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*NO* Mega Man 9 "Summer Hive"


Rexy
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You had me groovin since the first few notes.  Funky beat and rhythm, and eps for days.  I do have some issues with this track though:

Production is clean enough, but I feel some of the levels are off.  I.E. when the melody is intruduced at around 0:56, the levels on that piano are a bit low so it feels like it's behind all the other instruments.  
Most importantly, I think this track is very static and a bit too repetitive.  Specially towards the second part, it repeats the melodies for way too long without much else really happening.  There are a few breakdowns but it feels like the energy levels are like a flat line in this song.

I think this needs more interpretation and variation to make it to the front page.  It's funky and fun but not quite there yet.

NO

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  • Sir_NutS changed the title to 2019/07/22 - (1N) Mega Man 9 "Summer Hive"
  • 3 weeks later...

Agreed on all points.  I was tapping my toes to the first few measures of the opening groove, but then it went on for much longer than necessary., and then again in the second half it repeats the hook a few too many times.  And balance is an issue throughout--leads are far too quiet, percussion, bass, and harmonies are too loud.

I'll also add that I'm not sold on the instrumentation.  It's very simple GM-MIDI stuff, very AdLib-era.  I think you can get away with it as an aesthetic choice but it's a bit eyebrow-raising.

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  • MindWanderer changed the title to 2019/07/22 - (2N) Mega Man 9 "Summer Hive"

this is ~90 seconds of music scraped over 3:30 of bread. the other judges nailed it in that it's too static and doesn't go anywhere throughout. there's a lot of potential to get creative here, but slowing down the tempo and then essentially playing through the track in a straight line makes for a pretty generic-sounding track. if you're not going to go with more synth design - which is fine, i liked the lofi style actually! - you need to generate and hold interest exclusively with what those simple sounds are playing. i don't think there's enough of that here.

from the production side of the house, it desperately needs a compressor (feels like the balance is done exclusively through levels that are set at the beginning and never change). beyond that, the snare's way too loud throughout, and the melody's never loud enough. everything could be playing really interesting parts but it gets kinda mashed together since there's not much stereo separation that i noticed and everything's kinda in the same register.

ultimately this is fun in that it's got a good groove to it. it needs some more work to clean it up - the best funky tracks are the ones that sound busy but really aren't. cut out a bit of the extra, tone back the snare, and find ways to emphasize the lead, and this is in a good place.

 

 

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