Shadow the Hedgehog "Follow the Tornado" 2:47

Judge jnWake emerges from the shadows with... wait a minute, Wake's not really the skulky type -- he's actually super-visible over in Dwelling of Duels! But he's still manages to be a shadowy figure this time around, even when brightly, energetically arranging a flying theme from Shadow the Hedgehog! Wake explains how his synthy showcase would up flying in Tails' Tornado, all in tribute to current DoD poobah, evilsonic:

"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. I hadn't listened to the soundtrack before but it's pretty good, actually. Many themes are vocal, but I found this cool simple one to cover! 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!"

You see, even fellow judges can be like "I don't know what you'll think..." and start biting their nails, so don't feel underqualified if you're unsure about submitting something, just do it. Definitely take the chance and let the Js critiques fall where they may, and even our own staff underestimate themselves. :-) Always a helpful guy (even when shadowy!), Wake provided his arrangement breakdown, so go listen to the original and follow along behind the flying Tornado:

"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)!"

I was one of the judges and -- shock of shocks -- there turned out to be more than 50% source usage in play here! Like me, fellow judge paradiddlesjosh tipped his cap in respect to Wake's thorough expansion of Jun Senoue's brief original theme:

"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. [...]

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

Kudos to jnWake for his DoD entries encouraging him to explore all corners of VGM for great source tunes! Yet another spirited session here -- as a creator, Wake knows no other way but forward. :-) Progressive yet mellow, funky yet chillaxed, this was a nice squeezing of juice out of such a quick cue! :-)