Liontamer Posted May 27, 2007 Share Posted May 27, 2007 Remixer Name: Jewbei Remixer E-Mail: jjoyner17@yahoo.com Remixer Website(s): www.myspace.com/jewbeii and jewbeii.googlepages.com Name of Game(s): Sonic The Hedgehog 2 Song: Emerald Hill Comments: My man Jewbei didn't give me any comments... although this song was created as a battle against DJ Econcerto to see who can do a better mix Link to the higher quality version is: Link to Mix: -SkullFire PS: I have permission from Jewbei himself, feel free to email him and ask if SkullFire has permission ;D ----------------------------------------------------------- Pretty decent power to open things up, though the encoding being so lossy hindered it a bit. Not a good idea to sub this long of a mix and somehow not expect the sound quality to suffer. Not sure if there was a little bit of distortion going on, but the volume was a bit rough. At around 9 minutes long, this definitely has a ways to build, so it gets leeway in those respects. 2:18's worth of buildup that had nothing to do with the source at all sounds like a dealbreaker, but we'll hear how it all turns out. Source came in at 2:18. Decent stuff with the synth pads in back, as well as the buildup fading in starting at 2:34. The melody's treated pretty uncreatively, so the focus is on the other elements to carry the weight. Once the beats came in at 2:46, things felt distorted and cluttered. 3:14-3:42 dropped out the melody in favor of a minimalist section based off the progression of the original. 3:42-4:24 went for an original section loosely based on a Sonic the Hedgehog feel for the lead synths. 4:24 went into some completely original material that had 0 to do with Sonic 2 featuring sampled Kate Lesing vocals. Some very cursory research showed that the vocals are royalty-free and sold for uses like this, so that's on the up-and-up. But still, what the hell's up with this section? This is supposed to be a Sonic 2 rearrangement, not a trance mix with only a couple of minutes of Sonic even in it. When you have original ideas, they need to seamlessly connect with the parts that are arrangement. This here was just a sloppy cut-and-paste quality addition. Went like this all the way until 7:12, with an equally poor transition back to the "Emerald Hill Zone" material. Sonic 2 stuff at 7:12 arranged the chorus, again treating the melody with little interpretation, until 7:40 went for something more interpretive within the structure of the genre and stayed there. Everything was cluttered and distorted on the production side for the last couple of minutes as well. Well, if you cut the fat out of this one (i.e. 3 minutes of stuff in the middle having nothing to do with Sonic 2) you get a lot more leeway to bump up the encoding quality. The production needs an overhaul; right now this is really messy, especially when things kick into high gear. The arrangement is pretty weak. You have some observable base ideas in trying to adapt the Emerald Hill Zone to trance, but they're not nearly interpretive or sophisticated/complex enough. Keep working toward improvement, you've got the initial skills and need to develop them. NO Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Malcos Posted May 30, 2007 Share Posted May 30, 2007 After a super repetitive 2 mins and 18 secs, we get the source tune. The part at 4.29 when the drum loop suddenly comes in doesn't sound too good. It's not mandatory at all that the lyrics should have anything to do with the game, but in this case it could have helped, as the links to the source are scant for most of this mix. As it is, this is a trance song with some elements of sonic thrown in. The arrangement is very very simple indeed, and this added to the repetitive nature of the mix doesn't make for a very engaging listen. This needs a complete overhaul. You have the skills necessary, but the execution here just wasn't at OCR standards. NO Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
big giant circles Posted July 23, 2007 Share Posted July 23, 2007 holy shit, 9 minutes? I'm not even 10 seconds into the track, and I'm already feeling iffy. Why? Because you've encoded at 80 kbps, which is borderline auto-reject territory right there. Since the track sound OK otherwise, I suppose it's only fair to *officially* vote. K, like those before me have declared, 2+ minutes of generic trance is a little too far out for an OCR-qualified track. Especially one that's 9 dang minutes long. You could have cut out most of that and got closer to a far more respectable 7 minutes and encoded at a better quality (say it with me: VBR) At any rate. Cymbals/hats have been eaten up by the encoding. I hate that. Woah, we got vocals. Guess they're ok. Damn, Larry--how the hell do you research these things? Anyway. Yeah, I tell you what. This could definitely get on here with some pretty simple fixes. Namely: - Cut out/minimal as much of the non-source stuff as you can to get this a little closer to maybe 6 minutes AT THE MOST. That will enable you to: - Encode higher quality. 'Nuff said. - I'd be thrilled to hear a little more interesting synth leads. Trance is cool, but the textures just wear thin. Innovate. That's pretty much my primary gripes. Generic, but fairly solid in terms of quality (with the exception of the lenght vs. encoding, etc.) For now, NO Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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