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Final entry submitted! Win or lose, it was honor competing against you Yami! I'm looking forward to what everyone came up with for these two rounds. And, since it looks like most of you are in the Wily Castle Remix Gauntlet - I wish you all the best of luck there! Finally, thanks DarkeSword for hosting this competition - had a blast! Also, thanks orlouge82 for the original idea! Edit: Oh man, listening to my final entry again... hahahahaha... well, I tried something different, I guess. Ah well, I still enjoy listening to it, though.

Thanks for the list, NovaReaper! It's only missing Cosmic Sounds (from the first page of the thread). 9 teams already, awesome!

Sorry for my post disappearance, Brandon. If you'd have this newbie, I'd be very interested in this!

This brings back some memories - here's where it all began for me. I'm not sure if my mixing skills have improved much at all, but I'll give it my best effort! Edit: Awesome! Energy Tank is refilled! I'm looking forward to teaming up with you again, Jesse and Zach! My picks, good sir: 1. Pump Man - Mega Man 10 2. Bright Man - Mega Man 4 3. Aqua Man - Mega Man 8 4. Cloud Man - Mega Man 7 5. Ring Man - Mega Man 4 Thank you (and thanks, DarkeSword, for hosting this competition, once again!)

Good luck to you, Yami! And good luck to everyone in this final week! Now... to see if I can pull off this idea I have... or will it fall flat on its face like my others... we'll see!

Sorry to hear that, man. I know what you mean, though - not as many ideas came to me for this one... not many at all... :\ However, as per your last comments, you'll at least hear... some different instrumentation (except for the one warm pad) in the form of two VSTis and a soundfont. Yeah... so, I just wanted to say, that I'm sorry for not being able to come up with something creative for your theme (or mine) this week! Overall, I don't know... hopefully it isn't too much of the same... Nonetheless, the best of luck to you in the next round (or this round, if you do decide to turn something in), and I'm looking forward to hearing what you come up with! Edit: ... Blah... at the lack of arrangement in my entry. Once again, I'm sorry.

Entry submitted! Well, for this one, I finally got to try out a VSTi and a soundfont that I've been wanting to use for some time now. On the flip side, I wasn't able to come up with too many ideas, arrangement-wise, for this one, so... sorry about that. So, I tried to use Chrome Gadget Zone's chord progressions to tie these two themes together a bit! Regardless, win or lose, it was an honor competing against you, MindWanderer! And, I'm quite eager to hear everyone's entries!

Thanks for the comments, acarmelo1! Not that great with variations yet, but I'm working on it - one mix at a time. I beg your forgiveness, but you've lost me here. ** For my style: I approach each song based on a particular 'state' or I try to create an 'area' with a soundscape - it's the provenance of my ideas. That's why I gravitate towards ambience with all of my tracks; however, I'm trying to not use so much background ambience (pads) and instead let the 'leads' or melodies do that instead! I'm sorry you're not a fan of my style, though... (... These two artists represent the main genre 'area' I'm trying to work toward; if you were just curious). As for this song, it was based off some unimplemented ideas from Chrome; however, Chrome was meant to be more dream-like, while Into The Future is simply meant to be upbeat and uplifting. Finally, I took all the feedback everyone graciously gave me and tried to fix my mistakes made back then in Chrome; but that's where the similarities end - these two are completely different sub-genres. As for instrumentation - none of the synths, save for one pad ('Warm') and one synth (Short PWM 2), used in 'Into The Future' were used previously. So I would venture to inquire as to which instruments you are hearing repeatedly in each and every song? I'm not trying to attack your comments here: I would just like to know so I can give them a break for a period of time! I use a lot of synths since I don't have any real instruments; I do have a few 'romplers' (real instrument samplers / VSTis), but I've been a bit hesitant to use some of them for awhile. However, this next entry will try another, to this point, unused VSTi, so at least instrumentation will be different! If you wish to see, here's a list of instruments used in each song (from memory): Chrome / An attempt at Dream Trance PianoOne (VSTi, lead) Mist (Synth1, used for an arpeggio) Dark Wind (Synth1, pad and transitions) Jupiter (Synth1, pad) Autumn Strings (Synth1, pad) HS Atlantic Swell (Zebralette, pad) Clav (Sytrus, accent for lead) Glassy (Synth1, pad and accent for lead) Jazz Dub (Synth1, bass) Cruisin' on Skywave Road / Another attempt at Atmospheric Drum and Bass (the first attempt was 2 years ago) PianoOne (VSTi) Dark Wind (Synth1, pad, used for transitions) Electricity (Synth1, pad, effects in background and ambience) Jazz Dub (Synth 1, bass) Glock (LazySnake VSTi, used during the breakdown) Rhodes low (DSK RhodeZ, used during the breakdown) Warm Pad (Synth1, pad) Square Purity (Sytrus, there are two synths with this name, and I used them both) Short PWM (Sytrus, used for the background arpeggio later in the song) Short PWM 2 (Sytrus) Submerged / Ambient (Final usage of) PianoOne (VSTi, co-lead) Mist (Synth1, lead synth) Xylophone (Synth1, plays the arpeggio from Neptune's theme) Nexus tears (DSK Ethereal PadZ, pad, primary pad) Warm (Sytrus, pad) Dark Heaven 2 (Sytrus, pad) Distant (Sytrus, pad) Jazz Dub (Synth1, bass) Modern Setting (Synth1, accent synth during breakdown) Into The Future / Just something upbeat We Feel Digital (TAL NoiseMaker, lead synth) Everglade Walk (TAL NoiseMaker, that funny sounding synth playing Quick Man's arpeggio shortly after the song begins) Short PWM 2 (heard this one before, of course, it's used to play parts of Quick Man's and Chrome Gadget Zone's themes) Soft Sub (Synth1, bass) Oxygene Arp (Synth1, arpeggio, another computer-sounding arpeggio, near the beginning and during the breakdown in the background) Warm (Sytrus, pad) GX (Synth1, pad) Cosmos (Synth1, pad, the gated pad) Space Keys MW (used during the beginning, the breakdown, and at the end) [Entry this week] The only thing from above that returns is a warm pad because it fits the soundscape of the song. I'm using a VSTi that I haven't used until now. So, yes, you've got me on 'Jazz Dub' (the bass) and the warm pads... but... I'm sorry, but as I previously mentioned, you've totally lost me, and I'm just confused as to what you're hearing that sounds 'exactly the same'. If I've misunderstood you, then I offer my apologies. With that said, I'm grateful for your comments for each round, so, thank you; I really appreciate them!

Edit: Ahh... hope you feel better soon, Tuberz. *** Mega Water S. Awesome! Best of luck to you, MindWanderer! I'm looking forward to hearing what you come up with!

Entry submitted! Time was rather elusive this week, so I'd like to apologize to everyone (especially my opponent) for not being able to give my 100% to this week's entry. With that said, the basic theme I was going for here was - "what if Sonic the Hedgehog 3's levels had Good Future themes?" Quick Man made me think of the time warping in the Sonic the Hedgehog CD, and I noticed how Chrome Gadget Zone is dark and industrial, but has a very upbeat theme - so I wanted to turn that around into a good future of 'high-tech' by rewriting both themes in C Major (and, also, that might help explain the synth choices... once you hear them). ** As for source usage, you'll hear Quick Man's beginning arpeggio: right from the start, in the bassline a bit later in the song, and small portion later in the song. That weird 'computer-like' synth you'll hear is playing an arpeggiated version of the arpeggio from Quick Man! Two parts may not be quite as obvious, and that's around 1:16 and 2:31 - that's a couple of interpretations of the chords from the third part and final part of Chrome Gadget Zone. The first one builds a bit of a bridge between two parts of Chrome Gadget Zone's Melody C; the third one was just... for fun, and trying to end the song on a happy note! Finally, in the breakdown, the two arpeggios are playing Quick Man's beginning arpeggio and the part between Quick Man's two melodies. ... and, this song does not begin with a pad... ** Win or lose, it was honor competing against you, Jesse! I'm most certainly looking forward to everyone's entries!

Thank you for the comments / review, MindWanderer! Awesome job on your arrangement, man! Thanks for the comments / review, jnWake! About the bass, I was wanting it to add to the underwater feeling, if you will, but I guess I submerged it too much, volume-wise. I really do need to work on melodies. Old habits die hard, with the pad / soundscape coming first, but with that said... ... I'm going to try changing things up for these next 3 entries!

Thanks for the comments! The relaxing, smooth soundscape, if you will, was intentional here. As for the lead, I'm still trying to find 'that one lead', one mix at a time. But, overall, I'm glad that you liked it! @NovaReaper Welcome to the world of remixing! I started kind of like you did - all I had really done previously was make MIDI rips / mashups (and only a couple of those). The important thing is that you started!

Thanks DarkeSword! -- Really liking the entries so far! Great job, everyone!

Well, Jesse, I'm looking forward to witnessing your quickness! Best of luck to you!

Quick question: did you mean the colon character - :? If you meant the semicolon character - ; - you can use that, yes. If not... To answer your question, when entering metadata into your file with a program such as Mp3tag - you can put pretty much any character you want in the 'Title' field. However, in regards to the actual filename of your audio file, you can't use the following characters (at least, in Windows): <, >, :, ", /, \, |, ?, * More than likely, someone had their file named 'My Remix - Part 1.mp3' (just as an example), but tagged its Title field with 'My Remix: Part 1'. Hope that helps! (Also, another place to post this would've probably been the Help & Newbies forum) --- On topic: I guess I'm about as finished as I'll ever be with this week's entry! There's still a part I'm a bit 'hmm...' over, but, I'm not entirely sure what to do with it... So, I'm just listening over it a few times to make sure I didn't miss anything glaringly obvious (even though I probably will, anyway). Also, this one has the lowest BPM I've ever tried @ 75 BPM. --- Edit: Entry submitted! Neptune / Chrome Gadget Zone at 75 BPM is quite interesting! As for source usage, the piano is playing Neptune (except near the end of the mix at around 2:59), and the synths are playing Chrome Gadget Zone's Melody B and C (or, in one case, the chords that accompany Melody . Hope that helps! And, win or lose, it was an honor competing against you, Zerothemaster! Looking forward to everyone's entries tomorrow!

^ Edit: Thanks for the comments / reviews, Cash and Change! Sorry about the 'pad as intro' thing. That is actually something that started 2 years ago due to a comment on one of my earlier mixes. The piano in the background was repeating the 3rd part of Turbo Man's melody. The arpeggio was just the pad... arpeggiated. The middle was an experiment in taking small parts of the basslines of Turbo Man and Chrome Gadget Zone, respectively, and seeing how they sounded. And, of course, the 2nd part of Turbo Man's melody was repeated a lot. Heck, a part of his first melody was a bassline for the first part. I did say that he drove this mix forward, after all. To answer your question about the pads - I'm glad you like them! - I layered two pads from two different banks in Synth1 (I use it in almost every mix): Electricity (from bwwd's Pad Bank) Warm Pad (from Kaiyoti Bank 1) Finally, about the same vibe - hope I can do something about that with these next three entries (since my current one's pretty much on its way now). I'm not very knowledgeable about many genres, but I've been listening to all kinds to get a feel for how they flow... but no success, yet... One change, though, is that if my ideas actually work out - this current entry is the last one that'll use the piano for the rest of this competition. Thank you for the comments! On another note, I really enjoyed everyone's entries this round - great job, everyone!

Thanks for the comments / reviews! @therex A question: would a part of the problem of the 'neverending intro' be that I had too much going on in the breakdown / middle part (starting at ~1:41) of the song? I was afraid of not having enough there, but I'm guessing I went overboard. @Cosmic Sounds Glad you liked it! I'm also pleased that the song invoked that soundscape - just what I was going for! I'm deeply honored that you think this would go in Mario Kart 7 - love that soundtrack. That does give me an idea (for when I revisit this song)! So... how's everyone doing with their entries for Round 3?

Thanks for the comments, Mirby! Repetition is still a problem that I have... trying to work on that, but it just keeps finding its way into my mixes. On another note, excellent entries, everyone! And great job on your entry, jnWake! Just like I said in that message, your mix reminds me of something from Wario Land: Shake It! - one of my favorite game soundtracks. ...and to be honest, that kind of stuff is what I wish I could do... one day... one day...