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MnP 126: Pokemon Gold/Silver - National Park

TheVideoGamer

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TheVideoGamer

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Compo: MnP (Meat 'n Potatoes)

Congratulations to HarlemHeat360 for winning the last round! As a result, he/she get's to choose this month's MnP source! Here's what he/she had to say about their pick:

"Well, after some thought, I felt it would be nice to go somewhere nice and simple but lovely. I was inspired partly by Chris Cornell and his video about pokemon music (link below). I think I myself often overlook 8 bit music from the GBA for my go to PS1 classics and such, but man the guys behind Pokemon found a way to give us some lovely tunes. This one has pretty start and I'm really digging that alone but then that breakdown? Wow! I'm so curious as to what you creative folks could possibly come up with! Funny thing is I don't remember this track from my childhood and this version was my favorite! Oh well, lets dust off our thinking caps and try and make some beautiful pieces!" - HarlemHeat360

GAME: Pokemon Gold/Silver (GBC)

SOURCE: National Park

VIDEO:

Deadline: 20th August @ 1PM

Closing Date: 22nd August @ 1PM

Vote Ends: 29th August @ 1PM

MnP ARCHIVE  - made by Trism ;)

submit: http://compo.thasauce.net/rounds/view/MnP126

MISSION STATEMENT
The goal of Compo:MnP is to promote that "meat and potatoes" conservative approach to remixing: this includes the mood and composition of source tunes. It is up to the remixer to create their own personalization, or to simply give it a sound upgrade. Moreover, the compo is a great opportunity to hone your remixing skills and give video game music the respect that is due. SOME reinterpretation is recommended, but not required.

MnP Instructions/Guidelines

Rules for Picking a Source:

  1. All video game sources are limited to the 6th generation of video game consoles and earlier. This was due to community consensus, where people preferred to remix more retro games, than newer games. 6th generation includes: GameCube, Xbox, PS2 and Dreamcast. 
  2. I'm now restricting big name franchises (Such as Zelda and Mega-Man) to one source per year. This is to encourage more obscure games, that not many people will know about to be picked. 
  3. Make sure you provide me both a video and a MIDI of the source in question. 

Note: This is subject to change. Also keep an eye out, if any special rounds come into fruition. 

Guidelines:

  1. Modifying the Source is fine, so long as it doesn't sound completely separate from its original intent. 
  2. If you're gonna do a genre change, at least make sure the original aspect of the source is not lost.
  3. Tempo changes are fine, as long as it's not a big change. I'm talking like, going from 80bpm to 140bpm. 
  4. Submissions must be at a maximum of 20mb (keeping in step with ThaSauce's file size max), and submitted as a MP3 file.
  5. Only 1 entry per participant. Previous winner cannot participate but can submit a BONUS entry. 
  6. Try to avoid making quality-based comments on submissions until after the Round is concluded.  It is to avoid a Bias in Votes.

MISC/TIPS
- When picking a source tune, make sure it has a MIDI to make people's lives easier.
- In-game sound FX are permitted, so long as they don't comprise the whole track (i.e. replacing entire MIDI tracks with just sfx)

Edited by TheVideoGamer
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  • 3 weeks later...
The Vodoú Queen Community Regular

The Vodoú Queen

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Mine's in, albeit like 40 minutes late.

Yes, BandLab is epic in total suckage because it has no ingrained ability to slow down or speed up tempo, so I had to literally take the song, replicate it between several different files, and try to splice it back together with the variant speeds and key changes...

...*shrugs*...I tried. I'm probably going to switch to an actual DAW rather than the online thing, because it's busting my proverbial and metaphorical balls almost every single time I try to produce/compose something, and I'd rather not have a near-mental breakdown every time I make a song, lol.

Edited by The Vodoú Queen
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HoboKa Rising Star

HoboKa

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2 hours ago, APZX said:

@Souperion

Had the same issue, if you select the blank entry it will be Coloradoweeks'. I had the same concern and checked with @TheVideoGamer and my vote went through as anticipated :)

Whew!  I'm glad that that's now @TheVideoGamer's problem to work out haha.  It's things like this that made me realize I was burnt out at the Compo Host gig.  Er...don't quit on us just yet TheVideoGamer.  I'm sure that Starla and Ramanescence can fix it quickly. 

Maybe I'll throw my hat in next round, depending on the source-pick.  Cheerio~

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The Vodoú Queen Community Regular

The Vodoú Queen

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*Looks at the scores*

Yikey-crikey-rooney... Bottom of the barrel. ...Seems like I don't do very well with MnP, lol.

Congrats BTW, Col, since Harlem didn't get to vote.

@APZX Hint noted. And kick was slightly right and drums left to balance sound. Didn't want drums and bass to overwhelm everything but still wanted them loud. Read up that panning and compression helps that, especially in electronica where so much shit can be loud at the same time. So IDK. Tempo changes fell through like I thought they would anyways, so song didn't have a hope in hell regardless. XD

Edited by The Vodoú Queen
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APZX Enthusiast

APZX

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@The Vodoú Queen

In a situation like that is where the art of mixing comes into play. I can do a lot to make a mix cleaner & clearer even without panning. Take your track for example. I'll just start from where you go full electronic.

The build-up and transition are fine and you've got a small bit of wall of sound going on. You've got decent transient information there to work with as well. The instrument voicing is perhaps not the most conducive to making it sound huge because there is too much in the 600Hz to 2KHz range going on. Now, thankfully in the electronic realm there is a technique that is super useful. It is called Sidechain compression*. In this particular case the most probable course of action would be to sidechain the main synth sound to the kick. Bring the kick into the center then sidechain the main stab to allow the kick to come through more clearly. Another option is to force the kick to pump a compressor. Here what you do is route the main synth sound to another channel and then send the kick there as well. Then you simply start turning up the volume of the kick to the point where it causes the compressor to react to the kick primarily.

To create even more room for the kick in there as well. On the main synth if you take out say (just guessing here) about 3-4dB around 100-200Hz and then do the opposite for the kick you've given the kick a little more room to hit a smidgen harder. Something else I'd do here is on the other bits of percussion, I'd route them all to their own channel and add a bit of transient designer to them for a little extra attack. Something else to consider is that your main synth there is also providing your low end. So, you'd want to give that some more weight in the form of say something like a low shelf around 50-80Hz. Or alternatively you can let the kick win there, by high passing the main synth say around 80-100Hz and then boosting the kick's bottom end in a similar fashion that you would for the main synth.

The next bit of concern is the additional synth you bring in. It also has a fair bit of lows. Now, me personally from what I'm hearing I'd take out some of the main synth's 300-900Hz region and give that to the other synth, while giving the additional synth a high boost with a very very wide high shelf (I'd start with the shelf around 20KHz and bring it down until I got the effect I want). Further, for the main synth I'd also compress the ever living snot out of it. I think something like an 1176 style compressor here would be great. Set it for say 4:1, attack middle-ish, and release as fast as it'll go (that'll be all the way clockwise). Then aim for a lot of gain reduction (I'd say 6-12dB would be a good starting point). Then for the last bit of polish on the additional synth that comes in. I'd go for some gentle compression, likely an opto (or a VCA can be used if the attack is set long and the release is set short too). The aim here is to do some gentle leveling of the sound. Just ride the overall dynamics and just squeeze them down a little as it were. Don't forget to pull some of the lows out of the sound as well.

For the hats. They're simply too quiet, and honestly I think just a level boost is all they'd need. Maybe a bell centered around 6-8KHz to bring out the attack a little bit more. The clap just needs a level boost to my ears. If you paired that up with a transient designer you could really bring them forward in the mix.

The trick to loud is much more in the composition rather than the mix though. The instruments have to have the room to breathe. Selecting which instruments play when and controlling the voicing of the instruments such that the actual desirable part of the sound does not conflict with another. The other thing is to watch the amount of low end you put into the track. The more low end, the quieter it is going to be simply because for us to perceive lows there needs to be more level. The more level the harder it is to make that sound loud without making a limiter sound bad. And that is probably the last thing, just a good overall spectral balance of the mix. If you were to take an average spectral view of commercial tracks, you'd see that generally it tends towards the shape of pink noise. Another trick is to actually use more highs. This does not generally make the track any louder, but it makes it appear louder, but be careful you don't overdue it ;)

Okay enough waffling.

 

* - I really do not like this term, but it is what it is. To start the basic anatomy of a compressor. I'll assume the feedforward topology for this explanation (the difference between a feedfoward and feedback compressor are where the sidechain of the compression is fed from. In a feedforward design it happens before the gain reduction element and in a feedback design it happens after the gain reduction element). There is an input buffer and the signal is then sent to both the sidechain and gain reduction element simultaneously.

The sidechain consists of multiple parts on its own, but functionally it consists of a detector of some sort (RMS, peak, or average typically) feeding into a comparator of some sort (determines whether the signal is above the threshold of the compressor) that is then fed into an envelope shaper of some sort (this is what gives the compressor its attack & release characteristics). Now, the entire job of the sidechain is to control the gain reduction element such that whenever the signal goes above the threshold the gain reduction element will begin to turn down the signal.

The thing is though that a compressor is functionally two different major circuits. One is the audio path where the signal passes through the gain reduction element and the other is the sidechain circuit. Knowing this, it is possible to disconnect the audio path from the sidechain and then feed in whatever signal you want into the sidechain; thereby, effectively compressing any signal with another signal. Some examples are whenever you listen to an EDM song and when the kick hits everything just seems to duck out of the way of it? Yeah that is sidechain compression. Another useful place is when you're trying to fit in vocals around a bunch of guitars in say a rock track. Often the most desirable frequencies for both instruments are in the same region one thing you can do is duck the guitars around the vocals a bit by using sidechain compression. This same technique can also be applied to gates. Ever listen to a Trance track and here some nifty gated instruments? That can be done using a gate and something like a simple square wave feeding the sidechain of the gate ;)

Edited by APZX
typo
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TheVideoGamer Proficient

TheVideoGamer

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13 hours ago, HoboKa said:

Whew!  I'm glad that that's now @TheVideoGamer's problem to work out haha.  It's things like this that made me realize I was burnt out at the Compo Host gig.  Er...don't quit on us just yet TheVideoGamer.  I'm sure that Starla and Ramanescence can fix it quickly. 

Maybe I'll throw my hat in next round, depending on the source-pick.  Cheerio~

What you think one problems is enough for me to leave haha.

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APZX Enthusiast

APZX

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@The Vodoú Queen

All right so I've created a simple audio example of what I was talking about with regards to sidechaining and how useful it can be regarding letting a kick through without much effort. Please see attached :)

How I've laid this out is that you hear a very basic 4 on the floor type beat followed up by a nice & loud sustained bass sound. Then I play both together without any sidechain compression happening. Then I kick in the sidechain compression. I then fade in a simple supersaw type pad that is also sidechained. From there I go into a few times where I alternate between no sidechain compression and sidechain compression. Lastly, on the pad I remove the sidechain compression and bring in a gated pad controlled via a simple sine wave to rhythmically gate the pad so it sounds a bit more interesting. Now, other than the dynamics processing and some reverb on the pad, there is zero other processing going on (well save a limiter on the master cause I'm lazy). So, what you hear is just the power of the sidechain ;)

Quick Sidechain Audio Example.mp3

Edited by APZX
minor clarification
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The Vodoú Queen Community Regular

The Vodoú Queen

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@APZX

Thanks, honestly. I'll be sure to listen to it, and try to understand. Admittedly, about 40% of everything you said sunk in... The rest? I'm unsure and I'll probably have to read up more on it or watch YT vids.

I'm not as adept as you or Gamer or the others with composition crafting. And don't even get me started on music theory or spouting off music vocab, besides simple things like...what mezzo-forte is, or a rest is, or a whole note... Ya know, baby's first band class shit. I barely got to grips with hertz, decibels and EQ not long ago, lol... The help goes a long way but a good portion ATM is going r/whoosh over my head. Sadly, a lot of me EQing and modifying music quality and balance is by ear. It's what sounds good to me, which may or may not sound good to the wider public and only way I know otherwise is through poor scores, critique and occasionally, asking someone I know what they think of a song before I release it. Otherwise, I wouldn't know. And I don't have the necessary acumen or huge depth of knowledge yet to sidechain compress my way to victory, because I barely know what that is (or was.) I don't have a teacher or someone to shadow under, like an apprenticeship. Don't think it's needed? Hmm...

TL;DR: I guess for subsequent songs on these compos I can try my best, but they're going to probably sound like shit. But I guess it's no worse than what I pull off currently, which doesn't fly either.

And yeah, I think I suck at making music, but it is what it is, lol. I suffer from extremely low self-esteem so I can say that about anything I touch.

But, again, thanks for the tips and I'm honestly going to do my best to understand all of this advice. Got me scratching my head a bit, but guess I'm a quick enough learner.

Edited by The Vodoú Queen
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