[Liontamer]

Dave had been thinking about a DP, and the conflict with the panel over it made it get lost in the shuffle. Don wrote to me asking about the status of this MM6 mix a week or two ago, and I let him know how several on the panel had not been hot on the relative conservativeness of the arrangement as well as the EQ work. He also felt the EQ work wasn't his best once he relistened to it and let me know he would tinker with it, plus he redid some of the concluding guitar work (3:18-onward) presumably to help drive down arrangement concerns. Now that the revisions are done, I promised Don he could have a Fall-Through. The current version is 4:00-long. The old one is 4:01-long.

Originally Posted by Vurez

Hey Larry, I made the changes I wanted to make to Fortress of the Knight and I overwrote the old one on my site -
I changed the EQ of some of the instruments slightly for better or worse and I changed up the guitar part at the end.

Thanks

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http://www.zophar.net/nsf/megaman6.zip - Track 8 ("Knightman Stage")

As per the previous version, the arrangement starts off pretty conservative, basically a souped up cover of the original. The soundfield was still swamped sometimes (e.g. 1:07-1:17), but never for any long periods of time. From 1:28-onward, the arrangement proceeded to get more liberal and interpretive.

Don showed off again how he's one of the most effective in the community at sequenced guitar part. When he went back to the more straightforward rendition of the Knightman melody at 2:38 he made sure to push up the guitar part so that it was more audible, which stressed the interpretive embellishment on it moreso than the old version.

Since the volume on it was raised, it sounded like the guitar flubbed at 3:05 moving into the source's bridge as the guitar note cut off loudly and abruptly; maybe we can get that fixed?

One particular example of the old version feeling swamped was from 3:12-3:29 during the big finish where the guitar, vox, bells, and (especially) strings all mushed together indistinctly. The new version rebalances everything so that there's a clearer foreground and background. Dunno why that wasn't done with the 1:07-1:17 section, but it wasn't a big deal.

I just commented on some various points in the track just to share some thoughts on it. Overall, the approach started out very conservatively (albeit very personalized), but eventually moved over into some more interpretive material. A bit on the loud side, but fairly well produced with good energy, and the instrumentation choices gelled together nicely. Nice work.

YES

[The Orichalcon]

Works for me, some of those brass samples are a bit abbrasive. There's a lot of reverb on the stuff that's going on in the background (ie: that swamped sound.)

The drumwork is awfully uninspired. It's just there to keep a beat basically. Loved the switch in the beat around 2:30. Works for me. Could probably be more going on down there, but the rest of the mix distracts away from that.

Not a lot more to say. Good rearrangement. Enjoyable remix.

YES

[Vig]

This definitely sounds better than the earlier version I heard. The brass is still rough, but it's not nearly as bad as it was. Generally a lot of the samples sound clumsy. The brass is too punchy, the strings dont attack fast enough, the bells are pretty rough. I'd say the samples hurt this track a good deal. That said, the arrangement is solid, and the guitar work is pretty good. I think this one is close to the line, and so I'd like to hear some more votes, but I'll give it a YES

[zircon]

The production values here, as with all of Vurez' mixes, are absolutely superb. Lots of very high end samples that are actually used WELL in a convincing manner. At times the brass seems a little too loud, and I do agree with TO that the drumwork could be a little more interesting, but really, there's no way I could have any substantive complaints about the production. The 'swamped' soundfield is not really an issue for me after I listened to this a few times. It contributes to the unique sound.

The arrangement is kind of conservative at points, especially towards the beginning, and the constant wall of sound kind of kills the dynamics of things. If I had to pick the weakest area of the song it would probably be that. However, I don't really think it's significant enough of an issue to merit a no, considering how strong everything else is.

YES