Yami

Wow, the last round.?? It's been an honor. If I remember I will be entering this one last time

Wow, the last round.?? It's been an honor. If I remember I will be entering this one last time

Wow, the last round.?? It's been an honor. If I remember I will be entering this one last time

I haven't been here in ages and have just stumbled across this thread by chance, but I love these kind of competitions, so I'm in

This screams for a Jungle remix. Which I have no idea of how to make?

Puyo Puyo Junglist Massive

This screams for a Jungle remix. Which I have no idea of how to make?

Puyo Puyo Junglist Massive

Well, I'm sure some people will cast aspersions, but I like this tune a lot.  It has that awesome 90's electro-house vibe we all secretly crave.  It's a guilty pleasure.  Faptastic. 

Damn, it's been more than two years since I actually finished a track and even longer since I've posted here.
This originally was an idea for the Shounen Jump Remix Album, but I never really got around to actually working on it until a few weeks back.
Yeah, I know it's very conservative arrangement-wise, but I'm still rather proud how it turned out, and I'm interested in a professional opinion or otherwise I'll probably microtweak it until it's broken
 
https://www.dropbox.com/s/f16bw9fhlhc18l7/Yami - Magic Knight Ray(v)earth.mp3?dl=0

Original
 

Oh wow, nice source, that's a tune I haven't heard in a very long time

Hmm, I love everything about Zoras, perhaps I'll find time for an entry

Hmm, I love everything about Zoras, perhaps I'll find time for an entry

For anyone curious about the lyrics in "Shovel Power" (such as they are), here goes:
 

Review time!
El Polar Enker: This is kind of a textbook example of a static arrangement.  There are only two leads, the guitar and the piano, and their thin and artificial character makes them sound very similar to each other.  The percussion is a simple loop that's varied very little from beginning to end, and there's very little other accompaniment; the Enker section has some mid-range piano playing a simple loop, and that's about it aside from an extremely quiet bass.  As for source usage, it's a straightforward A-B-A pattern, which works but isn't very striking. Arctic Robot Dance Party: A good effort at integrating two sources that don't lend themselves to integration in any obvious way.  Some good ideas here, although vanilla synths and simple beats do bring it down somewhat.  Some of the transitions are a little awkward, and the ending is a little abrupt. King of the Kuiper Belt: I had a very hard time identifying the source usage.  On the second listen, I caught some suggestions of both themes, but they're really far afield.  Nice approach with the style, although there was an awful lot of the organ lead that could have been switched up a little.  Bass and highs were both a little light. Pridemoor Cat: Not bad at all!  A little slow and repetitive, but it's trance.  There's an odd effect in the first main section and again at the end where the lead is pushed back a little, which almost works, except that the mid-low arp is supposed to fill in the pauses in the Pluto theme, but isn't quite beefy enough to pull it off.  I was worried about a simple A-B-A arrangement here, but then you started doing the layered thing, and it worked really well!  It was kind of disappointing when that section ended, since it was easily the best part and there was a full minute left.  Solid approach overall though. Fellow Knight: Odd how this gradually grows less melancholy and more trancey as it goes, until the end when it reverses.  The lead is a little static, but it's a good arrangement.  Nice, if brief, layering of the sources.

Okay time for impressions.
Event opened, we walked down a red walkway right to the stage at the far end of the room it was set up in, that was nice. There were 4 demo stations for each game on display that was playable except Zelda, which had about 16 or so. Anyways, to go in order of what we played (went with my fiancé).
ARMS: Very intuitive controls. I picked the robo-girl and he picked Spring Man (really I just keep thinking MM when I hear that name). We went through the tutorial first. Very basic stuff. Tilt Joy-Cons to move, L/R dashes in the direction you're tilting, punch to punch, tilt to turn punch, ZL/ZR to activate Flurry which just lets you unleash a bunch of punches. That's basically it for controls. And then you get into it, where you get to pick which parts you want for each arm, and that's where the fun begins. You've got your basic fists, you've got the 3-fists-in-one that I had default as robo-girl, and then there's also a boomerang. In Flurry mode these get powered up and the boomerang basically becomes the Gale Boomerang from Twilight Princess. It's great fun, I can see it being fantastic for party mode.
Next up we played Disgaea 5 Complete, which was pretty standard as far as Disgaea goes. Nothing really special to mention there. After this we also grabbed our tickets for Zelda because we had to get in a group based upon time slots.
After that I went on stage to challenge someone in Quick Draw, part of 1-2-Switch. The way this works is both players get in position holding their Joy-Con down with their finger on the trigger (ZL/ZR depending on the Joy-Con) and listen for the audio cue. The game goes READY then STEADY... and when it says FIRE both players raise and fire to see who gets the shot off first. The game then says the exact time it took for each player to fire and even shows the angle the controllers were at while moving. I won the first game, but lost the second. Got a nice Switch hat. I was kinda on the fence about 1-2-Switch but I can see it's very well-made and will be a blast at parties. 
Next up was Sonic Mania, which I didn't even know would be there. This took just one Joy-Con set horizontally to control. Knuckles was unfortunately not playable in the demo, and we could only choose between Green Hill Zone and Studiopolis. I picked the latter and it controlled wonderfully. Took a bit to get used to the Drop Dash but it's well made, and the level design is wonderful. Even more hype for this one now.
Then after that we played a bit of ULTRA STREET FIGHTER II. Did three rounds of this. First round I was Zangief and my fiancé was Dhalsim. I won in the 3rd round. Next up I was Ryu and he was Vega. He annihilated me lol, and he did again in the final battle between Guile and Blanka.
After that we did some Mario Kart 8 Deluxe battle mode. I needed revenge. Picked Fem-Villager and he chose Waluigi. Course was randomly picked, and it was Battle Course 1 from Super Mario Kart. The mode was Bob-Omb Blast, where the only item you get it Bob-Ombs and you can hold as many as you collect because the point is to blow EVERYTHING UP JUST BLOW IT ALL UP OH THE HUMANITY IT ALL BLEW UP. I was in the lead for a short while (when you're in the lead you end up wearing a crown and it goes away once you lose that lead) and ended up 3rd overall (we were playing against 10 CPU). I'm sure that in the full game you'll be able to turn off CPUs entirely in Battle Mode because you can do that in MK8 already.
After that we kept the explosions going in Super Bomberman R. Which is classic Bomberman action brought back to current consoles. So much fun. Also includes the whole "when you die you get to throw bombs from the edges" thing from some installments, and if you take someone out in this way you take their place and rejoin the fray. And if you land a bomb directly on someone while on the sidelines (you usually throw one space away, not in the adjacent one) you'll stun them. Great fun, and up to 8 players too iirc. We only had 4 though. 
Then we went to Puyo Puyo Tetris. They had us stick to the Swap mode of multiplayer, which would keep you in Puyo Puyo mode for 30 seconds then swap to the Tetris board for 30 seconds and then back to Puyo Puyo for another 30 seconds and so on and so forth until someone lost. And the board you started on wasn't always Puyo Puyo, it would randomly choose at the start of each round. Very basic fare for both of those, and if you had a combo going in one mode as it swapped it would continue and affect the other. So it's really built for those who are good at both. However, my fiancé was rockin' the Tetris board while I was rockin' the Puyo Puyo side so we balanced each other out that way. So it works.
Lastly, we played our demos of Breath of the Wild. You start off doing a new game, and have to OPEN YOUR EYES. Then get the slate, get clothes and climb outside. From there you get to do anything, which we of course already knew. That's not the point of THIS impression. It's nice to be right into the game that quickly compared to other Zelda games that have absurdly lengthy intros *coughSScough*. I went right, found a stick, gathered mushrooms, then set the stick on fire and started a small grassfire because lol. Also apparently hitting apples with a burning stick bakes them, so that was nice. I then found an axe, cut down a tree, and entered the Temple of Time. Or the ruins of it, at least. Prayed to the statue of the Goddess Hylia, and then headed outside and tried to climb the temple. Failed. Walked 10 feet to the right and found a ladder. Climbed it, found a bow, and then jumped off... and died. Link's leg was bent in the completely wrong direction so that visual was well-done. Reloaded the save and then tried to climb down the ladder and ended up jumping off (not dying this time) and then found a Bokoblin base. Managed to take them out with the axe, including the really tough leader (this was in the skull rock y'all might've seen in screenshots being blown up). The leader kept leaving himself open long enough for my axe swing to connect twice and cancel his attack. He even leapt at me once and I knocked him like 10 feet away! Also stole his spiked club (which has like 3x the attack power of the axe) and killed him with it. Also when firing arrows you'll need to adjust for distance because the physics engine in the game is very well made. I killed a few more Bokoblins, stole their meat, and them climbed a rock... and then the demo time was up. And then we left because nothing else really interested us. My fiancé's playthrough consisted of him bumbling into the Talus Steppe thing (the giant rock golem) and getting murdered. He also successfully hunted a boar (headshots are the way to go, he says, as hitting them anywhere else causes them to flee, and you need to use a bow. Also be very aware of how much sound you're making, it tells you in the lower-right corner), and then fell to his doom and then drowned trying to catch a fish. Both of us were very pleased.
But yeah we left after that. They gave us cookies with the Switch logo on them as we left. All in all, great games. Didn't really check out anything else (wasn't interested in them). The controllers are very comfortable and lightweight. Forgot to play in tablet mode cause I didn't think about it, OH WELL.

Hey folks. I've decided to continue on with the compo. I'll be posting Round 3 match-ups tonight, and Round 1 and Round 2 music together tomorrow night for voting. For those wondering about my family emergency, my mom passed away last week while visiting India. While I certainly appreciate any condolences you have to offer, please do not post them in this thread; I'd like to keep the thread on-topic. A "like" on this post would be fine, though.
Thanks for understanding! I'm looking forward to everyone's entries moving forward.

On an interesting aside, Darkesword is right, first and foremost: if you merge sources, think not about absolute pitch (e.g. What notes are being played), but more about relative pitch (e.g. what scale degrees are being played). I'm glad he pointed that out, as it can help make the intimidating process of merging sources far more manageable.
As someone who wants really great music to come from this, I can give just a few more ideas on how to handle your sources:
Give a precursory thought about form. There's no need to get into too much detail, or give more than a minute of thought on it, but if you have some idea that you're going to make a short ABA track it can help generate ideas when you'll use what source, which alleviates writer's block. A nice trick I personally use, for example, is using sonata form when mixing four or more sources at once (such as my older track 'Magnus Divinicus Chiptunicus'); AB C AB (that's Sonata form: Exposition 'AB', Development 'C', Recapitulation 'AB') gives you a lot of room to use very different ideas while still having a cohesive sounding piece. That's a personal trick of mine, but you can use many more established forms to keep your track from becoming two sources stacked next to each other. For people who are not used to mixing sources together, this will help keep you on track.
Shape ("Contour") is more important than getting the exact intervals correct. Rarely can you get a theme to match with another sources harmonies without changing some of the intervals notably, so don't be afraid to change the size of the intervals for important themes if it helps harmonize it better with whatever music you have underlying it. As long as you don't change the shape of the theme, it will still be recognizable.
Rhythm and beat pattern is a powerful motive in its own right. If a source has an iconic beat pattern (say, MM2 Wily 1's famous '2 gallop + three 8th note' pattern), people will make the connection between the sources no matter what notes or shapes you make with them. As far as submittable material it'll give you a funny look on the panel claiming it as source, but using rhythms as compositional glue to keep it grounded in more original sections can really help make something sound cohesive.
There are all sorts of smaller tricks to the trade, here, but these should help on a more general level. I'm hoping this turns out to be a great compo, with lots of solid music and growth for people here.

i have no wips for that track yet. i'd love to hear it! send it my way if you get some ideas written down. it by no means needs to be full length or anything - just a promising concept.

Hmm, Chrono Cross literally changed my life, so I'm thinking about doing something as well. I'm torn between "Magical Dreamers ~ The Wind, Stars, and Waves ~" and "Voyage - Home World"
Hmm, let's see first. what I come up with, and if I have time to come up with something durning the Robots vs Knights compo

Oh, I had an idea for a remix of this sitting in the back of my head for quite some time. I might participate again (yeah, it's been some time)

Alright, looks like Kapden didn't check in. The spot goes to @Jorito!! Teams are filled, all remixers have checked in. Make sure you head over to your clubhouses on Discord and get those source selections and squad rosters to me by Friday!

@Xenonetix @Yami , you might remember from that RPG contest. Glad to be on your side, Hope we can work together and at least defeat Team Knight. Hope there's no hard feeling about said contest (I'm pretty sure you're a good remixer).

I won't be joining this one but if anyone needs an extra set of ears or some advice, hit me up with your WIPs.

Next week? Perfect, my holiday starts after Wednesday

Here are the teams.
Team Knight
@Kapden @Dewey Newt @akalink @theshaggyfreak @GCJ @JohnStacy @Arrow @Anorax @PlanarianHugger Team Robot
@Xenonetix @Starphoenix @Yami @Ronald Poe @Gario @Thirdkoopa @Trism @Chiwalker @MegaDrive I need EVERYONE to check in to make sure they're ready to compete starting sometime next week.

Oh, I had an idea for a remix of this sitting in the back of my head for quite some time. I might participate again (yeah, it's been some time)