive; the only direct sample is the "bongo" sound layered in that starts around 0:51 and even then it's been processed a lot. The other synths are being done through a combination of u-he's Diva/Hive/Zebra2 and a MicroKorg.

The idea was to remake and extend the source tune to have it be more in line with the production on Streets of Rage 4, but retain the downtempo/funky pacing of the original (source and remix are both 90BPM) since a lot of the SoR4 tracks are a lot more fast-paced.

There are a couple other Yuzo Koshiro references as well:

- It's subtle but the "charang" hits from 0:08 of Ninja Step (Revenge of Shinobi) start getting used around the 3:21 mark;
- Around 3:31, the "bongo" rhythm from Stealthy Steps is used melodically by the piano and the guitar;
- The square lead from 1:08 of Attack the Barbarian (Streets of Rage) gets referenced/modulated around 3:23 and 3:41;
- The bassline, also from 0:08 of Ninja Step, gets used for bass and piano starting around 3:50.

It's a pretty dense mix so I'm mainly trying to avoid any excessive muddiness or anything sounding too compressed.

Edit: replaced the mix to be the same one from my 3/10 comment

Edit 2: file attached to OP is the latest version from 3/12.

Edit 4/5: replaced with mix that is currently in the Submission thread, mainly to cut some additional lows and extreme highs.

 

 

Edited April 6 by gravitygauntlet

[gravitygauntlet]

Edited this one last time to include the version of the mix being used in the submission/judging process.