*NO* Streets of Rage 2 "The Dreams of The Streets"

[Liontamer]

Artist Name: Genesis 83

I wanted to do a 90s House style version of Dreamer from Streets Of Rage 2 as an experiment and to test my own musical capabilities having been self taught and having zero musical knowledge.

This Track was composed in FL studio.

Yuzo Koshiro the original composer is a legend to many of us on OC Remix and his music has stuck with me from me childhood to adulthood. I hope i have done the track justice.

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Games & Sources

Streets Of Rage 2 - Dreamer and Various SFX 

Edited Wednesday at 02:17 AM by Liontamer
closed decision

[prophetik music]

opens with some filtered stutter synths. we get a lot more instruments at 0:14 - it gets pretty dense really quickly. a quick freq analysis sees a lot of sub-40hz content that's really clogging up the bottom of the mix. it also sounds like the hats are filtered alongside the arp - which means there's not much high content at all. so it sounds pretty condensed. dropping a significant highpass on the stuff below 40hz would be a big help. beyond that, the track is so compressed. it's very dense and oppressive. turning everything down a lot, getting volumes roughly where you want them before your compression and limiting, would be a big positive.

there's a bit of a break with sfx at the 1:00 mark, and then we're back to a repeat of the first 30s of the full band sound. this is followed by another sfx break with some electro guitar in there to mix it up a bit (but the backing elements just repeat twice in a row), and then we're back to another repetition of 0:30-1:00...and, well, you get the picture. there's a lot of wholesale repetition that just gets tiring. something to change it up each time - even changing synths would help! - is really needed to avoid it just being repeated over and over again. better to repeat something once too few times than once too many.

the same 30s of full band repeats like five or six times with various sfx around it until around 3:45 when the arp finally stops. the next several 16-bar sections involve the full band section repeating with various instruments added in or out, but it's the same thing overall. it repeats a few more time and then it's done with a kind of weird pitch as a final note. there's some audible static as well that just drops after a few seconds.

overall i like the concept - 90s house is a specific vibe and i think that SoR would fit that a lot. what's here though is maybe one minute of material stretched over five. i know that house can be repetitious, but there's loads of examples of keeping the overall feel moving consistently by using instruments that have natural change over time. this just sounds like the same 30s repeated at least ten times, with a few breaks for sfx that also have similar backing elements. i'd suggest trimming the length way back and finding ways to never say the same thing twice the same way. add a new instrument, change a synth, use a different drum fill, etc. - it's going to add a ton to the overall package.

 

 

NO

[Liontamer]

Man, this opened up so promising, so I was wondering how it could get NOed, then it became obvious as soon as more stuff faded in; this is total mud with no high-end clarity. Perhaps a purposeful approach, but the fullest parts sound swamped, almost like the track's in mono, which is brutal.

Had some sort of original interlude from 1:43-2:12 that didn't sound bad in a vacuum but also had 0 synergy with the  "Dreamer " treatment, then right back to the arranged groove at 2:13 basically copy-pasta'ed. Nah, you've gotta go somewhere else with this, barely anything's developing once the groove's established.

On the plus side, good use of sound effects here and there, even if they got mostly swallowed up and were lossy-sounding.

Yeesh, finally something new around 3:41, more focused on some SoR SFX sampling, then getting back into the melody and changing the textures a little more. Like proph alluded to, trim the fat and get to the meat of things more quickly. That said, it's not enough to just reduce the runtime. Man, this needs dynamics, it's almost all just slammed intensity, barely any "let me up" sections, or changes in the groove, OR exploration of other areas of the theme as a form of dynamic contrast. Then a complete nothing of an ending with no transition, how come? :'-(

This has potential, but it's gotta have further development. Poor mixing aside (is there stereo???), the core of this really beefs up the source tune nicely, so you have a legit good base here, but it has to change things up more quickly and not drag out.

As I say to all the wanna-be musicians, G83, I applaud you. :-) I have a ton of musical ideas and don't enter the arena, so I respect you aiming to create something and showing genuine promise on top of that. Do keep at it; would love to hear another pass at this one to see what more you can do with it!

NO (resubmit)

[Rexy]

You put this mix together from no musical background?  That's a bold effort; respect! :)

When I saw "90s house" and "Dreamer" in the same post, I was ready to brace myself to hear the melodies in that style - but little would I know that all you took from the source was the opening arpeggios, and then you ran with it for five minutes.  It's as valid as an arrangement approach as ever, but stretching it out into a guns-blazing track for that long, with hardly any opportunities to breakdown and build back up, makes it tiresome to listen to.

I understand that you were aiming for this progressive / dream house direction, but the best advice that I can give you is to listen to a lot of commercial reference tracks of this same genre - preferably radio edits when necessary, and definitely not club mixes - and pay attention to the textures' shaping over time.  You were on the right lines with textural variation, but dynamic shaping and a look into envelopes sound like the next big step.

The production techniques also need improvement.  The first thing I noticed was that master low-pass at 10k hz of all places.  If the idea of emulating 90s House for you similarly meant emulating the average MP3 file of the era, I could understand, but the 10k+ range ideally is where your higher-toned instrumentation should go, particularly your cymbal selection and any other similarly toned sounds.  However you decided to make that frequency cut, please undo it - you'll get a cleaner sound without it, and the reference tracks certainly don't have cuts like that.

Similarly, Brad also mentioned the overwhelming sub-frequencies as well.  I used an EQ analyzer to high-pass the file and that did take the edge off - but it's all on you to balance the rest.  Assuming this is your first musical project, I would suggest balancing out all the percussion pieces and SFX first, then get the bass to sit in, then the melody, then the pads, and finally any pitched rhythm parts.  Keep them all under 0dB both as individual instruments and on the master, and then you could do the rest with experimenting with your master chain and seeing what else works.

Not a bad start at all.  I like the vibes here, and I'm all for a trance arrangement like this to make its way onto the front page - but for this to get there, it needs more TLC in the mixing department, as well as a further look into the writing so that it doesn't drag like it's currently doing now.  I'm seeing potential, so please keep at it.

NO