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Mega Man: The Wily Castle Remix Gauntlet 2013

DarkeSword

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Sir_NutS Rookie

Sir_NutS

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Ultra serious and dramatic lyrics:

(Verse 1)

I thought in time,

Things would ease my pain,

But I keep hearing you call my name.

My heart fights jealousy.

Why don't you want to be with me?

Caught in a triangle,

Our hearts entangled,

Bleeding tears and rust.

Although you may choose another,

You're more than a brother,

With my soul I intrust.

(Chorus)

2 boys are better than one

Together, it'll be so much fun,

Tonight, things will be done,

Until we're numb

We can't stop what has begun.

(Verse 2)

3 bodies, you never said.

You form the arms, I'll form the head.

Some choices you regret for life.

But others, feel just right.

I see the flutter in your eyes,

It's pleasure in disguise.

Excitement drives the pace.

While I splash woman all over your face.

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DrumJ8 Newbie

DrumJ8

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Haha, I'm pretty sure they're ordered by team. You were after the Beat Masters twice and before The Most Handsome Gaul-Durn Devils twice. I've noticed the pattern too
Alphabetical order, in fact.

Ahhh I never noticed the pattern. I've been wondering why I've always been placed in between powerhouse players. I feel short.

@Sir_NutS I listened to it. flipn tizzight. (I haven't listened to all yet, cuz I'm still at work :/)

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DrumJ8 Newbie

DrumJ8

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Hmmmmm DrumJ8, I like your mix title ;-) Is "Smooth Moduhater" in any way a reference to "Smooth Operator", mine and pH's Needle Man remix from the 2011 WCRG? heh heh.

Whoa, unfortunately no, but how cool would that have been? i wish i were cool

It IS a reference to that old song "Smooth Operator" but it's an allusion to the lyrics "I don't modulate nor do I modu-hate" in my track. secret's out guys - I rap in my mix :oops:

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Ethan Rex Newbie

Ethan Rex

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DEM REVIEWS

Amph: Smooth as fucking silk dude. Sub bass seemed a little big in spots but that's really a nitpick. Glitches were tasteful and well done, and the marimba/xylo added some nice texture.

Cash: Countermelody at :20 sounds like its is in the same freq range as the lead, try and eq or maybe even knock it down an octave to separate the frequencies out and clean up the mix. Some nice automation happening in the leads. Dug the ending.

Jameson: Dissonance is used well here. Piece was dynamic and kept my interest.The style and atmosphere kept me hooked till the very end. Nicework.jpg

wildfire: pretty atmospheric intro, though i wish it was a bit shorter. Vocals seem oddly harsh in the high end, almost as if it was high passed with a bit too much resonance. Other than that, the vocals worked well. Track seemed a bit long, but I'm an impatient listener, so that might be my end.

Mr. L: nice change of pace from the usual atmospheric stuff man. Some of the note changes in the strings seem a tad off, and some of the harmonies are a bit odd, but it's neat that you're branching out.

ParahSalin: Still some key issues that need to be worked out, though it's less than before. Hats are reeeeall hot on my end, so I'd cut the high frequencies a bit to make that less harsh. Arrangement got better as the piece progressed. Keep Improving man!

PH: dat MP sine wave. As usual, drums are sexy, but this time it's because of drum choice as well as writing. Piano gave me a boner but it always does that; it DID seem a bit soft though. Actually, the whole piece seemed a bit on the quiet side, but it was a pretty downtempo groove, so it worked.

shadow: Dug the glitch atmosphere here man. Still some odd harmonies, but at a fraction of what they were, so nice work on that. Bass seems panned a bit left which sounds weird to me. Your piano can come out as well, but this is some solid improvement man.

Sir_NutS: pls have mai babbies pls <3

DrumJ8: Soundscape sounds a lot fuller than last time, nice work on that man. Switch to needle man has a few key issues, but i don wanna be a moduhater. Vocals work well aside from a few odd lines that seem to have too many syllables.

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Phonetic Hero Newbie

Phonetic Hero

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PH: dat MP sine wave. As usual, drums are sexy, but this time it's because of drum choice as well as writing. Piano gave me a boner but it always does that; it DID seem a bit soft though. Actually, the whole piece seemed a bit on the quiet side, but it was a pretty downtempo groove, so it worked.

Agreed about quietness. I only had like 3 hours to do the last half or so of the track (from about 1:30 in the track and on), and I mix at low volumes. By the time 5:00 (central) rolled around, I didn't realize it, and had to do some sloppy 5-second mastering... I'm already doing some other mastering tonight, so I'll try to fix that one up and post an updated version on my soundcloud

I guess now that I think about it, I also wasn't intending for the piano to be the lead when I started, but that's what ended up working best to fit the parts. It needs to be more up front than it is, and I usually shy away from piano leads anyway because it's such an expressive instrument and I have such a poor sample :P

Edited by Phonetic Hero
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shadow24 Newbie

shadow24

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DEM REVIEWS

shadow: Dug the glitch atmosphere here man. Still some odd harmonies, but at a fraction of what they were, so nice work on that. Bass seems panned a bit left which sounds weird to me. Your piano can come out as well, but this is some solid improvement man.

Thanks dude :) I had fun making it and still have a long ways to go. Hope the journey is a fun one. Also, I think I heard Darke mutter "Imma gonna break you shadow24" in my mind's eye. ;)

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Ethan Rex Newbie

Ethan Rex

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You forgot Kuolema in your review, who really stepped it up this round IMO.

Also I'm too old to have babies at this point.

I figured that Kuolema's already heard my crits this week, so there's no need for a public review (I haven't reviewed any Robutt Mustard track). But yeah, he killed it this week, and I'm proud of him.

And damn. Maybe we can adopt? :tomatoface:

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Mr. L Newbie

Mr. L

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DEM REVIEWS

Mr. L: nice change of pace from the usual atmospheric stuff man. Some of the note changes in the strings seem a tad off, and some of the harmonies are a bit odd, but it's neat that you're branching out.

Thanks for dem reviews, man. :)

I've been wanting to try orchestral for some time now, so I figured 'why not' for this round.

But I'll study more about string arrangement, definitely.

Edited by Mr. L
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Garpocalypse Newbie

Garpocalypse

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Thanks for the review Therex. I went to the library and I got the Complete Idiot's Guide to Music Theory - Dyed Blond Girl Edition. I try to brush up all the things I learned in high school so next time I won't make any key mistakes.

There we go. :-P Racist/sexist stereotypes averted.

Is anyone up for an LP tonight?

Edited by Garpocalypse
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timaeus222 Enthusiast

timaeus222

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Okay, gonna give reviews!

ProtoNitroGENerator - Tempos were inconsistent and the arrangement felt disjointed. Still, I can't blame you for trying. Good effort, and good luck for future material.

Dancin' Through Club Wily - Nice dynamic reso saws. Pretty good funk-ish bass. I liked the lead, aside from how it gets rather resonant in the mids whenever it reaches low cutoffs. Drums could come through more. Texturally, it comes off as a bit sparse sometimes, and there are times when the rhythmic choice on the percussion was a bit confusing. The bass was probably the highest quality sound from that song, IMO. Nice and thick.

Ascent - Good effort! The orchestra comes off rather fake, but doing something like this with fake samples is going to be tough to be convincing anyways. Even if it's only a minute. :<

Entangled - This is actually really good. Loved the vocal processing and the dubstep wobbles. Who knew you could do dubstep? Reminds me of the ending of Blast Beatdown. ;D At 0:59... is that the exophase filter from Zebra? Random guessing! At 1:25, the lead is a bit too sustained to have a resonant timbre like that and not hurt. :P The DnB section drums didn't seem to work tonally. And... that's about it!

Follow Your Dreams - The bass is too loud, but the tone is good. A bit too much reverb in the background instruments, and your vocals have some distortion artifacts as well as remaining sibilance. The rest was pretty OK in my book.

The Ohm Operatives - The instrument choice isn't quite gelling, IMO, and the mixing is quiet. I liked the glitching you did in the background. It has a little bit of a metallic chiptune feel. Some sounds were cool, but the mixing made them feel narrow and lo-fi (not because of any sort of bitcrushing or lo-fi processing).

Guile of the Nile - The bass notes were good, but I think the bass tone could lean less towards a sine-like bass and more towards an electric bass for this kind of song. 1:05 lead was nice. I kinda wish it had more expressiveness. The glitching felt welcome. Good work on the E. Piano chords.

Smooth Moduhater - Mixing is pretty quiet. The bass instrument and possibly the kick are actually too loud, perhaps in the sub bass, and the hard-panning lead was a bit confusing. There's a hollow feel to the mix due to little midrange presence. Nice rapping, though the execution sounded kind of flat (i.e. not that much variation in the intonation). I loved the lyrics, and the inflections were clear.

Spirit of the Wind - The sine wave was pretty piercing on the higher notes and could have used some keyfollow/keytracking on a LP filter. Good snare, and though it could have a little more low mids, it was able to come through. I personally don't think it fit the somewhat chill atmosphere though, and it does stick out a bit IMO. I'm not sure I really heard any obvious lead other than some bells, a piano, and a sine wave, which all tend to be rather thin and trebly at those higher octaves. It feels like you really went out of your comfort zone tbh, and it was a good effort on your part. Reverb was good, and background instrument choice was good.

Prayer for IDOLA ~ Kobayashi's Final Descent - For some reason the bass felt offkey versus the square arp. The track feels texturally awkward to me, at least until 0:52 where things get more structured. The square lead at 1:15~1:56 felt dissonant in the non-jazzy way. Tbh, I don't hear a super clear direction in this, but there's definitely variety in this, and it was a good attempt at complex dissonance.

Speed Run - Nice drums. I do feel like the 909 snare gets used a lot when power is the goal. Generally I find it useful for snare rolls, but I don't actually use it for a main, power snare if I don't have any other layers on it. Good piano. The snare works better in the 1:47 context with that noise gating. The backing and lead though, both use saw waves, so the clarity is a bit hurt. If you want textural distinction, it tends to work out well if you use different waveforms for each different synth. Square waves come through with a powerful bass fundamental, and saw waves tend to work well as piercing, cutting timbres, generally. Interesting glitch section. I personally felt like it was somewhat random in the effect choices, but for the most part it was good. Great improvement from your entries in the past.

Edited by timaeus222
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Sir_NutS Rookie

Sir_NutS

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Entangled - This is actually really good. Loved the vocal processing and the dubstep wobbles. Who knew you could do dubstep? Reminds me of the ending of Blast Beatdown. ;D At 0:59... is that the exophase filter from Zebra? Random guessing! At 1:25, the lead is a bit too sustained to have a resonant timbre like that and not hurt. :P The DnB section drums didn't seem to work tonally. And... that's about it!

umm... I've done lots of dubstep in these and other compos o_0

And about using Zebra, I don't use VSTs, I build all my sounds from scratch in Reason (with Thor mostly, and subtractor sometimes).

EDIT: The effect on the lead at 0:59 is a result of some automation with Reason's phaser and Scream distortion unit, as well as some pitch bending.

Edited by Sir_NutS
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timaeus222 Enthusiast

timaeus222

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Oh, well I didn't know. This is my first OCR competition.

EDIT: The effect on the lead at 0:59 is a result of some automation with Reason's phaser and Scream distortion unit, as well as some pitch bending.

Yeah, that's essentially what the filter I mentioned does, IIRC. Neat production work on this.

Edited by timaeus222
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DrumJ8 Newbie

DrumJ8

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I don't use VSTs, I build all my sounds from scratch in Reason

Thought 1: You think you're better than me, just because you build all your sounds from scratch? because you are :P

Thought 2: fkn badass

So, to try and sum up my track, I struggled with ideas, and you'll notice that minus the rap the arrangement is overly simple. I realized mid week that I couldn't/wouldn't want to start from scratch, but the arrangement sounded like a rap could go nicely over it. As wildfire stated regarding her track, this was also my first attempt at a vocal anything, and I never thought in a million years I would be making a rap song, but here we are. Also, I'm not a big fan of vocal mixes but after making one, I have a new found appreciation for the hard work it takes to pull it off. (e.g. I didn't really listen to Killer Beets in detail but I went back and concluded that it was indeed awesome). I don't have good vocal mics and was planning on using my Tascam recorder but it malfunctioned, so as a last resort I used my iphone to record the vocals (it came out surprisingly good imo, for an iphone).

The lyrics alternate between breaking the fourth wall of the competition and nonsensical.

P.S. thanks for the reviews, they are much appreciated :D

LYRICALz:

This is DrumJ8 , I hope I'm not late , for the test of fate

can't differentiate between the keys at this rate

I don't modulate

nor do I modu-hate

take the bait

satiate

don't wait

Middleton Kate

open the gate

save the date

find your mate

united state

master what

I cannot equate

week after week everyone sounds great

Megaman , also known as the man of the Rock ,

Here we are, 2013 on the third block

Wily Castle Remix Gauntlet

At the start, some people didn't want it

now it seems like we're all on board

hardcore, Darkesword, untoward, lions roar

This used to be a chore but now I want more

and in the end I just wonder what it's all for?

@Trism hope you feel better

Edited by DrumJ8
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