*NO* Star Fox 64 "Ballast" *PROJECT*

[prophetik music]

ALBUM PROJECT TRACK (STAR FOX)

Hey dudes and gal dudes, this is my submission for the Star Fox album.

I'll save you some time - this track only uses the first 20 or so seconds of source. I lean heavy on the first part of the melody and that little 1-5-1 arpeggio, but I think the general reharm, melodic phrasing, and overall sound palette make this a substantial-enough reinterpretation. Not as harmonically dramatic as Aquas, but more chilled out and smooth while still being a bit mysterious.

~

The ruins slowly emerge from the void as you make the crossing; a vista nearly devoid sunlight. What was this place? Your viewport isn't nearly wide enough to see everything. The auxiliary monitors aren't much better, but - from the corner of your eye, you catch a glimpse of an unknowable creature on the screen. It silently retracts into the darkness. A moment passes, heard by the low rumble of the two-stroke diesel behind you. Curiosity guides your heavy hand to the throttle lever. The vessel cruises further into darkness.

~

Really I just wanted this to ooze "submarine" - without literally using sonar and water samples, I think it's pretty effective. But that reminds me - did you catch the ingame sample? I'd forgotten about it! Lol

Cheers,

RS

LT Edit: Source usage info given 11/25 (after prophetik reached out):

I guess I would make my argument that Aquas is built on 3 main components:

1. The melodic sequence built on parallel 5ths. It continues past the first 0:20, but the melodic cadence is exactly the same.
2. The 'chorus' section - I'm not really using this.
3. The 1-5-1 arpeggio that plays throughout both.

#1 is the hook. #3 I would attribute the group of synth layers that bind the track, the 'living arpeggio' as it were. It's not always literally 1-5-1, but IMO it serves the same role as a constant thread from start to finish, just always modulating to make it more interesting. It's simple, but I think it's worth a mention as a main characteristic of the track.

As an aside - to use a visual analogy, I would also argue that musical "negative space" in general is a real and meaningful component of an arrangement. Maybe I'm on my own here, but I don't think I've ever seen the idea really presented as such on OCR. What's right for the track is not always what's right for the guidelines. Maybe I'm just becoming more at odds with the desired output.

Hopefully this makes some sense. Either way, I'm past the point of doing any revisions, so I hope this will not count as a ding against the album as far as number of viable tracks is concerned.

Thanks

Games & Sources

Edited Monday at 03:56 AM by Liontamer
closed decision

[prophetik music]

opens with some nicely filtered synths. there's some elements of the little stepwise melodic chunk initially. the feel at 0:36 is fantastic, i love the fat sixteenth note synth. i'll admit i don't hear a ton of original in this first section with the drums, but i do get more of that descending line around the one minute mark when the second drumloop comes in. definitely an intentional but bad note choice selection at 1:48. the correlation in the later sections (around 2:00) is more subtle - maybe too subtle - and it isn't until maybe 2:39 that we more consistently get melodic material for any stretch of time. there's an outro starting at 3:25 and it's done.

i love the feel, i really do. you've nailed the style you're going for and it's handled well. i just don't think there's anywhere near a preponderance of original here. there's not much in Aquas to hang your hat on, and you limited yourself to an even smaller segment of it for your feel here. i think that, unless i'm missing something significant, we're nowhere near 50%. i hear overt elements of the original from 0:15-0:36, 1:02-1:24, and 2:39-3:3:24 - about 40%. so i think that'd need to change before i'd be able to think about a yes.

 

 

NO

[Chimpazilla]

I really like this remix!  I have mastered the album version of this track (this subbed version is not my master, though).  It is a luscious and mesmerizing soundscape and the arrangement is really well crafted, I especially love all the filtered synths coming in and out of the soundscape, but I have to agree with proph that there almost certainly is not enough source use.  Other than a few selected notes from the source tune's motif (in the first 20 seconds of the source as mentioned), I don't detect any source use.  If there is more here, I would appreciate a source breakdown and I would be delighted to be wrong, but I'm not hearing it (and I'm really trying, I have mastered several versions of this source for the album so I have become familiar with this source tune).  Beautiful track, just not enough source for OCR.

NO

[Liontamer]

Well I just waited in line for 6 hours with Ridley at the Sonic Speed Cafe, so I hope he's not like "Man, F him, WTF!", but the transformation here... is too transformational. Especially the 1-5-1 pattern, where was that here? 2-6-2? (Kidding.) I hear what proph's referencing to an extent, but I'll need to be educated on this source usage as well. Rather than NO, I'll read through Ridley's breakdown, but on first blush, I'd NO this.

?

EDIT (3/23/25): I don't know any theory, so I appreciate Wake's thorough breakdown. Agreed that in a vacuum, this sounds cool and is a well-made piece of music, but the connections to "Aquas" are too scant and disconnected, even for someone like me that's approved liberally arranged tracks like this and this. If there's any appetite for playing this more melodically straightforward, I'm certainly open to it, though I assume Ridley's cool with the approach he took and understanding that he went off the beaten path enough to make this a stretch, based on his comments. All good, and looking forward to your future stuff!

NO (resubmit)

Edited Monday at 03:54 AM by Liontamer
changed vote from ? to NO

[jnWake]

Opens up with a fun descending synth over the E minor pentatonic scale. Soon after, synth strings and a percussion enter. At 0:15 we have a synth doing a "F#-G-F#-E-D-E-F#-B" line which is technically the same line the choir does in Aquas (the line there starts on A but it's the same pattern). Now, the feels are completely different, you're doing the line on the 2nd of the scale here, while Aquas is doing that line on an A phrygian scale so it begins on the 1st of the scale and features a minor 2nd (it's also harmonized on 5ths, for an even more different feeling!). We're of course open to reinterpretation here so I'll "allow" this as source usage but it's so so different it's almost a technicality IMO. Anyway, this line repeats a few times until 0:36, where we get a more straight percussion oriented section. At 1:03, the melody returns until 1:24. I haven't mentioned this until now, but the soundscape you created is great. Really nailed the underwater feel you mentioned on the write-up. Love all the details on the sound design as well. In any case, 1:24 features a sound design oriented break, pretty cool. At 1:48 we return to a steady rhytm and there's now a synth playing a (5-1-5) arpeggio. The rest of the instruments seem pretty similar to the section around 0:36. Around 2:36 there's another break and the main melody returns and plays until 3:24 (from 2:39). Then, the track ends with a few synths playing the main ideas of the track.

On the arrangement side, this is a neatly crafted atmospheric piece. There's not many elements on the track but they flow well and you manage to keep interest alive with breaks and subtle variations. It's a bit repetitive, but that fits the genre/mood you were going for.

On production this is great, I really don't have much to nitpick. Good samples, good sound design, good percussion. Really well done.

However, as the other judges mentioned, this deviates way too much from the source to fit OCR's criteria. The choir melody from the original is represented (in a very transformed way) as the only melody on this track and plays 3 times for a total of ~86 seconds (21+21+44 as per the above breakdown), which is less than 50% of your 225 seconds track. We could count the 5-1-5 arpeggio entering at 1:48 but that's way too much of a stretch IMO, even more than the melody I'm already stretching to count.

Really well done track but it definitely needs more clear source usage to reach the front page.

NO

Edited Monday at 03:38 AM by jnWake