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Got around to submitting my track today since I wont have any time available tomorrow to work on music. It was definitely tricky finding a way to work the two sources together given how different the mood and feel of them are but I reached a decent compromise I think. Excited to hear the rest of the tunes this coming round.

Sorry to see 2 competitors drop out. Hopefully you two will participate in some friendlies as the tournament progresses. Round 2 is up and voting is open.

Do it by ear! Train your ears!

I've started to rearrange the tracks into their final album order. Disc 1 is fully complete and arranged in how I want it to be. Discs 2 and 3 are kinda waiting on.... Jason Covenant and his Gilder's Theme track. I have absolutely no idea what his will sound like and as a result, I cannot fully commit a final album arrangement for Discs 2 and 3 without knowing where it could fit in the mix. So right now, we're just waiting on the final few tracks to filter in and we can finalize this album and get it going with all the steps with OCR to get it released!

Ah, so many newer games in here. Give me 8-bit Mega Man any day. Groove Bomb: Groove indeed! I'm tapping my feet to this one. It is a little static, though, with not many changes in energy or sound palette. Still, it's a lot of fun, and you integrated the two sources cleverly and smoothly. Ending is a bit abrupt. Grenade Powered Locomotive: There seem to be some off harmonies here. The changes between the two sources are frequently abrupt, and the Charge Man sections don't seem to fit as well. Nice soundscape, though. Glassy Haze: The timing on the strings in the opening is slow. It takes over a minute to get into the meat of the arrangement at all, and even then the energy levels seem subdued throughout--the whole thing sounds like one long intro. Overall it seems thin and incomplete. Planet Killer 2019: 2019? More like 1989! The highs are a little subdued, but otherwise I'm loving this epic 80's soundscape. The arrangement is a lot of fun, although the usage of Top Man is pretty subtle. A few notes seem off, though. The lead is frequently buried, partially due to conflicting frequencies, and partially due to synths with similar timbre stealing each others' thunder. Could do with some more dynamism in energy level. But I'm hoping to see a polished version of this on the panel. Unbalanced: This is mixed awfully quietly. The two sources weren't really integrated at all. I did like the key transformations and the performance, though. Frozen Sky: I can tell you struggled with integrating the two sources, but you put forth a valiant effort. The arrangement is quite static, though, with unchanging energy levels, a drumline that switches drums but not patterns, and not much variation in instrumentation.

2018's Mega Man Compo-of-some-sort Round 1 Rage Reviews! Razor Wind Very nice use of the themes and sound fx! Great Energy throughout and the mixing is solid! Only nitpick I can make is that the ending is a VERY abrupt one note cadence with almost no decrease in energy in the phrase before it to signal the end of the remix! Great listen! Most competent use of the stereo field in the round i'd say! NEXT!! Digital Redemption Listened to this over and over trying to pick out metal man's theme but for the life of me i'm not hearing it! NEXT!! Dopamine Great Rhythm Guitar tone! Only dig is that the lead is on the overly fuzzy side for my tastes! Themes are recognizable! Awesome remix! Why you don't do more Dwelling of Duels compos is beyond me! :/ NEXT!! Fire Truck Right off the bat that bass is really bottom heavy and unrecognizable in the mix! I'm afraid to hook up my subwoofer cuz i'm worried it's gonna be all subs....! Themes are recognizable so good work on keeping things familiar! Biggest issue for me is that there is no real use of stereo throughout the entire remix! By that I mean no expansion/contraction which was omnipresent in Razor Wind! For the most part good work! ...NEXT!! Thunder Crash Bass hangs slightly to the left which was off putting until I realized a few seconds in you were going for a live jazz band on a stage kinda thing. Nice work on selling that! Actually... is it a live band?! Surely a week is too short a time to detail such great humanization on all of these instruments...! Great remix! Regardless If you were able to write AND get a band together to practice this OR detail this much interpersonal energy with midi in a week is a real accomplishment!! ...Unless you are just a very competent keyboard player! NEXT!!! Crash of the Tornado Very funky! Dig the use of the strings throughout even if they could use some more detailing! Enjoyed this mix. Get back to me in a decade I might be able to vote on this matchup then! NEXXXTTT!!! Empty Desires Ah Shademan, my source for the first mega man comp I did back in the day. Allright I'm going to get real here. No gratuitous exclamation point use. Good that you subbed your WIP in the end. Only crit isthat outside of some really thick mud you had a very nice vibe going for what you had. Sort of reminds me of DJP's Marble Zone remix. what's it called... Love Hurts i think? If you do finish this send me the link because I'd like to hear what this ends up being. Drill Bits Very well developed remix! But it fades out...! And it only has one bass...!!! You know you need to layer those things right?!! NEXT!!

Holy shit, I didn't even realize it was the Saturn version, and the fact that it isn't the primary version of the song is criminal. Such an amazing tune, and looking forward to the remixes integrating it!!

I realized this is my first compo with the new forums! Having this separate voting thread with the poll setup makes tracking votes and reviews sooooo much easier than the old format. Love it! First round was pretty awesome, nice job everyone! A few quick thoughts from me: Air Man vs Metal Man Arceace: loving this song! Probably my favorite one of the round. I love the atmosphere in the intro and the hints at each of the themes. The integration of Metal Man into the lead was groovy - nice use of SFX too! I felt the arrangement meandered a little there in the middle after the Air Man segment (~1:30ish mark), but things were groovin' again come ~2:00. Overall a very nice sounding song, I enjoyed it! AxLR: Nice use of the retro low-fi sounds. I echo Gario's thoughts on the atmosphere - trippy & sample heavy, in a good way. Sources were definitely harder to pick up on, but I enjoyed this for what it was! Fire Man vs Cut Man Mak: good stuff! Standard rock/metal affair - I thought the guitar work was really well done and the integration of both themes was handled well too. Very fun song! Ronald Poe: soundscape is pretty thin and I'm only hearing the one source, keep at it! Tornado Man vs Crash Man ahhhh this was the toughest matchup!!!! Ridiculously Garrett: groooooovy - I loved your instrumentation and the overall vibe of this song. That EP I live for this kind of low-fi jazzy/funky music. I liked how the EP kept the track moving forward and the string stabs on the melody line were very fitting. It reminds me a lot of the stuff Amphibious makes, which is also right up my alley. pixeltea: this one was sooo good too! Ironically kind of a similar style to Garrett's, just much faster paced with a swingy jazz style. Sax sounds a little fakey, but I thought it fit the atmosphere well enough. I really really dig the arrangement and the chord progressions. Piano Crash Man parts were the scene stealers for me Ground Man vs Shade Man supercoolmike: thanks for turning your song in good sir! I liked what you had going. The atmosphere was really eerie and I liked the use of the piano and pads in the intro. The lead your chose for Shade Man was really cool too. I wish you had had the time to finish it up and integrate Ground Man too. Good start! Thanks all for the thoughts on my song! Yeah it definitely relied more on Ground Man, but as others referenced I used the Shade Man motifs as ancillary supporting melody parts. It was harder to integrate than I thought it would be at first. The lead at 1:13 did do a direct interpretation of the Shade Man motif too. I wish I had more time for it, maybe I'll work on it some more after the compo.

Since I voted, let me give you my opinion as well : Razor Wind: I concede you my vote, you deserve it well. As Gario suggested, your kick is a little bit too weak, making it stronger or adding a short-attack bass would have reinforced your drums. Dopamine: A lot of energy, a lot of headbanging when I was hearing this. Metal fits Mega Man very well (yea this is a dad joke - I can, I actually am a dad -, or should I say bad?) which was well enough to give you my vote. Fire Truck: It was a tad too calm, in my opinion. I like the way you shaped your sounds, though, It has a professional feel behind it. Thunder-Crash Tornado Fusion: This is very Persona-like. I really "didn't see it coming" (lol did I tell you I was a dad?), but still very cool to hear. I may be picky about the sax that is maybe too much for this music, but that's me complaining, objectively this is a very nice work. Crash of the Tornado: OOOH, funky! Rythm was very well handled, and this was me shaking my butt on my seat for 2:48. Although your battle with pixeltea was maybe the one that made me hesitate the most, I must say that both are really well put remixes and that you got my vote solely because I have a crush on funk. Empty Desires: That's really sad that you could not get that done on time. It actually could have made me vote for you. it's well put together and I really felt like 0:59 was really too short xD If you finish that remix, I would gladly hear it. Drill Bits: I really enjoyed your chord progression, and I really liked how well It jams together. This would have been a really cool battle, but you got my vote by default. Note that since each remix ( except mine because I'm a madlad lol) incorporated very well their theme, I didn't feel the need to comment on that. And now, for some responses : Gario : Thanks for these nice words, but I didn't go by the rules and I deserve my defeat. AirMan is indeed included into the remix and it's not quite silent xD And as much as OCR accepts or not my remixes, in the end, I sill will make music as I like it ^^. I'll let you search a bit more if you are curious but in case I'll give you the sampling guideline I gave to DarkeSword to prove that I indeed used both themes in my remix. It's just There. MindWanderer : Yup, The point is, I didn't see how I could arrange them without one being dominant over the other. And since I wanted both to be present I got stuck thinking. To the point that I said " Screw it, I'm gonna be sampling, chopping and screwing". My goal was to create an original theme that would still fit in a Mega Man game, based on the two imposed themes. So yeah, didn't respect the rules and couldn't think of anything better than that I gave my remix just to see how people would react to this or how many time before they find out what did I sample and when x) I knew I'd be losing anyway. Ridiculously Garret : Thanks, though I added too much reverb on my had which makes me cringe each time I hear my remix, but thank you for your nice words too It was fun even though I actually didn't know how to read the rules, at least I enjoyed hearing those nice remixes. Are all the entries going to be in an album in the end? That would be lit af

Subbed! Wish I could have spent just a few more hours to iron out a few things (The middle section is definitely going to sound more sparse than what I would like). Good luck to the rest of you!

Just submitted my track. Aaaand you not going to like it! Enjoy!

Round 2 RAGE REVIEWS ...part music critique, part semi-psychotic rambling Unbalanced Trism, you've improved a ton since the last time I heard your stuff on one of these mega man compos. The middle part of this remix gave me serious flashbacks of Metallica's version of the Blue Oyster Cult Classic Astronomy which I enjoyed the hell out of. After giving it a few listens it seems like all of the melodies from Top Man are there and Tengu man was adapted to fit the rest of it. All in all this would work well as part of a Twisted Metal Ost. Nice work! NEXT! Groove bomb Vs Grenade Powered Honestly a great matchup. Both tracks are really well made and groovy AF. Groove Bomb Gotta admit I was really excited to see jamphib sign up for this thing and he did was an awesome remix that doesn't disappoint. The different themes were all used very well and i'm loving that bass part. The one thing i can say bad about it is that the highs definitely stick out too much for my tastes but everything is very well balanced otherwise. Curious as to what cans you use mix on. If they are sennheiser's you have to be careful of the infamous "sennheiser veil" which could cause you to boost those highs. Great remix! Grenade Powered Locamotive I really dig what you were going for. Kind of a night time dreamy take on a similar style as jamphib's. Loved the background diddles. Nothing bad I can really say about it other than you made it apparent what side of the loudness war you are on. :/ There is a LOT of clipping on your track here but the cool thing is I wouldn't have noticed it so much if not for popping it into audacity. Good work, going to keep this one in my playlist Planet Killer 2019 What did you do here? Put on a wig, Call yourself Pat Benatar and shape broadband noise into a "remix"? I couldnt' tell if I was listening to a piece of music or hearing someone fry eggs! NEXT!! Glassy Haze Interesting soundscape. The combination of samples and synths make it like you were attempting to go for a Prodigy esque remix. Maybe the drag in the strings was intentional but it's a good idea to sync up your samples with the groove using the midi time offset in your DAW so that the attack of the strings comes before the beat. Most string instruments take a solid 30-50ms to get the string vibrating and since that is a feature of well made orchestral VST's you need to compensate for that if you are doing a tight electronic track. I'm hearing a lot of clipping throughout the track. A quick glance in audacity is showing a large amount of red. For a quick solution I'd recommend using something like Gclip to snip the transients off of your percussive elements but honestly there's a lot of mixing practice that you could use this remix for. Try taking some noise and cut it across 4 different faders using a multiband, scramble the volume levels by using different output settings on a plugin then use the faders to try to get as close to the original noise as you can. Warning that this will fatigue your ears quick but you'll get use to hearing for highs mids and lows seperately. Keep at it! Frozen Sky Good job with the sources. Outside of some occasionally awkward harmonizing it's a cohesive enough of a remix. Mess with the attack settings on that bass as it is lethargic and severely lacking. With percussion that tight such a soft attack on the bass doesn't work well and robs a lot of energy from the remix.

If you have two instruments and both give 'm separate reverbs, it's just going to sound unnatural. "Sound quality" is a weird way to describe it; it's more of a "this is something you can't ever hear naturally". Mixing is about the suspension of disbelief, and unless you're live-recording an orchestra with a pair of microphones separated at a distance equal to your ears in a seat somewhere in the venue (which is -still- an approximation because your ears work different from microphones), you're always trying to "stylize" things to paint a scene, send a message, or perform illusionism. It's like a render of a scene; your eyes don't focus on two distant things at the same time and adapt continuously to the light around us (and fill out a hilarious amount of details outside of your focal point that aren't really witnessed - just painted in there by your brain). With inserts, you're actively decreasing the volume of the dry signal while increasing the volume of the dry signal. It's a crossfader. With sends, you keep the dry signal at equal volume while adding more wet signal - and as Jorito says, you should have the wet to 100%. It's two separate faders. It's about the ratio of the mix plus multipliers. With inserts set to 20% wet, it means the dry signal is multiplied in volume by 100% - 20% = 80% (0.8) while the wet signal is at 20%. With a single wet/dry knob, you can't have a scenario where dry is 90% and wet is 40% or something - the sum always has to be 100%. With sends, the dry signal is left at 100%, the wet signal at 20% - the sum of this (120%) is the "new" 100%, and if you'd scale everything back proportionally (100/120 = 0.83), it's comparable to the insert's dry/wet as 83%/17% in terms of ratio, but both are louder.

If you use sends, you typically set the dry to 0 and the wet to 100% and use the send level to control the balance. I have the impression you’re looking at this from the perspective of a single instrument. When mixing, it’s important to look at the track and balance as a whole. And trust me, I’d rather have 3 reverb sends where I can control the send levels directly from the mixer, rather than having 60 insert effects where I’d have to open the vst or automation lane to control the balance. Make it easy for yourself, save some cpu and look at it from the perspective of mixing a complete track. $0.02.

When do you use inserts: for distortion, EQ, compression, chorus, flanger, phaser. When do you use sends: for reverb, delay. When are there exceptions: any time you want 'm. You can use compression as a send effect to get something called parallel compression. These are rules of thumb, and rules can and should be broken if you learn something from them. Chorus (or plain old oscillator detuning) can make the sound wider, but at the same time it can get weaker, because it's cancelling itself out in terms of phase. Reverb lets a focused sound compete with a smeared copy of itself; naturally, when the copy gets stronger, the sound is less focused. You camouflage the transients. In the end, all you're doing is controlling the ratio of dry and wet. Send effects aren't "better" in this regard. It's just that you start with 100% dry and sum a wet signal on top of that. Let's say you have 100% dry and 20% send; the total is 120%. 100% is 100/120*100 = 83% of that, so the signal is 100 - 83 = 17% wet. This is effectively not different from using an insert effect and setting the wet/dry to 17% wet. The difference comes in once you start adding other tracks, because then you get something you can't do with insert effects. The other difference is that 20% on an insert is not the same as 20% on an aux send, so you'll indeed hear more of the dry signal. "You have too much reverb" is an oft-heard complaint. Reverb is like MSG for the sound; it makes everything better. However, you usually don't notice that you're using too much of it. You can use a reverb as an insert effect. The downside is that if you have two tracks and you use two distinct reverbs, it sounds pretty unrealistic; you can't have one instrument sounding like it was recorded in a small tiled room and another in a concert hall. That ruins the illusion. If you use exactly the same reverbs, they may still mismatch, because the result of two dry instruments playing in the same room is not identical to summing two instruments each playing in their own room. What aux does, effectively, is that it creates a submix. Let's say you have a dry mix of guitar, bass and drums. Drums are set to 100% volume. Guitar is set to 60%, bass to 80%. That is the mix that you hear. With auxes, you can make the mix completely different; on an aux you create a duplicate of the mix that may be set to guitar 100%, bass 40%, drums 20%. That is the duplicate mix that you send to an effect (any kind of effect). The effect will "hear" that mix completely different from how you're hearing it. The end result is sent back to the mixer as if it were a single stereo track, and summed with the original. If you're using a reverb effect, the guitar's wet/dry mix may be a lot stronger than that of the drums, but since everything is still in the same "room", it'll do more to suggest positioning (i.e. how close to the microphone was the instrument). Panning is in that sense not different from any effect. Experiment! Keep things simple initially; just a few tracks. Try all combinations. You'll learn a lot.

Great job Protoman Bracket! A lot of great mixes. Unfortunate that Gario and Realme had to drop. Very brief thoughts: Groove Bomb - You never disappoint when it comes to Mega Man compo tracks! Have always loved your stuff, and Groove Bomb is no exception. Great job combining both sources, especially the accenting you did around the 1:41-1:53 mark. Love it! Grenade Powered Locomotive - Had a lot of fun and frustration creating this track. Originally my goal was for something reminiscent of Txai-style swing jack, but it never really developed. Still, much more pleased with this showing compared to my last compo... Planet Killer 2019 - Holy darkwave, Batman. Once the 0:40 mark hit, my fists were pumping like a madman while waiting for my Tron bike to show. Tengu Man is clearly identifiable throughout the track, but at points I struggled hearing Top Man. Not as familiar with his theme, so it might just be me. Production is killer. Great job! Unbalanced - Honestly thought it was game over coming off Garp's track, but you held your own. Could pick out both themes pretty easily. Track is a little static throughout, and the drums could probably afford to be moved a little farther back in the mix. Still, awesome job man. Glassy Haze - Arrangement really sounded like two MIDIs crammed together. There was also some disharmony happening at points. Think it might have been the bells? Frozen Sky - A lot of really great ideas in here. Though I'm not as familiar with MM7's Robot Master themes, each theme is identifiable, so I can hear where you're trying to take them. Good job.

Subbed. Hope everyone likes 5 minutes of static.

OH IT'S ON NOW (frantically searches "Ground Man MIDI" on Google)

Still have some work I'm going to put into my track so knowing me I'm going to push it right to the last minute of the deadline most likely. All I can say about my track right now is I've put more time into it than I planned to and that everyone will probably think that I've watched bladerunner, blade runner 2049, blade runner 2022, blade runner 2036 and blade runner 2048 way too many times this year. ...and yes I have. Also played a few dozen hours of Outrun 2019.

My remix and remake of of Lake Floria, from The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword. Based on Dr. Pez's guitar cover. This piece never actually really stood out to me in the game, however, I heard Dr. Pez's cover of it a few years ago and it's stuck with me ever since. Hope you can enjoy my take on it and find it relaxing! -Juke

Indeed, Saturn, Neo Geo, and TG16 all had some great games on them. Neo Geo and TG16 couldn't compete with the Nintendo and Sega juggernauts during the early 90's (especially when Neo Geo cost a whopping $650 at the time it was released). Saturn was truly a magnificent system, and its failure is largely attributable to piss poor marketing by Sega. I wish that Sega or some third-party would create a Saturn Classic Edition edition with Panzer Dragoon Saga, NiGHTS, Magic Knight Rayearth, SotN, MM8, MMX3, Shining Force III (all three chapters, not just the first and only one to make it to North America), Guardian Heroes, and, of course, all the Sonics on it. I would pay hundreds of dollars for it, and I would consider it a bargain. The system and its games are that good. As far as the anti-Nintendo drama, only the failure of Neo Geo and TG16 can be attributed to Nintendo to any substantial degree. The Saturn's direct competitor was the PS1.

Well, I'll try to say at least something. Please don't take my words as a rant/taunt or whatever bad. I'm bad in finding proper words, due to my bad english. So I just say what i feel. And, yes. I had no time to learn language. Sorry. Razor wind. Cool sounding. Catching flow and clear understanding of happening. Glitchy stuff sound right in place. Can't say something useful from production side. Nothing bother me while listening. I'm OK with last pitched hit, cause i like it. Brings some natural ending to unnatural sound, from philosophycal side. Digital redemtion. I do not have any enthusiasm or interest, as expressed above. Sorry. Sounds like actual chiptune. And that's not good. Overall composition kinda senseless. It just moves to the end and nothing happening. I can't even take it as an ambient for my sound perception. Sources just mixed. I can't catch anything familiar, except some notes. I mean, I can hear something form both sources, but just because I'm trying to hear em. I checked your original stuff and I wonder why you made something like this. Cause your own music is interesting. Dopamine. Oh, wait. That's mine. It rocks! in beginning, but then it just suck. Fire truck. I can't call it a ReMix actually. I can hear both sources at the same time and not sure you've changed anything. Soundscape is empty and.. You know, I have a feeling, you just was too lazy to make something. Sorry if I'm wrong, but if im right you need to reconsider your attitude to similar competitions. You have my vote, just because voting for myself is bad. Sorry. Thunder-crash tornado fusion. Ah.. Fusy-jazy track! Tough to vote. Sources are there, production is natural(some freq cleaning needed). So in this matchup you've lost my vote due to lack of enjoyability. That dissonant piano is very cool, but it's more like "see me playing and get out of here". Crash of the tornado. Well, as I said. Very cool stuff! Great percussion, amazing bass, piano, strings and organ is the cherry on da cake. And sources well introduced. Best track in this round for me. Empty desires. Promising introduction. I'm sorry that you did not finish it. The only complain I had is the lead. I just don't like it sounds. Personal taste i guess. Drill bits Same boat as a first track. The only thing I'd suggest is to make bass notes a bit shorter when they in a pair. Ahhh. I hope you understand. Nice one!

Fair enough, my counter-point would be that it's a teacher's job to be hard on you and expect more out of you though. When people don't (appear to) have any motive other than the commentary itself and providing their opinion, it can be a real kick in the ass to hear someone doesn't like something. And whether or not the commenter actually knows what they're talking about vs. just trying to puff themselves up, if it pushes you to improve, the effect is the same (at least in terms of general advice/impressions - if someone's telling you to blow up the low mids on all your instruments or something like that, that's another story). Using myself as an example again, I used to think of myself as a great composer, even after I found out exactly how bad of a producer I was. But when you hear "wandering melody" and "stagnant harmony" (or whatever variation of that, if the feedback was coming from someone who didn't have the musical vocabulary to describe it as such) over and over from people on forums or non-musician friends or comments from complete strangers on music hosting sites, it eventually sunk in that "oh wait a second, maybe I'm actually not nearly as good as I think I am". That was what it took for me, and it made much more of an impact than it did in situations where someone whose outward purpose in critiquing me was to help me learn. I guess some additional context is also necessary to clarify my point - I've never been a good student until I "decide" I want to learn more about something, and I know I'm not the only one. Again, that's what it took for me, and I have to wager there are others who operate the same way. As a bonus, I came to find out eventually that a lot of those people giving me that feedback actually WERE being hyper-critical and couldn't follow their own advice. But the result was the same - I put my nose to the grindstone to learn how to better structure a tune, how to write stronger melodies, how to mix better, whatever the criticism might've been. I still learned as a result of the feedback, regardless of where it came from or how much the person giving the critique actually knew themselves. Hopefully I didn't botch the point I'm trying to make in so many words, but basically: feedback from different sources can have drastically different effects, and people will respond to the effect it has on them accordingly.

DJPretzel turned in his track ahead of schedule! Yes!!! And it is pretty damn amazing! Also, for those who have been keeping track of the track listing, do you SEE all that bold green?! We are looking at the light of the end of the tunnel now. This three year journey is finally coming to a close! Skies of Arcadia fans, I sincerely hope you are ready!