Sonic Relief 2010 kicked off a few weeks back to help support Sport Relief 2010 and already we’ve raised a total of £134.00 thanks to a very kind Alex Peal who donated £128 and Gavin Storey who donated £6 and £1.69 to Gift Aid. A £6 donation isn’t all Gavin (also known as Gavvie at the SSMB) has done though, he’s also created an official charity album for the cause containing remixes of various tracks from all your favourite Sonic games.
Aswell as his Gavvie online tag Gavin also goes by the name Living Sedative in which he has previously created 3 other albums under so he has experience in the field of music and it certainly shows in this charity album which he has titled Songs For Sonic.
The album consists of 21 tracks
1. Green Hill Sonata 05:35
2. Mega Metropolis 02:55
3. On the Top of the Hill 03:02
4. Come Join the Carnival 04:30
5. Sunset Park Act 1 (Piano Mix) 01:31
6. Jumpin’ Jungle 01:56
7. Chemical Orchestra 03:39
8. Casino Jazz 01:55
9. Emerald Beach 01:37
10. Mystic’s Cave 02:48
11. Sunset Park Act 2 (Dance Mix) 01:31
12. Crystal Eggs 02:11
13. Soarin’ Over the Cosmos 03:25
14. Aqua Planet Rock 01:45
15. Oil in the Ocean 01:30
16. Twinkle Twinkle Little Cart 03:18
17. Sunset Park Act 3 (Rock Mix) 01:31
18. Lava Reef Symphony 03:02
19. Death Egg Mk. II 01:19
20. Final Resonance 02:47
21. Starry Starry Starlight Zone 01:46
The album is now available for you to stream or download for free at Gavin’s Living Sedative website, if you like/can you may also pay an optional donation amount of your choice to our cause which will go straight to the Sport Relief 2010 charity. So far Gavin has raised £6 for the cause from this album and after giving it a listen myself it is well worth paying money to charity for.
Thanks again to Alex Peal and Gavin for their donations and support for our cause, we will keep you updated on futher Sonic Relief 2010 developments. Meanwhile if you’d like to donate to the cause you can at our JustGiving page, we also have a competition to show our appreciation for those donations where you can submit ‘Something Sonic and sporty’ for Charity. Each paid submission will be entered into the contest for Best Sonic Relief Submission 2010 and our favourite will win a prize!
Submissions to be sent to Shadzter@sonicstadium.org
The closing date for submissions and donations will be midnight (GMT) on Sunday 21st March 2010 to coincide with the end of the Sport Relief Weekend.
(You will need a credit or debit card to donate via JustGiving)
You can contact us at:
Shadzter@sonicstadium.org
MK Skillz (or Sir MK as he’s now known) via PM at the SSMB.
I just listened to the first track. I am so getting this. I am too donating toward it and I’m going to try do a Sonic thing for the competition too. This is truly great stuff.
Living Sedative needs to go back and turn these tracks down. They are clipping like no other.
Hmmm… They all sound like glorified MIDI tracks to me.
Can I just say that, first of all I’m loving that this is on the front page of TSS!
Secondly, I appreciate the feedback I’m getting, both positive and negative. With regards to going back to the tracks and turning some of the volume levels down, it’s something I might try and do, time permitting. If not, then I apologise in advance.
As for the MIDI comment, I was working off of MIDI tracks when working on the album, so I can see why you’d think that. Again, for future mix albums like this I’m going to try a lot harder to make the music better. This album has set a benchmark, so it’s up to me to go and improve on that.
As I said, I do appreciate all feedback, so if you want to tell me it’s utter crap, then go ahead and say it. It’s your opinion, you’re entitled to it, and I’m not going to throw my toys out the pram because of it. On the flip side, if you want to wax lyrical about how awesome it is, I’ll take that too 😀
Anyway, thanks to all of you for listening, and for those who’re donating money to Sonic Relief through it, extra special thanks to you too!
Gavvie: Try actually remixing the songs and using better music samples. I think I can -name- the MIDIs that you are using. Again, I highly recommend going back and turning it down. It is clipping badly and it’s an easy fix. Your bass on a few songs, the “Oil Ocean” one in particular, is awful. It’s so low and distorted that you can’t even tell that it’s playing notes.
Thank you for being cool about critique. That’s the attitude you need to improve. Also, thanks for supporting Sonic Relief.
Heh, that last comment got me pretty downhearted. Still, I’m willing to give remastering the songs a go.
The original idea I’d had for Songs for Sonic was to remix the tracks, which is why I had hold of the MIDIs. The idea was to think of a genre that didn’t exactly fit the track, and make it fit. When I actually got around to trying to do it, the limits of my musical knowledge were somewhat exposed.
I realise that what you’ve been downloading and critiquing is something of a cop-out, and it’s not been something I’ve been trying to hide either. I felt it best to be honest straight off the bat. I didn’t intend to deceive anybody with this album. I know you’re not suggesting as such, but I felt that I should come out and say it.
However, I’m also aware that I can’t leave the album in it’s current state, as it seems more people are UNHAPPY with it than there are people who are HAPPY. Of course, it could be that the problems are being voiced more openly, as is the case with everything, but I still want to try and convert people, and at least make the album listenable, if nothing else.
I’m going to go back through each track, and make changes to them so that the problems that are in them are fixed. I’m going to clone each channel and readjust the volume, so in theory there’ll be no clipping. Where clipping continues to occur, I’ll change the instrumentation around a bit so that it sounds a lot cleaner. There’s also a couple of tracks which use guitar slides, I’m gonna actually make those guitar slides to give a cleaner sound.
Believe me, if I was a better musician, and had access to better samples, I’d be doing all I can to make this truly kick-ass, with some awesome remixes and other stuff. Sonic fans, and Sonic Relief, deserve as much. However, I’m still quite new to the whole game, and I’m honestly no good at remixing anything, as you’ve obviously noticed.
I apologise in advance that I let you down, and I hope the changes, whilst not what you’re wanting entirely, do help to allieviate some of the disappointments that you felt whilst listening to it.
Brad’s pretty harsh when it comes to music. Which is what shows that he definitely has an ear for these things. 😀
Ugh, I can’t even listen to it because of the clipping D:
Seriously, the music’s not too bad, but you’ve got it WAY too loud. You might just not have an ear for it, but it’s clipping very, very badly. I don’t know what program you use to mix it all together, but examine the volume for the tracks (open it up in something like Audacity). If the volume looks like it’s constantly at max capacity, it’s way too loud. It should never hit max, or else you’re going to get those popping noises all over the place.
Sounds like they put Midi files into fl studio I should know I used to do the same.
As the other guy said its clipping like crazy!
@Silva: Correct. I’m a sound designer for film and television. That’s my job.
I really like Lava Reef Symphony and Starlight Zone.