*NO* Sonic Forces "2017 Chill Str."

[Liontamer ⚖️]

Artist Name: L.T.H

It's intended to be a lo-fi Remix of Justice - Park Avenue. It was my favourite song for a while before moving to Sunset Heights.  I'm happy to make the first Sonic Forces piece on this site – if it gets accepted, of course.

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Games & Sources

Original arrangement by Tomoya Othani for the SEGA video game by the name of Sonic Forces.

Edited 7 hours ago by Emunator

[prophetik music ⚖️]

not quite 4db of headroom. this is a bop of an original, never heard it before.

opens with some keys playing some chord blocks that are really, really loud compared to what's going on in the background. there's some heavily filtered riffage in the background, and eventually we get a bass element at 0:23 that's playing some of the bass riff from 0:13 in the original. there's the melodic element brought in at 0:57, and it's in a traditional detuned piano. there's a bit of harmony after a while, and then the melody gets passed to a new instrument at 1:36. the keys at this part are again really loud compared to everything else. there's a shift at 2:15 to reduce the instrumentation and drop the drums and to layer the lead with a buzzy pad that's much lower. it does this a second time, and then it's done.

i'll be the first to note that lo-fi doesn't mean put a lowpass at 3khz on the entire track, which is what's happened here as far as i can see. so from a mix perspective, this needs some definite assistance. i'll page resident lofi expert @Emunator to suggest some more applicable production techniques since he'll be 1000% more detailed than i could be. in terms of the arrangement, what's here is very straightforward and simple. lo-fi doesn't mean that you can't still have a creative adaptation, and what's here is pretty much just a transcription. adding more LTH to it and not leaning so heavily on what made the original track great would be a great choice here. i think the workshop discord can definitely assist with giving some additional feedback and perspective on how to make the arrangement more personalized.

this isn't there yet, but it's a neat idea and i think it has legs. i'd love to hear it with a better mix and more personalization.

 

 

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[Chimpazilla ⚖️]

Yeah this isn't lo-fi, it's just EQd harshly at 3kHz and it sounds muffled.  Emunator can definitely provide better advice here, and explain the process, but proper lo-fi involves different types of processing, EQ and saturation than just cutting off the top end.  There are entire plugins dedicated to lo-fi production.  The first one that comes to mind is LO-FI-AF by Unfiltered Audio.

The arrangement is very conservative, and although it has some nice adaptations it could really use more personalization and variation.  The instruments and drums all sound very robotic and stiff.  The piano especially needs some humanization.  The writing is very repetitive and the energy is static throughout the piece, with no breakdown and the drums play all the way to the last section.  The same patterns play over and over and in combinations but they never do anything interesting once established.  The ending is brief and disappointing.  As for mixing and volume-balancing, I can't even comment on it in its current EQ-obliterated form.

I agree with proph that our Discord workshop channel will be a great place to get further advice and guidance on this one!

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[Emunator ⚖️]

I see I was batsignaled here!

I think the other two judges assessment of the track as it stands is right on the money - I see what you were trying to do with the EQ here, but actual lofi production is a lot more nuanced than that. I'm not going to harp too much on that issue, and try to focus my vote on suggestions for tools, resources, and techniques that will help you get closer to your vision. I do want to say that, when comparing this to the source, I like the sounds that you chose and feel like you've got a good ear for sound selection, especially given the high-energy nature of the original track - this approach totally brings something new to the table that, when executed to its full potential, could be really cool! I particularly love the bass sound that seems to have some resonance sweeps going on, it's really unique!

So, to recap - conceptually, this is a strong idea and you've got some good building blocks to work off of, but compositionally, it's still structurally too similar to the original track and needs more of your own flair to the arrangement in order to clear OCR's bar. However, the production quality is the main hangup, as there's a few major things that need addressing. I'll bullet point a few primary ones and then share some resources below:

• Remove the master EQ cuts that you have on your track - I sometimes do apply a very gentle EQ reduction to my lofi tracks to help with tone shaping, but they're usually a high shelf, not a high cut, and I'll apply them much closer to 10kHz and reduce by maybe 3dB - definitely not a full blown cut of almost all of the high frequencies! 
• Instead, I would put EQ/filters on each of your instruments or instrument groups and shape them individually. Play around with using filters that have a resonance built into them too, rather than just a plain EQ cut, which will help character and personality to the track. It will sound much more natural and full if you apply these filters at different frequencies depending on which instrument you're working with. 
• Other ways to achieve that lofi sound is with tape effects like pitch wobble and saturation - lofi production isn't just about cutting out frequencies, but also about doing more to warp/degrade the frequencies that you DO have.
• You want to make sure that your bass frequencies are still present - right now, there's not much in the way of bass, and the kick drum is much too subdued to fill that role either. This is where comparing with reference tracks will help.
• The drums and bass feel weak overall, as if you also applied a low cut to the track that removed a lot of the sub frequencies, or just mixed those elements far too quietly.
• Add textural layers - things like foley sounds, vinyl crackle, or even room noise, when mixed *very* subtly, can give your mix a sense of space. You don't want to overdo it, especially with vinyl crackle samples, but a tasteful dash of it will go a long way.
• Use reference tracks with a spectrogram plugin. I can't stress this one enough - download some of your favorite lofi tracks and load them up in your project file, then, using a plugin like SPAN, look at how the frequency spectrum is filled up by those tracks and then compare it to your own. You can learn a lot just by comparing your track to a finished track that already sounds good to you.

There's a lot of resources you can use to help execute this - there's a few plugins I'll suggest, but I would avoid trying to throw more plugins at your track to fix the problem. The issues I'm hearing stem more from experience and methods rather than not having good enough plugins. 

• Izotope Vinyl - this is an "all-in-one" lofi plugin that you can apply to your master track (again, I STRONGLY recommend not going overboard with this) that can do EQ shaping, tape wobble, and even introduce mechanical noise/hiss/scratches to emulate playing your song off of a record player. It's very easy to overdo it with these sounds, but this is a good starting point to show you how these different techniques will impact your sounds. 
• SPAN - this is a free monitoring plugin that shows a visual representation of how the frequencies in your song are distributed. You can't solely mix with visual cues - eventually, you've got to use your ears - but when you're troubleshooting, this can be a great way to diagnose problems with your mix, and compare them to reference tracks.
•  Lo-fi Reference Tracks - there are a number of songs published on OCReMix that are free to download and use as reference tracks. These have all passed the Judges Panel, so it should give you a good idea of where your track needs to be in order to pass that same bar.
• OCR Workshop - when in doubt, we have an active Workshop discord that you can use to get additional community feedback or participate in Office Hours events where you can submit your track for realtime critiques from the panel of Sages. 

I hope this is helpful and you continue to grow your skills and take advantage of the community resources we have available to help you get there :) 

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