Sir_NutS

I would love to help as a star, but with the current commitment I have with the Maverick Remix Battle I don't know if I'll be available by the time this one starts.

oh wait.. it's Storm Owl. I thought it was Storm Eagle . Well, that was a couple of hours wasted! lol

gj to you too, jnWake. Storm Owl is one of my favorite maverick themes, so this will be pretty exciting. EDIT: I'm really excited about this round, I just started mixing.

Wonder where Darke is..

Here are my short reviews. I'll start with the previous round because i couldn't review or vote for it because of the technical difficulties I had: X Round 2: Benjamin Briggs vs Jason Covenant: First, whats with you two using your names instead of the old nicknames now? Is that a thing you do after you get old? I'm turning 30 next week so I'll stop being Sir_NutS and start going for Michael Molina then. Anyhoo! Nice yaya bass from BB, love that bitcrushing shit. Insteresting mix of instruments through the song, certainly makes it feel unique. Jason's song, as always, is huge and epic yet somehow pretty catchy. That chorus playing the magma centipede theme is the highlight of the song for me, that sounds like it belongs in a mega man movie. Amazing stuff, and really hard to pick a winner because both songs were so good. Blackpanther: drums are baws, dub bass could've used more work to fit in with the sub. Nice arrangement overall. Mr. L vs Phonetic Hero: Lovely piano intro in mr L's. Arrangement gets a bit odd after a while, when the stacatto strings come in. Sweet arrangement overall. PH's song goes the other way and pulls a glitch hop on us. Loved the ambience, and the use of both songs. This was a close one for me, as there parts of Mr. L's song I found lovely, but I would've gone with PH in the end. Cash and Change: The boomtiss is strong with this one. A bit dissonant at parts, nothing too bad imo. I might have heard some clipping at some point, but maybe it was just me. Overdrive Ostrich seems like a pretty hard song to mix in this style. Zero Round 2: Theory of N vs Gario : More funky stuff from ToN, I think I've said before how much I dig copious amounts of funk poured onto the bass, and this one got its fair share of it. Arrangement follows that line, and overall was a very good song to listen to, keeping this one. Gario brings its own kind of funk with a jerky groove and a bucketful of arpeggios. Very hard choice with this one. Going with ToN. Hakstok: nice work on that panned/delayed synth in the intro. I liked the drumstep, and you managed to fit plenty of both songs there. The beat could've used some breaks as it feels a bit loopy. jnWake: funny we both started with a piano section. The song really felt very progressive rock at the start, but I think the part with the synth and the guitar chords at :50 sounds a bit dissonant and lacks a bit of coherence. The song regains its cool after that, but falls in the same trap at around the 2 min mark. I loved the break it sounds much nicer and the arrangement there is pretty nice. Overall you did a much better job than me including the two themes, even if I had finished what i had in mind with my song, but the parts that included the first section of Chill Penguin's theme really drag the mix down. TheRexAsaurous vs ProjectSpam: Dat LCD soundsystem bass. The tempo change could've been handled better. Pretty short. ProjectSpam's instrumentation on the drums is a a pretty interesting choice. Overall a pretty strange song that feels pretty mysterious. I think I'll go with you for originality this time. About my own song: Obviously, incomplete. Murphy played a dirty trick on me this round, Overall I was happy with what I had so far, but I could've implemented more of both songs in the mix. The fadeout ending was there because I literally had no time to include a proper one (I submitted like 15 mins before the deadline). I was planning for this song to be around 5 mins long and I had another chill penguin section planned but oh well. I found interesting on MindWanderer's comments about how he find it surprising that I did this style. Well, a few years ago I was known precisely for doing this kind of stuff around here, but I dropped it for years because I started to get bored of it and also because people began to expect that from me, and it makes me happy to know that it worked!

Uploading my entry, hope I can make it in time. edit: song sent to Darke. It's incomplete, but it's something.

unbelievable. My PC went belly up again until now. Hard to believe but its the honest truth, this PC was working fine until yesterday. Holy shit. Now I have what a couple of hours left? man, I think I'm gonna have to go with either an unfinished or a rushed entry, and I dunno if my PC wil be able to start again, I literally put it apart and back together again and tried for hours. Anyways, time spent typing is time lost spent mixing, I just wanted to explain this situation, holy shit murphy you son of a bitch.

Amazing, my computer wouldn't start for the whole day. Now I have to finish this mix... gotta start brewing that coffee.

My track is coming along well. I haven't done trance in years, so this was a good change of pace for once. I might have it finished tonight.

I got half a mix done, it's coming along nicely. However I'm having trouble fitting in melodies from the themes on this one, it might be short on source reference.

On the other hand, my mix is mostly Wire sponge right now, and I'm 2 mins in already. Just started including Chill Penguin motifs.

NO U! hmm Wire Sponge. Interesting.

And here's a real German beer to all the night owls hard at work! I know what its like

Well, as promised, here's a decent sounding version of my mix: Youtube: Soundcloud: http://soundcloud.com/sir_nuts/sense-plan-and-act GG Pixelwave. But just because you lost doens't mean you didn't deliver, I actually liked how you changed the melodies but kept them recognizable. Pretty hard to do IMO. I'm prepared to bring my A-Game for the next round!

My short reviews for this round: 1-Yami vs Ivan Hakstok : Yami's track is pretty moody, some transitions are needed between sections. The chords near the end sound pretty dry and take too much prominence. I'll go with Hakstok on this one, which delivered an awesome rock rendition. Good use of both themes, I liked how you made the synths work with this. 2-Zerothemaster vs jnWake : Good ideas in ZTM's track, but it felt kind of empty at times, the transitions and combinations between the two themes could have been smoother. Cool drop at 2:38. JnWake's get my vote: good use of both themes, very nice soundscape and arrangement, nice use of the piano through the arrangement. 3-Theory of N vs Ectogemia : I thought ToN's track was pretty amazing, I would have easily lost to this. Awesome arrangement, really funky bass I just love that shit, clean incorporation of both themes, one of my favorite tracks of the competition so far. Ectogemia's track was good, I liked the scary ambience it had at some points. I thought the song was a bit too chaotic at parts for its own good. Overall it was a pretty good effort but ToN's track was just superior. 4-Trism vs Projectspam : Trism's track was pretty short, I was enjoying what you were doing with the song and the heavy metal theme, just needed a bit more polish. Projectspam's track was enjoyable. The prescence of the arpeggio gets a bit annoying after a while, and the transition at the middle was a bit jarring. The song is a bit muddy, but nothing that a bit of mixing and mastering can't fix. I'll go with ProjectSpam's on this one. 5-Amphibious vs Gario : Loving the lead and the arrangement on your track Amphibious. The bass keeps things interesting for the most part, good use of both themes. Gario's track was pretty awesome. The lead sometimes gets lost in the soundscape, but it's audible for the most part. Love how it gets demoscene-crazy towards the second half. 6-pixelwave: Gritty bass, I liked the changes on the armadillo motif, pretty funky stuff. The chill penguin part was pretty cool and I liked how you changed it but kept it recognizable. 7-Metal Man vs SilvermixSP : More mega man rock, I approve! I think the lead could've been mixed a little bit better so it can be heard a bit more over the chords. the transition mid-song was a bit medley-ish, but the solo section made up for it later on. Silvermix's song was a bit weird, the timing goes off at times, and the tones go a bit crazy at times. The storm owl theme needed more interpretation. 8-TheRexAsaurus: digging the electro intro, the hard panning was a bit too much. When it comes to panning you want to keep it subtle for main instruments in most cases, unless you do some stuff with the other instruments in the song to make up for the lost space in the middle or want to achieve some effect. The mix between the themes wasn't too bad. As for my song, well, its LOUD. I usually listen to my finished works in different setups because I know my headphones understate the levels sometimes, but in this case I couldn't do so. Although the song is pretty short, its not incomplete, I thought I would keep it short for once and leave it at 2 min and a half since most of the times my songs go for twice as long as that. As for the arrangement the song started out pretty heavy on the EDM side but I found out this doesn't work very well for MMX themes, since they're all very rock-like with heavy solo parts, so I thought I would make it less dubstep/electro and make it rock more with modified versions of the solos and guitar-like wanking on the synths. Anyhoo, good round everyone.

I don't think there should be a problem with that. I already have a non-ear destroying, properly mastered version of mine ready. Just waiting for the votes to end to post it.

As I stated earlier, I decided to send the mix in before the final mix and master because I would fear I wouldn't get it done in time, and well it shows, so I apologize in advance to everyone's ears . I will still post a properly mastered version (which I'm working on atm) if anyone's interested, after the voting ends.

Chill out guys, its a competition for fun. It sucks when someone drops, I know that but shit happens. Enjoy the music and have fun.

Well if you want a bit more of advice, I think it wasnt as much of a sample problem, but a choice of how you sequenced them and presented them. i think that for a track as chill as this one, something more spaced out than a 4 on the floor would've worked better, that's one of the reasons why the song and the drums felt a bit disconnected. Also I would have processed them a bit more to make them sound more in tune with the ambience. But doing something other than 4 on the floor would've made a difference, I think. You could have done a spaced out beat for the most part of the song and bring the four on the floor for fuller sections, for example. Anyways hope that helps a bit.

Also where's pixelwave? I hope I'm not having yet another first round default win... I hold a record on those in Darke's compos no joke.

Crap! I thought voting was due tomorrow! sorry guys My votes would have been these: 1-Superior X vs Phonetic Hero : Very close matchup I liked how funky was SX's track but I liked PH's a little bit more. It was hectic but not too noisy. 2-Tuberz McGee vs Jakesnke17 : Jake had some insteresting ideas but I have to hand it over to Tuberz for his bold take on the themes and the arrangement. 3-AMT vs Mr. L : Not much to say, AMT rocks the fuck out of mega man. I am afraid of going against this amount of face melting mega man rock later on. A big contrast vs Mr L's subtle rendition of the themes, which wasn't bad at all but I felt the drums were a bit disconnected from the song, not off-time or anything, but kinda doing their own thing. I'll have to go with AMT on this one. 4-BlackPanther : Short, but nice. I liked the atmosphere. 5-Cash and Change : C&C's intruments felt a bit loud and dry, the arrangement wasn't bad but the instruments kinda distracted me. 5-urdailywater : slappy clap there. Ambience is kinda odd, but it was entertaining. 6-ladyWildfire vs Benjamin Briggs : LW's song is pretty awesome, almost has a sad tone to it. BB's was upbeat so there was a contrast there. I would go with BB by a hair. 7-Jason Covenant: holy crap dude. Your songs have always been epic but... damn.

Submitted. I admit I could have done a much better job with the mastering but I'll be going out soon and I'd rather submit now than risk not being able to submit later.

Well, in the next patch they'r nerfing defensive abilities and Monster damage and I say its about damn time. Things got a little better for build diversity when 1.04 hit and a lot more builds other than just tanky builds became possible (I am currently running a 2H monk on A3 farm, I don't think it was possible to do before) but defensive skills were still mandatory for the most part. I sure hope I can drop some defensive passives for the next patch and try new stuff! There are also other surprises like being able to increase monster level for increased rewards. We'll see!

Well my song is done, just some mastering left to do. Synthrock and dubstep? why yes please. I'll lay down the wobbling bass with the epic wailing synth solos for this one.

Well here I am again, wasn't able to work on my song at all the last few days, only half the song done and less than a day. BRING TI!