A Short Hike "Adventures Ahead" 5:58

The way towards adventure is over yonder, courtesy Gaspode's bold trek into Mark Sparling's outdoorsy score for A Short Hike!

"Recently, I played the little open-world indie game »A Short Hike« and immediately fell in love with its great soundtrack. The song I remixed is full of great little uplifting melodies. I tried to incorporate most of them, but I changed their order or used them as background elements. I can provide a source breakdown if you want, but maybe you want to explore my interpretation for yourself beforehand. ;o)"

WE don't need a source breakdown. :-P Why? We've got a musical pathfinder in judge prophetik music in our back pocket (though he may be caught up in a sense of winged wonderment...):

"opens with some tempo-synced elements that apes the opening chord progression, and then at 0:18 we get the arp pattern that's in the strings in the original. there's an interesting feel at 0:18 - the backing arp sounds strings-adjacent, and the big verby drums and timpani give it an orchestral new age feel, but the lead synths are very spacey and different. the bit of glide on the lead that comes in at 0:53 is nice.

there's a bit of a break at 1:31 - still highly rhythmic and tempo-synced, but not any percs for a bit. the strings pulsing in the background again are nice - the interplay between real and synthetic elements is fun. the escalation element in the stop-and-go at 2:27 is really nice.

there's a change in the feel at 2:41, and suddenly we're two instead of three for a little bit. there's a feel of wonder and anticipation in this section, which is interesting and i can't really quantify. accelerating towards and then reaching the 'peak' of this section and feeling the beat drop out from underneath at 3:18 is reminiscent of cody sailing over the waterfall in marahute's arms in the beginning of Rescuers Down Under (one of my favorite animated films). the subsequent section transitions into a slow letdown around 3:50 - almost as if we can't get to that height again, and we know it - and then builds itself back up on the other side over the course of the next minute to a peak at 4:50. [...] it's a nice cozy payoff section for the last minute of the piece. one last chord, and some fade, and we're done.

this is outstanding. the work evokes a sense of yearning among other emotions - really superb realization throughout. i particularly appreciated the nuance in the pacing and in the volumization between each section - there's loads of extra attention paid to ensure that each element is just in the right place for each section, regardless of where it's being used. the track sounds fantastic. excellent work."

Gaspode's a careful creator, apparent from the detail work placed in the wide range of arrangements he's featured on OCR, particularly his expedition into A Short Hike. Like proph impressed upon us, prepare to be taken on a journey, as this one's a strong example of retaining the melodic fundamentals of the source material but evoking a different mood via the instrumentation; the throwback feel of the synths definitely gave this some 80s energy with some cinematic flair & flourishes. We've also got another arrangement from this game waiting in the wings, so A Short Hike fans are gonna be feasting with the combined powers of Gaspode's scenic serenity and a debuting arranger making their ascent to Hawk Peak (and our front page) in due time...