OCR04856 - *YES* Shadow the Hedgehog "Follow the Tornado"

[Liontamer ⚖️]

Artist Name: jnWake

Another month, another DoD track! This one's from december though, as I didn't enter on january (breaking a 25 month streak... everything ends eventually!). Anyway, this is my first DoD related submission that's an ALT track, which are submissions that aren't sent to the competition. Many of them are jokes but some people send alts because they have too many musical ideas! In my case, this particular track was created as the background music for Naop's (another DoD member) interview of evilsonic (yet another DoD member, who's now the site's director). Some time ago, Naop (who hosts a podcast) started doing interviews of DoD members and since july has been submitting snippets of interviews (with background music) as ALT entries to DoD. The first one was from my own interview and had evilsonic doing background music, so for december we turned it around! As evilsonic's name comes from Shadow (the character), I thought it'd be fun to cover something from his titular game. After listening to the entire OST, I settled on "Event - Flying with Tornado", a 20 second track with one fun melody... extending that to a full cover was fun but I'm not 100% how the judges will feel about it!

The source is basically one guitar melody over a G# -> F# chord progression and then some descending chromatic arpeggios to end (as Tails' ship Tornado falls to its doom). Lemme now do a quick breakdown:

0:00-0:05: Descending arpeggio from the source.

0:05-0:29: G# to F# (over G# bass but still) and some variations.

0:30-0:53: More direct cover of the source material over a chill backing.

0:53-1:17: I don't think I can pretend there's any source here, but the melodies I wrote feel fitting for the source's style!

1:17-1:30: A bridge, also "original".

1:30-2:22: Source melody on piano as we do a key change for a synth solo that begins with melodies taken directly from the source.

2:22-end: Variations over the descending arpeggio riff to end the track.

Hope you enjoy! In my mind there's over 50% source but you'll be the judges (literally)!

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Games & Sources

Game: Shadow the Hedgehog

Source: Event - Flying with Tornado

[prophetik music ⚖️]

opens with a fun flourish and then hits the groove right away. i don't really hear the bass instrument a ton but there's a lot of kick off the bat, and the kick's tone is pretty blah. there's a nice break right at 0:30 that's the melodic material right through - the vibe here reminds me a lot of the music for a puzzle game i'm playing right now, Tents and Trees. picks up at 0:54 with a descending pattern that mimics the ending of the original but i don't think is directly related to what it does. bridge section has some fun crunch in a few chords.

1:30 gets back to the melodic material in the solos, although it's not 1:1. there's an extended set of the descending chromaticism to end the track, and then it's done.

so, the 900lb hedgehog in the room - is there enough source? i hear source from 0:00-0:05 directly, the chord progression at 0:05 is the same initially, and there's some instrumentation elements that map over (like the bass is close to but not exactly the original), so i'll call it 0:05-0:17. 0:30-0:53 for sure. 1:30-1:58 from the solo is pretty close. and the end section is all good, 2:22-2:45 (with 2:45 being the end of the track). that's 90/165 seconds, which is definitely over. so we're good there.

the mix pops nice although i'd like the bass instrument to be more forward given that there's not a lot of unique instruments in the mix. i think that the adaptation feels great too - there's a lot of customization to the melody, which is needed since the original is only 25s long - and there's a lot of unique stuff that i didn't expect, like the chromatic ending. this is a fun one, nice work.

 

 

YES

[Liontamer ⚖️]

I’m with it, although the beat pattern quickly plodded, so I would have loved more variety with that part of the writing. Not as fluid and developed as many of Wake past works, but that’s a much higher bar than OCR’s; otherwise, this was solid, and a nice squeezing of juice out of such a quick cue. :-)

YES

[paradiddlesjosh ⚖️]

I remember this one from Smash Month, only now it's just the instrumental! Hits a little different without Naop's interview with Dweller over the top. Hard to believe it's from a source tune that's only about 25 seconds.

Your arrangement flows a lot like something off The Weather Channel: strong start, builds well (particularly the extra bar going into the solo at 1:30), strong finish. Using the source outro to make a bookend intro and outro was a great choice, doubly so for extending the ending.

I'll second proph's nitpicking about the level of the bass, and I'm not the biggest fan of the kick and snare sounds, but these are also nitpicks. What's here is above the bar.

Hook this onto the Tornado, strap in, and ride it onto the front page.

YES