Liontamer Posted June 8, 2008 Share Posted June 8, 2008 Avaris Shaun Wallace 15843 Mega Man 2 – Metal Man's Theme Mega Man X – Zero's Theme Remix: (please designate as Mega Man 2 if posted) I did the arrangement and composition for this mix a week after I wrote the China Breakbeat Market song. Needless to say I was in the in the mood for some audio trickery, 16th notes, and ethnic shizz. The song started out as an exercise in SATB part writing and grew from there. I really wanted to make a song that carried a high energy level throughout with its composition and not it's sound design. The original arrangement I wrote for this used nothing but pianos and one synth patch. I then took that arrangement and replaced several of the piano sounds with synths and other samples. The ethnic percussion consists of free loops from Kong Audio that I sliced and diced in Ableton Live. Thanks for listening! ~Shaun ------------------------------------------------------------- http://snesmusic.org/v2/download.php?spcNow=mmx - "Zero 1" (mmx-05.spc) http://www.zophar.net/nsf/megaman2.zip - Track 6 ("Metalman Stage") Interesting approach trying to combine these two at once. Opened up with Zero as the Metalman backing faded in, joined by the melody at :19. Thought the string writing at :25 felt a little awkward on first but it resolved just fine; just had to get used to the writing there. The overall texture was too saccharine for my tastes. Some of the sound choices made the track sound more goofy/slapstick than I think was intentioned, but let's see what the other Js thought. :46-:59 felt pretty cluttered and needed to be toned down. There was great dynamic contrast with the dropoff at :59, but that section could stand to have some elements dropped out. The drums from 1:44-2:10 seemed like a weak point. There could have been something else going on to drive the track forward a bit. And things were still extremely busy/cluttered while trying to harmonize a lot of parts in the foreground. IMO, they're competing for the listener's ear rather than effectively working together. Same issues from 2:43-3:29. Note, the ending cut off abruptly at 3:51. You should be paying a lot of attention to the balance of areas where the combined sources worked reasonably well (:00-:46, 1:17-1:43, 2:24-2:43). It's clearly not the busiest sections, but rather the ones where the Zero theme clearly functioned as a background player. When you tried to punch it up alongside Metalman's theme at similar volume levels and added other countermelodies and percussion on top of THAT, things just got way too messy. Carefully scale those busier sections back while retaining the otherwise good dynamic curve, and I think this would be in a lot better shape. Looking forward to seeing what the others say. NO (resubmit) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DarkeSword Posted June 8, 2008 Share Posted June 8, 2008 Really lacking in mid-range stuff. You've got lows and highs, but the middle range (for harmonic support like pads and stuff) is almost non-existent. It causes your drums to sound pretty exposed, especially that snare. I'd scale back the busy xylophone a little too, sometimes it's a little too navi-eqsue ("HEY! LISTEN!"). The synths you've got playing Zero's theme have pretty weak articulation and the notes sound mushed together. There are some good ideas here but I think you should work on balancing out the elements. Sometimes it just gets kind of crowded and spastic. NO, resub Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Palpable Posted June 17, 2008 Share Posted June 17, 2008 I thought the approach was pretty interesting too, meshing the two songs. They go over each other pretty well. This had sort of a kitchen sink feel though - sometimes the stuff you threw stuck, but more often not. The strings that Larry mentioned sounded off to me, poorly articulated. The piano too. I think some of the high octave stuff also got irritating/cloying, but I'll allow that that's more a personal preference. The biggest issue here for me is that the overall feel is just not very cohesive, even for a song that's trying to be spastic. There are a lot of sections where there's too much going on (1:57-2:10 and 3:17-3:30 are prime examples) and 3-4 instruments are vying for the lead. I think more distinction between what is taking lead at any given time would improve this immeasurably. In addition, some of the writing just isn't very melodic. Take another look at the song, Shaun, and think about our comments. The general idea here is good, but the execution could use work. NO (resubmit) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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