ReMix: Mega Man 9 'A New Beginning'

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Mega Man 9: Back in BlueMega Man 9

CarboHydroM! It's been awhile! One nice thing about long-running projects is that a lot of familiar names pop up on release who haven't submitted or been posted in months or years. Christophe writes:

"As the original version of the song has a decent duration, I wrote a very straight forward arrangement with live guitars and bass, and sequenced drums and synths. I focused on making the song sound live, rather than creating completely new stuff out of it. Using a wah pedal on lead guitars during the verses is the idea I'm the most proud of. It just sounds completely natural this way, and yet I'm not at all a wah guy. As usual, I had a lot of fun writing the drums parts, figuring out what sort of rhythm would be the best fit. People used to my works would easily recognize my overused recipes, including fast punkish double-pedal sections, and crash cymbal "showers" in the final part of the mix.

Everything was not easy though. The melodic content I had to work with was pretty rich, and was not easy to arrange for guitars without overloading the mix with chords details that nobody would hear anyway, so I decided to use synths. On top of that, I'm not skilled enough to play all the crazy arpeggios around the main melody without wasting the whole mix, so programming non-live instruments was a better solution."

Too humble :) But yeah, the decisions we as arrangers make to remove or simplify certain aspects of source material can be just as important as anything we add, and sometimes a single choice to use a wah pedal or other effect for a given section can be what really makes a mix shine. This rock arrangement of the ending theme/staff roll also closes the album out, and it does so with a good combination of verve & panache. I hear what the mixer is saying about aspects being "punkish," which does remind me of his previous mixes and also some of LuIzA's recent stuff, all of which I dig. Director k-wix writes:

"I thought Carbo did a really good job of capturing the essence of the original medley and immediately thought this song worked best as an 'ending' song to the project. The climax at 2:28 is the absolute highlight for me, and without a doubt my favorite section of the song."

Ditto; bumping down to half-time for the head-banging, lighter-swaying unison melody was a nice nod, in a sense, to a great album coming to an end. We'll be posting a couple more mixes from Back in Blue shortly, and I expect you'll see several more pop-up over the next several months, but until then please help us seed the torrent & spread the news!

― djpretzel

Discussion: Latest 12 comments/reviews; view the complete thread or post your own.
I can't explain it, but I get a distinct "Sonic the Hedgehog" feeling when I listen to this. One of the best from the album, keep it going!

- rahmoon on June 23, 2012
Loved the mix! For some strange reason, at one point it reminded me of the old Super Punchout Credits line - really cool little thing I picked up on!

- Raelena on December 28, 2011
This song is the icing on the cake for the MM9 album; it captures the feeling of relief at freeing Dr. Light and stopping Wily once again after so long.
It's also nice to rock out to! :D
RAAWWWKKK!!! :P

- Mirby on December 24, 2011
Beautiful work and easily one of my favorites from the overall-strong MM9 project, I love the tight rhythm playing, and various harmonies. This is a really clean mix, really giving each element plenty of room to shine.
Really solid work, I absolutely love this song! :-)

- OA on December 12, 2011
Wow, what a treat, you can definitely hear CarboHydroM's style in this ReMix. Fantastic drumming, the synthes were well done and the guitars really did give this a live sound. Amazing work with the climax and giving this tune the upbeat loving it deserved. Totally loved how the arrangement was handled and this was a great closer track for the album. Great job.

- Crulex on December 12, 2011
Wow, this mix has only a few reviews.
CarboHydroM has a sweet sound overall. His punk rock style is great and there's few if any that really does anything like what he does. This is yet another solid mix by him. I wish he subbed more of his stuff :( .

- Bahamut on December 7, 2011
It may be simple, but this was still the standout track from the album for me... maybe I'm just simple myself. There's one rock/synth combo figure that's repeated throughout the track (right at the beginning, 1:16, 1:46, 3:01) that makes me smile every time I hear it... given it's prominence in the mix I assume it featured heavily in the original as well, but I've never played the game so my ears give you full credit :wink:. Awesome work.

- Fridge on October 12, 2011
This is a great mix! One of my favorite on the album, and I'm really glad you didn't try to change it up too much but rather pump it up. The source material was probably my favorite of the soundtrack and this one definitely does it justice.

- MyrmidonX on September 10, 2011
Awesome stuff as usual buddy. This one really sounds great. :smile:

- Scaredsim on September 8, 2011
Way to go CHM! I knew you were going to do well on the project but wasn't expecting it to be one of the mixposts O_o
From what I understood of your profile, you have a tendancy to take ending songs and present them in a strongly upbeat everybody's-buddies-again kind of way, which I've noted particularly from renditions of the ending themes for Kirby Super Star, Pop n' Twinbee and Zelda: ALTTP (as part of "Unsealed"). So you've really managed to take the personification one step further for Mega Man 9's ending, really working on the pacing throughout when measuring it up towards the original.
I wish I could nitpick this as much as I can like some of your pre-2009 works, but to me, I feel this is amongst one of your [i]best[/i] works yet, and a wonderful way to bring Back In Blue to a close.
So, once again huge success with your track, and welcome to the "album closer" club, member #38! With love, member #19. :wink:

- Rexy on September 8, 2011
new carbohydrom??????
haven't even listened to it yet
10/10

- Benjamin Briggs on September 7, 2011
What did you think? Post your opinion of this ReMix.

- djpretzel on September 7, 2011