*NO* Undertale 'Long Way to New Home'

[Gario]

Remixer name: Marshall Art
Email: 
Website: http://marshallart.bandcamp.com/
members: jmr (Jeffrey Roberts), streifig (Mikhail Ivanov)

Remixer name: Jer Roque
Email: 
Website: http://www.jeremiahroque.com/
 

Song title: Long Way to New Home

Sources:

Undertale - Another Medium
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xLsuam9o9BA
Undertale - Waterfall

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v712NiVK5uY

Undertale - Core
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tDuEWw648jo

MP3: 

 

FLAC: 

 

*THIS SONG IS SCHEDULED TO BE RELEASED ON AN UNDERTALE ALBUM RELEASED BY THE MATERIA COLLECTIVE. ESTIMATED RELEASE DATE IS SEPT 15 2016. DO NOT POST THIS SONG PRIOR TO THIS ALBUM RELEASE.*

 

When we found out that Doug Perry was organizing an Undertale arrangement album for the Materia Collective, we jumped at the opportunity to be a part of it. I first played the game earlier this year at the insistence of Mikhail, Cory, a couple friends at work, and pretty much the entire internet. RPGs are very hit or miss for me, but Undertale's unique battle system and quirky branching storyline hooked me quickly. I'd consider it one of my top-five favorite video games.

 

We started this track with the goal of combining three themes with a common motif; using Another Medium (streifig's favorite) as a base to mix in elements of Waterall and CORE. Mikhail handled the bulk of the song arrangement. On top of recording 6 distinct guitar tracks, he even sequenced some of the chiptune elements used in the CORE parts (the lines of who is the chiptuner and who is the guitarist in Marshall Art continue to blur in the most wonderful way possible). 

 

The chip sounds, in addition to the NES's 2A03, use the Namco 163 expansion, a memory mapper chip with wavetable synth used in a dozen or so Famicom games. Because of the way the chip multiplexes its multiple audio channels together, it has a characteristic high-frequency noise which worsens depending on the number of channels used. Some low-passing and notch filtering was used to reduce the noise in the mix but it is still somewhat apparent... deliberately. If we wanted a perfectly clean sound I don't think we'd be using chiptune hardware.

 

Mikhail's arrangement of the Waterfall sections which bookend the song called for a piano, and while I was able to craft some decent chiptune approximations with the N163, there's no substitute for real human playing. We invited our friend (and past collaborator) Jer to tickle the ivories, and on real short notice, he delivered the parts you hear in the final song. Endless thanks to him for that!

 

Enjoy! All the best, 

-Jeff / jmr

Marshall Art

Edited March 9, 2017 by Liontamer
closed decision

[MindWanderer]

I'm glad you explained about the Namco 163, because otherwise that just sounds like background noise from a really poor-quality microphone.  But you can certainly get a much cleaner sound than this while still using chiptune hardware.  It sounds like even the percussion is created using the Namco, which is a very odd decision, since you can create nearly identical sounds in other ways without introducing that unnecessary artifact. When you have multiple Namco instruments playing at once, like at 2:48-2:59, the effect, frankly, sounds terrible, turning everything to staticky mush.

The piano at the end (not bookending--to bookend means to appear at both the beginning and end, or on both sides of something) is very pretty, but completely out of place.  It's the only place in the arrangement when the Namco 163 isn't playing, so even though it's melodically and stylistically similar, the sound space is totally different.

Otherwise, the arrangement is solid, and I actually liked it a lot.  I just don't think your creative gamble using that particular chip so heavily paid off.  Used judiciously, I think it could have worked, but this is really hard to listen to.  I can see this passing if other judges think the nod to authenticity is worth the loss of sound quality, but I'm not one of them.  I'd love to hear another version of this that either uses that chip less or cleans it up more.

Edit: I decided to revisit this after reading Gario's vote.  The key differences between this and The Wily Malfunction, in my opinion, are that Mazedude used instruments that are themselves low-fi, and, strange as it seems for such a chaotic-seeming arrangement, he used them in moderation (only one instrument generating any given type of distortion at a time).  The Namco 163 creates an audio artifact in addition to its primary sound (which itself is clean), and with multiple instruments creating that artifact, the effect is cumulatively more severe.

I will correct myself about the piano, though.  The fact that it doesn't start until 30 seconds in, and never without the Namco buzz, threw me off.  The bookending would work better if the clean piano at the end fit in better with the rest of the piece.

NO (resubmit)

[Gario]

Honestly, I've got to take the opposite approach from my esteemed colleague and say the authenticity and crunch from the hardware sounds absolutely great contrasting against the crisp guitar work. That was one of the features that really pulled this track together and made it into something new and interesting. I suppose it's not for everyone, but I dig it. The production, where it's not purposefully coming from the Namco 163 hardware (very interesting tidbit, by the way) is otherwise spot on, so it's very much apparent that it's a stylistic choice. I mean, we don't hammer on Mazedude for this amazing remix that technically has terrible production values, as it's utilized purposefully and artfully. Similar deal here, in my opinion.

The arrangement is a touch on the conservative side, but the change in style and pace is enough for me to give it a moderate pass. It takes it into enough directions in the soundscape to keep it fresh, for me, but it is a touch on the conservative side. Going to point out that the piano is utilized in the beginning of the track (at 0:34 - 1:03), so it's indeed a bookend. This preps the listener sufficiently for the ending, as well, so I think it was handled exceptionally well.

Drums are good, but I felt the track put too much low pass over it, which makes it sound dull in the background. It's understandable on the one hand, giving the other instruments their space, but on the other hand the drums remain hidden in the background a bit. Letting some highs through would've made them punch through better.

Nitpicks aside, though, I thought this was great. I'd be happy to see this get some front page lovin'.

YES

[Sir_NutS]

I have to go with MW on this one.  The use of the original sampling quality of Namco's hardware is cute, but it does get extremely messy at the spots MW's mentioned.  When compared to other "dirty" remixes on the site, such as Mazedude's excellent MM2 remix, there's quite a difference in mix clarity.  Whereas Mazedude's mix is crunchy, the mix is clear, that's not the case where, where the mix devolves into a ball of muddiness and the parts become very hard to tell apart or identify.  I think the main offender here are the drums , because the actual synths are really cool, the added harmonic content caused by the low bitrate is just something I love to hear in lo-fi works like this one, but this doesn't work as well for the drums.  a good example of how the mix becomes messy is 3:33, the lo-fi quality of the different elements stops being cute there, it just feels like a wall of noisy sounds.

I did like the arrangement however, and I think the piano and guitar elements could work very well with the sampled sounds, but I can't pass this based on mix clarity. Maybe it could be cleared up without hurting too much the artist's original vision, but as it is now I can't give it a pass.

NO

[Liontamer]

The arrangement's totally fine, and there's no concerns about it being too conservative; the end-goal is was it transformative in a meaningful way, and this arrangement in chiptune and rock together was completely substantive, even going so far as to seamlessly weaving together the 3 source tunes with each of their more unique writing beyond that main melody we all know.

The guitar at 1:07 sounded distant, and I waited to see if that decision made sense given what came after. To me, it's not ideal, but at 1:45 looks like the the melody is the big focus, so the guitar's OK as a supporting part then. But as the track went on, it felt like the chip elements were struggling to be heard over the guitar. I'm obviously no production expert, but it just sounds as if there's needless frequency overlap that blurs a lot of the textures. Also, there's something sounding like the very high-end got cut from the track though, so there's no sharpness/clarity to it. 

Dynamically, I think the mixing undermined the changes in energy and textures here. From 2:03-2:58, it felt like the density and distance of the track hovered at basically the same level. From 2:40-2:58, with more lines of writing gradually joining in, the soundscape was just getting cluttered. Even after 3:02's excellent changeup to focus on more chip stuff, the change in texture again at 3:33-4:02 back to the guitar being prominent but mixed in the background brought back more instances of clutter, which made the track feel samey.

I'll just say, I didn't really read the notes about the Namco 163, because that it and of itself wasn't a problem in anything I heard; I simply felt there was an overall lack of clarity throughout much of the piece. Like Gario mentioned, the drums were extremely dull in sound quality (NOT writing), and combined with my issues on the guitars generally mudding together with the chip elements, I didn't feel this version of the mixing worked, and the parts weren't clear/distinct enough. Sorry to also be a NO on this, but with another pass at just the production side to clean this up some, this would better realize the energy of the arrangement.

NO

[Chimpazilla]

On 2/3/2017 at 6:28 AM, Sir_NutS said:

I have to go with MW on this one.  The use of the original sampling quality of Namco's hardware is cute, but it does get extremely messy at the spots MW's mentioned.  When compared to other "dirty" remixes on the site, such as Mazedude's excellent MM2 remix, there's quite a difference in mix clarity.  Whereas Mazedude's mix is crunchy, the mix is clear, that's not the case where, where the mix devolves into a ball of muddiness and the parts become very hard to tell apart or identify.  I think the main offender here are the drums , because the actual synths are really cool, the added harmonic content caused by the low bitrate is just something I love to hear in lo-fi works like this one, but this doesn't work as well for the drums.  a good example of how the mix becomes messy is 3:33, the lo-fi quality of the different elements stops being cute there, it just feels like a wall of noisy sounds.

I did like the arrangement however, and I think the piano and guitar elements could work very well with the sampled sounds, but I can't pass this based on mix clarity. Maybe it could be cleared up without hurting too much the artist's original vision, but as it is now I can't give it a pass.

NO

^This,^ in it's entirety.  What a cool arrangement, but the distortion just kills it dead.  For anyone who ever hears it without reading the production notes, it is just going to sound bad, period.  I will add that the piano sequencing sounds very stiff and mechanical.  I hope you can fix this up and resubmit it, the concept and arrangement are ace.

NO (resubmit, please)