Mega Man X2, X3, X4 - Zero's Themes

[ShrackAttack]

Here's something I did for WCRG this past year. I did it in roughly a few days and never really got to fix and do everything I wanted, but figured I would start working on it again and try to polish it and fix it up and possibly submit it to OCR for the heck of it. It was supposed to use Concrete Man's theme and some of Zero's themes from Megaman, but as you can see there wasn't much Concrete man used (i.e. pretty much none) . So I'm basically just going to fix it up and keep it using the various versions of Zero's themes from Megaman X2, X3, and X4.

https://soundcloud.com/shrackattack/wcrg-sins-of-our-fathers

Feel free to post any critique as I certainly wouldn't mind some extra ears for when I start working on it this week! The most painful things for me personally when I go back and listen to it are how grating and just annoying the string stacs/spics are at 0:53 so I need to tighten that up and fix it a bit. Also, the ending was a bit tagged on since I ran out of time . And yeah, just in general it's a bit mechanical with the orch stuff.

Thanks for any critiques/advice!

edit: and yes, I was referencing Metal Gear Solid with the arrangement style .

Edited February 4, 2014 by ShrackAttack

[Jonathan!]

This is awesome, I love it.

- I like the voice sample mixed with the ambient sounds at the start, really nice

- The use of instruments such as the ones at 0:28 / 0:41 is very effective. It immediately makes me think of The Last Samurai soundtrack

- 0:46 is a cool idea but it feels really empty. I am not quite sure what the problem is

- I fully agree with your point about the strings at 0:53

- The transition at 1:20 works rather well and the following section is great

- The rest is pretty excellent, I really can't criticise.

- The ending doesn't do the rest of the piece justice though that doesn't make it bad.

- A very small thing: your strings and trumpet fade out at different rates at the end

Sorry for the lack of any meaty feedback. It's difficult to be objective when you really enjoy something.

[ShrackAttack]

Thanks! and also thanks for the critiques. I definitely agree with the ending, originally I was going to build it up a lot more, so that's a part where I need to go back and add on some more to really get the right effect, plus it needs some help on the production side of things.

[timaeus222]

What's up?

I like how this is so far, but I agree on how the strings are off. I don't think they're annoying as they are, but they sound stiff, and sometimes the timings are late. The choice so far to use all spic articulations makes it seem like you ran out of time, I think. It would really help to incorporate some legato and/or tremolo in there with some volume swells via automation.

I think 0:31 - 0:40 gets pretty quiet compared to the rest of the track. It's totally fine if you want to give dynamic contrast by doing that, but I think it's a bit too quiet. My bad headphones have a pretty low impedance, so I should be hearing things more loudly than with my actual mixing headphones, yet that section was barely audible on these (aside from some of the trebly sound effects).

At 0:45, the guitar that fades in is pretty narrow. It may help to double track it. That aside, I think the drum and bass loop doesn't help to lead into a half-time section. That fast tempo didn't foreshadow a very slow tempo for me. It may help to just put a few cohesive risers there, and maybe even trilling violins. I also just realized that the section at 0:53 has some rather lofi hi hats.

I like the modal shifts up to 1:56, though it seems a little cliche to me with the triplets. Cool trebly FX at 2:22. It kinda sounds like something from Evolve Mutations, or Evolve, or something of that sort. I would have liked to see those details in here earlier, but that's up to you. Also, 3:18 - 3:20 felt the weakest to me in terms of the realism. Maybe trying shorter/tighter articulations there on the brass could help.

Overall, I think this is pretty good. Just needs some production love and some refining on the sequencing. The low end support could be stronger and clearer.

Edited February 10, 2014 by timaeus222