*NO* Mega Man 2 'Quickman and Company Take Five'

[djpretzel]

Hi Judges Panel,

I would like to present to you "Quick Man and Company Take Five", my very first mix and submission to OC ReMix. I'm so excited! OC ReMix has been such an inspiration to me, and I'm thrilled to finally be able to (hopefully) become part of the community:)

Anyway, I suppose you want to know more about the mix (and not how much I love you guys), so here are the details:

INFORMATION

Remixer name: Rara Avis
Real name: Eilene Hao
Email: eilene@gmail.com
Your userid on our forums: 28041?

ReMix Info
Game: Mega Man 2
Songs: all 8 boss level themes, boss battle music

ABOUT THE MIX

Story: Quickman decided he needed to take a break from his wily, evil robot ways, so he called up his buds Airman, Bubbleman, Woodman, Crashman, Heatman, Metalman, and Flashman to take five. What better way to relax than to jam in their jazz band?

Inspiration: QM&CTF was inspired by Paul Desmond's classic 5/4 jazz piece "Take Five". I haven't heard very many pieces in 5/4, and I've always felt like the awesomeness of Mega Man music would adapt itself well to jazz, so this naturally fell into place (although I must say that adapting the original themes to jazzy 5/4 from 4/4 was pretty challenging at times:) ). In style with the original "Take Five", I tried to go with a laid back feel. What would their themes sound like on their day off?

Instrumentation: piano, saxophones, trumpets, trombones, acoustic bass, vibes, and drums.

Structure:
0:00 Intro (Quickman theme)
0:35 Chorus (Quickman theme)
1:10 Solos (8 measure solos of the Airman, Bubbleman, Woodman, Crashman, Heatman,
Metalman, and Flashman themes, performed by each boss of course)
3:11 Chorus (Quickman theme)
3:40 Coda (boss battle music and victory fanfare)

All tracks were sequenced and synthesized with a Yamaha DGX-205 keyboard.


So this is my mix; I hope you like it.:) I look forward to your feedback and any tips you may have about remixing in general! Thanks for everything in advance, and have fun listening to all your submissions!

Best,
Eilene

[Liontamer]

http://www.zophar.net/nsf/megaman2.zip - Quite a few

You go to Stanford, eh? Heard of these guys? http://www.institutefunk.com

Well, the first thing that you notice is the the production is muffled and down in the dumps. Second thing you notice is that it's General MIDI. I think if you listen to most of the music on the site, you'd realize that this doesn't compare favorably to what we have at all.

If you wanna figure out how to get a much better render of your MIDI to MP3, I'd say head over to VGMusic's (http://www.vgmusic.com/phpBB2/viewforum.php?f=12) forums (http://www.vgmusic.com/phpBB2/viewforum.php?f=13) and see what info you can find. Head over to the ReMixing forum (http://www.ocremix.org/phpBB2/viewforum.php?f=7) here to figure out where to go beyond General MIDI. There are lots of good, free options (http://www.ocremix.org/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=23568).

Actually a pretty fun medley/arrangement at times, but you need to step up that game, miss. (Ice Cube: "I got ALL the game!" [/Friday])

NO

[Vig]

some of these criticisms may be overblown because i'm a jazz snob.

first off, the sequencing isnt tight. The piano in particular sounds off..it sounds like it was recorded poorly then not quantized, although it's possible it was quantized not taking into account the syncopated groove.

Furthermore, the piano comping is hopelessly reptitive and mechanical. jazz pianists dont play the same chords and the same rhythms over and over again.

the horns are all unconvincing, and the sequencing is mechanical at times and sloppy at others. i dont get it. some quantization is a must.

The concept isnt bad, but this is very sloppy.

NO

[Harmony]

Firstly, that’s a great submission e-mail. From the interesting inspiration section to the arrangement breakdown, the e-mail gets a YES.

Moving to the mix, I agree that 4/4 to 5/4 can be a difficult transition sometimes. Thematically I think the switch has been pulled of relatively well. The major distractions IMO are the sloppy performance and the muddy mixing. Jesse’s comments on the performance weren’t overblown. Certainly don’t 100% quantize everything, but use some discretion as to what needs to be quantized and by how much. The muddiness is really easy to fix with a little equalizer and levels work. The toms in the drum solo at 3:06 are a good example of an element that needs some of it’s low EQ taken out. The bass is the major element that needs to be kept in check, especially during it’s brief solo at 3:44, but it’s not helped by the piano which is lacking mid-high frequencies. I like the piano sample though. It’s very Take-Fiveish.

Cool concept and I hope that after a little more practice and some time in the WIP and ReMixing forums the Mega Man bosses can get together again and really jazz it up.

NO

[GrayLightning]

Yeah, jesse is right on this one. The rhythm piano is way redundant. The whole mix just sounds very unconvincing. There's really no production value here of note and the sounds are very GMish.

A fun and enjoyable listen despite its sloppy nature, but really, it's not anywhere near the bar at this point. I hope you consider retooling this mix for a resubmission, as this has a lot of potential. Best of luck.

NO