prophetik music ⚖️ Posted October 27 Posted October 27 (edited) Inspired by Living in the City from Sonic R, my personal favorite music track in the game. Games & Sources Sonic R - Living in the City Edited 7 hours ago by paradiddlesjosh
prophetik music ⚖️ Posted October 28 Author Posted October 28 energetic original. opens with an orchestral stab and some very loud pads over what sounds like a midi guitar. the entire mids are very blown here - everything is very loud in that range, the pads especially, and it is clipping constantly - and you can't really hear anything going on. percussion are pretty quiet until the ~2:00 mark when a very loud half-time beat comes in. this continues for a while until 2:56 when it gets even more clippy and overblown, and that continues until the track ends. the instrumentation throughout is so overblown that i can't really make out any elements of the music itself, so it's hard to comment on the arrangement. you need to start by turning every instrument down by half, and then being more intentional about what is saying what instead of just layering in big sustained pads on top of one another. i'd definitely recommend the workshop (either the forum or discord) and especially the regular Office Hours meetings on discord as a way to peel back some of the layers here and get to the core of what you're hoping to do. NO
jnWake ⚖️ Posted yesterday at 01:56 AM Posted yesterday at 01:56 AM Sonic R has such a classic soundtrack... This begins with an orchestra hit and we then get an acoustic guitar that sounds like the MIDI soundfont of old Guitar Pro versions accompanied by some pads. The harmony here is rather odd, I'm fairly sure the pads are playing A-B-C as lowest notes but the guitar chords are F-G-Am, so they're not gelling well together. A synth bass of sorts enter a bit later and the soundscape gets very muddy, very hard to parse what each instrument is doing. At 0:29 the soundscape focuses on some chords without much evident direction. A piano melody joins in a bit later, not sure if it's echoing part of the source. At times there's new instruments added but they're usually buried behind the pad and guitars. Around 2:00 the soundscape becomes more sparse and I can hear the bass clearly finally. At 2:30 we return to a similar vibe than before for a bit, until a piano playing the main chord progression from the original joins in. I don't think the different parts fit together very well here, it sounds like a mass of unrelated sounds. I'll be honest, this is quite below our bar in both arrangement and production... On arrangement, this is a very repetitive piece without much clear focus or direction. The original track features a ton of melodies and different chord progressions yet I barely hear any of that here. Also, I'm not sure most of the parts really fit together during many parts of the cover: chords and bass that don't fit together, melodies on top of each other without any relation... On production, this falls on 2 main aspects: mixing and samples. Regarding the first, the track is very unbalanced, with the background elements (pads and guitar) being often extremely loud, making it impossible to really hear the other instruments. On the second, several of the samples used are of very low quality, like the acoustic guitar during the first section. I'd recommend going to our Discord and seeking advice in our #workshop channel, where people can help you understand more about arranging and production. NO
paradiddlesjosh ⚖️ Posted 7 hours ago Posted 7 hours ago Really cool source! I haven't been plugged into Sonic since the Genesis era so it's refreshing to get exposed to new tracks. I'm probably going to sound like I'm dogpiling with my fellow Js. First, the track is much too loud; I'm going to echo prophetik's suggestion to start by cutting the volume in half for every instrument. There isn't anything cohesive about this track in its arrangement or production aspects. It's unclear what instrument has prominence above and beyond the others while they all fight to be heard. On top of that, there is very little resemblance to the source material in your track's arrangement beyond the chord progression. The vocal melody is by far the most unique aspect of "Living in the City" and it doesn't sound like it's represented in your arrangement. At the risk of being a broken record, I also recommend checking out the #workshop channel on our Discord server or the workshop here on the forums, especially the Office Hours meetings most Wednesday evenings. The folks in our community can help you take this track to the next level. NO
Recommended Posts