OCR04959 - *YES* Oregon Trail 1 & 2 "Under a Summer Moon"

[Liontamer ⚖️]

Artist Name: minusworld

ARTIST NOTES

I'm copying and pasting this from an explanation in the DoD discord. As usual for me, this is a DoD entry, this time from February 2025, Katajun Month! Any PC game was eligible.

This track came about because my wife got excited about an Oregon Trail cover when she learned the theme was essentially PC games. I was *planning* to take a break, but told her if she came up with a concept that I would do an Oregon Trail arrangement. Given *gestures at everything* going on these days, she came up with the idea of disparate people learning to get along to make something unique and special.

Only some releases of Oregon Trail have soundtracks, but it turns out the OST is 99% American folk songs. The only original piece is the title track (cf. http://videogamemusicnerd.blogspot.com/2013/05/my-gaming-audio-history-oregon-trail.html). For the rest of the arrangement, we visited the Oregon Trail 2 soundtrack which has more original pieces… including two tracks for “Native Settlement” 1 and 2 which are basically recordings of indigenous chanting.

The “story”, then, became one where Oregon Trail settlers stumble upon an indigenous gathering at night, and both find something they enjoy about the others’ music, finally combining into something beautiful and hopeful at the end. …That was the idea, anyway. 😅 I hope it comes across.

 Thanks to my collaborators for making this happen! It was really fun to gather a large crew to throw all these weird instruments together.
* Lady Varda - concept, co-arranger
* DeLuxDolemite  - drumkit
* Mattmatatt  - harmonica
* Steven Higbee - ocarina
* optimizasean  - violin
* me - vocals, acoustic guitar, bass

I really wanted live drums for this one, and DeLuxDolemite delivered! (I don’t mix live drums often, though, so I apologize for any quirkiness. 🫠)
Mattmatatt went 500% overboard, recording not just one but five stacked harmonica tracks which sounded AWESOME. He also gave great mix feedback.
While listening to some Native American flutes, I noticed that many sounded like ocarinas, so I hit up Steven Higbee for a little ocarina work.
optimizasean did the violins, which he turned around in like 2 days after getting the parts!

Electric guitar is my main instrument, and this is my first non-acoustic remix that has no EGs in it whatsoever. To jam my own personal style into the arrangement, I went a little ham on the bass instead. 😅

Lastly, a word about the vocals: I was exceedingly nervous about this part given, well, history. I wanted to be respectful, so I spent quite a bit of time reading up and watching videos on indigenous music. I even found and read an ethnomusicology publication by the Smithsonian in the 1900’s. 🔎 It turns out many chants are comprised of vocables rather than words—that is, vocal sounds with no meaning, such as “la la la” or “meedlymeedlymeeeee”. In these publications, chants are recorded by writing down the vocables, therefore I mimicked this by writing down the vocables for sele ct phrases from Native Settlement 1 and 2 (from the OT2 OST) and did my best to replicate those.

In the end, this was weird track to arrange (and co-arrange, at that!). It was way outside my norm, but I hope it is enjoyable and I hope it conveys a sense of wistful hope.

Here's the link to that Smithsonian publication: https://repository.si.edu/bitstream/handle/10088/34591/bae_bulletin_136_1943_No28.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y

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Games & Sources

0:00-0:25 - Oregon Trail 2: Native Settlement 1 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kSiyb9YoOe8&list=PLcygF2UN-KeaCDcVwUPfhdkSok8dF6LhR&index=14)
0:25-0:47 - Oregon Trail 2: Native Settlement 2 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pEc7J4woJLQ&list=PLcygF2UN-KeaCDcVwUPfhdkSok8dF6LhR&index=16)
0:47-1:09 - Oregon Trail: Title Theme B section (https://youtu.be/e7uR_WnDIv8?feature=shared&t=46)
1:09-1:20 - Oregon Trail 2: Title Theme A section (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YsGtUJNoZVw&list=PLcygF2UN-KeaCDcVwUPfhdkSok8dF6LhR&index=2)
1:20-2:27 - Oregon Trail: Title Theme (https://youtu.be/e7uR_WnDIv8?feature=shared)
  (1:43-1:54 Oregon Trail 2: Trail Theme 1 cameo) (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ALKH-wHXxdM&list=PLcygF2UN-KeaCDcVwUPfhdkSok8dF6LhR&index=7)
2:27-2:50 - Original Transition
2:50-song end - Oregon Trail: Title Theme + Oregon Trail 2: Native Settlement 2

[prophetik music ⚖️]

what an interesting idea for this. the opening section sounds great to my uneducated ears - this is an aspect of music history i've got little experience in. i wasn't exactly expecting queen at 0:25, but hearing how the vocal fragments fit into the setting you put it in is so cool. the americana section at 0:47 is nowhere near as much a change as i expected. there's some very hard panning into the right hear that i don't care for all in the plectral instruments, but other than that this is neat. the following ocarina is great and well-performed - wish it was a touch louder actually! the subsequent violin sounds great too, there's a bit of an earthy tone to it that really fits well. the chorded instrument that comes in after at 1:43 is a little dense and doesn't sound like it's in the same room as the rest of the instruments. this comes back to the harmonica for the OT title theme, and then we finally get our first real break at 2:27. there might have been a bit too long until getting to this. it feels really nice at that point to settle a bit. the last big section has the violins aping the vocal elements at 2:50 - what a fantastic concept, i'm surprised how much that fits together. there's one last bit of native settlement 2 and it's done.

that's a whole lot of ideas and themes in a row, but it feels more like folks sitting around a fire and passing the lead around in a circle, surprisingly enough. it's a really neat feel. the mix is bright and forward, and the drums in particular sound a bit over-EQ'd, especially the hats and snare, but that might be partially due to recording methods.

there's a few little quibbles here and there, but this is a super fun approach that is novel and interesting. i love the leap of faith that is trying the traditional vocal methods - i'm really impressed with how it turned out. fantastic job.

 

 

YES

[XPRTNovice ⚖️]

First, a talk on the piece itself.

It's really nicely done. I like all the melodic elements, I like the way that the drums have that mid 90s feel to them, where the samples are kind of like...lower bitrate MP3 that you'd download. Like proph said, there's a great folksy feel to this that I really enjoy. Weirdly reminds me of how the drums sound on the Xenogears Creid album. 

The performances are all REALLY solid. Everything feels very human, which you totally need when you're making it feel like these are real people around a campfire. 

Mixing wise, I think everything fits together. Couple of nitpicks:

- Guitar plucks at 1:00 are a bit loud and very hardpanned in the right ear which was a little off to me. 

- At 2:50 when things get loud, to me it sounds like the drums are over-compressing, though; I hear some pumping and breathing in the kick and the cymbals that kicked me out for a minute. It's not something that puts it below the bar, but it did make me sit up and notice (instead of noticing the otherwise excellent composition). 

In short, this track is really awesome and it should be on our site. 

But, second, I can't let this go without saying this: I have enough experience in the public eye at this point I can say that the internet will not appreciate this. If there's one thing that internet culture doesn't care about, it's rational thought. The amount of research you've done pales in comparison to the fact that you're not a Native American - end of argument. You could be a PhD scholar of Native American studies and sing this and the mob will still come after you. We no longer exist in an environment where tasteful appreciation is not confused with appropriation - all cultural borrowing from marginalized peoples is currently viewed as bad. I coming from a place that is very cynical and jaded, so take what I say with a grain of salt here. 

Despite the above, we have no OCR standards regarding this, and I truly believe you DID do the research and you ARE being respectful. I would just be remiss in saying that the community will welcome this track with open arms. The obvious (complicated) solution to this would be to find a Native American in our community and have them sing it, but you may not be able to. 

YES 

[paradiddlesjosh ⚖️]

This one's a pretty easy pass imo. proph and XPRT nailed the mixing critiques; in particular, hi-hat bleed into the snare mic is inevitable without some kind of shielding between the cymbals and the microphone, and it's very easy to overhype the hats in the snare channel while trying to boost the snare's presence in the upper mids (3-6kHz). I could certainly live with less hi-hat in the mix! Still, I don't think it's enough to be a dealbreaker, not in the context of the performance quality from y'all.

One thing I will note: it looks like there's a peak in the left channel around 0:46 right before the transition from Native Settlement 2 to the OT1 Title Theme B section, just before Mattmatatt's harmonica comes in. Any chance we could get a new .wav before posting to the site?

If folks on the internet want to complain about the vocables, I say let 'em. I'll take minusworld at his word that his approach was well researched and agree that what's here is a tasteful, appreciative interpretation. This is well above our bar, nitpicks about the mix included.

YES