Liontamer Posted September 28, 2006 Share Posted September 28, 2006 Hello OCRemix, I am Cyril, a new face around here (to the degree that this is the first tune I have had the balls to submit to OCR) and have finally decided to submit a remix to (hopefully) get added to the OCRemix archives. I would first like to thank the judges for taking the time to listen to my remix, you all will either give me good suggestions or accept this as you have with other potential remixes. The song that was remixed was from a game for the Gameboy Advanced called Megaman Battle Network (Rockman.EXE in Japan) which I noticed had not recevied any love in either your current submissions or your archive. The song in particular is called Net Battle. It can be found at Atomic Fire (www.atomic-fire.com), where you (incidentally) can find all sorts of Rockman music. Anyway, because this game has not even graced OCR, I have the extra burden of giving information about this game. I do believe that this song itself was composed by Akari Kaida, but I do also know that Capcom likes to sic teams of composers on their games. That said, I cannot say for all certainty that this song was indeed composed by Akari Kaida. Normally I would have checked the credits of the game, but I lost my copy ages ago. I have been wanting to make this mix since Rockman.EXE was released in America around 2002. I was not as into metal at the time, however when reflecting upon this song recently (about a month ago) I realized that it would really translate well into the metal genre. Two problems were faced, the first was that I am not supremely talented at guitar, if you give me a pick, I have absolutely no rhythm. The second one was, similar: what was I going to do to extend this and make it my own? After some research (and that means checking out some MIDI's and the original) I determined that the intro could be lengthened a tad to give the bass a bit more of an introduction and give it a bit more of a "epic" feel. Traditionally in an instrumental (well, from what I have heard from Rush) is that the main theme is stated, then it is stated again differently, this is followed by a guitar solo or breakdown section, then it restates the main theme with a bit more "oomph" and it ends somehow. This in mind, after I recorded the first two choruses (for ease's sake) I just started messing around with that riff that is repeated throughout the song. After much time and string breaking, I settled upon the riff and transition that happens at ~1:27. Here comes the difficult part for me: I would love a guitar solo here, however I am not very good at playing guitar melodically, and certaintly couldn't shred it. I did learn some tremolo picking, and after attempting to solo over it on my bass many times, I decided that I would just try it on guitar. Two takes later, I produced that guitar solo, with minimal editing. The last problem was how to get to the last and biggest restate of the main theme. It was then that I remembered Rule #1 for the recording of live tracks in a studio that I go to with my band: "Always allow for natural fadeout at the end of a song." I decided to just do a natural fadout and then decide what to do. Well, one cliche guitar lick and dramatic-type transition later, sure enough there we were! The only other problem was what to play for on the melody. I was going to try and have guitar through the whole thing, but I thought that splitting the "chorus" into two sections would be wise, so thusly we have the "guitar melody" section and the "brass melody" section. I attmpted to play the melody on my guitar, but as I said, I am horribly inept at melodic (and sometimes even rhythmic) guitar playing, so I plugged up my bass into my BNX4 processor (which was used for all the guitars, for the record) and played with the Pitch Shifter feature to get my bass to sing at two octaves above it's normal range, even then, I still had to emply an auto-tuner as the notes were consistantly flat. Finally I was able to get to the part that probably took the longest, which is (of course) production. I had to have released 8 versions of this to get it to sound right. I am still very much a beginner at production so I took all the advice I could get my hands on. I am sure that it still needs work, but I am quite proud of this achievement... although I was proud of the first 8 as well. XD My email is cyril@acelie.com and my website is: www.acelie.com/cyril Myspace: www.myspace.com/cpelkey Pure Volume: www.purevolume.com/connorpelkey I am quite sure you could reject me with a solid statement of "Say less you moron" or "K.I.S.S.: Keep it Simple Stupid." However, if you didn't want something such as this, you should only suggest the minimum! XD I hope that you will consider this for acceptance. www.acelie.com/cyril/temp/rockwithyournavi.mp3 There, that be it. Sincerely, Connor Pelkey (Cyril) -------------------------------------------------- http://www.zophar.net/gsf/mmbn_gsf.rar - 17 "Net Battle" I'm liking the foundation of the track featuring that grungier guitar, as that was pretty nice. Drums are noticeably tame here. Lead guitar (first used at :11) merely sounded shrill and has no meat on it, plus it's pretty buried in the track. Brass synths from :36-:48 were also pretty dry and underwhelming, though I appreciate the J-rock kind of feel, even if it wasn't totally well-executed. Arrangement repeated until 1:26. Fairly good energy throughout the mix, with some decent shredding from 1:46-2:11. Good original writing from 2:11-2:30 before transitioning back to the ideas you opened up with. Repeats the stuff from the beginning at 2:45. Weird how two of the synths didn't properly fadeout at 3:26, affecting the smoothness of the ending. Though you had some brief original writing, the arrangement of the actual melodic content was pretty conservative. You have some decent expansive ideas, but need to bring in more interpretive ideas to the plate as well. Yeah, if you practiced more, you'd be able to get more comfortable and expressive with your playing, particularly the guitar melody section. You gotta adjust the sound balance so the melodic portions stand out more. Right now, they're swallowed up. After examining the sound balance, you also gotta get the brass section sounding beefier; selectively doing the same for the drums wouldn't hurt either. Good potential here, Connor, especially for a first sub. NO (resubmit) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DarkeSword Posted October 22, 2006 Share Posted October 22, 2006 Guitar playing sounds really amateurish. You don't sound very confident playing those melodic lines; it's very apparent from the timing issues. The arrangement here is pretty much the same as the original tune, with a completely unrelated solo shoved in the middle. When soloing, you should try to at least play with the melody of the original, or at least use the chord changes of the source tune. NO Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
zircon Posted October 27, 2006 Share Posted October 27, 2006 Yuck at the opening guitar tone... very boxy and muddy. The drums here are really weak too for the feel you're going for (both in terms of sequencing and the samples themselves). The synths are OK and the bass sounds passable to me, but as Darke and Larry pointed out, the guitar is definitely not up to our bar. You gotta be more in-time. I also recommend boosting the volume on the lead and putting some reverb or delay on there to get it to sound out. Some additional EQing all around the mix to make the individual parts stand out would be a good idea too. Once you've tweaked some of these production and performance problems, then I recommend going back to the arrangement and making it a little more unique and interpretive - add your own chords, vary the existing progression, add new harmony parts, change the melody rhythm, etc. Keep at it. NO Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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