Liontamer Posted September 22, 2023 Share Posted September 22, 2023 Hi there! I have been a long time fan of ocremix.org and would be honoured to have this VGM remix of mine considered: Submission Information: Name of games arranged: Dynamite Headdy Name of arrangement: Mushy Metal Aura Headd Name of individual songs arranged: Hustle Maruyama (parts 1 & 2) I made this as a Christmas present for my fiance last year (but ended up spending the last 9 months trying to get the mix to sound better haha). I think Hustle Maruyama is listed as 1 song on ocremix but sometimes it's listed as a two part song. My goal with this song was to arrange it in my own style but still be very recognisable. The style I have been working with in the last few years mixes chiptune and VGM influences with IDM, breakcore, prog rock and power metal. I hope you enjoy it Contact info: ReMixer name: Dane Jacobs Real name: Dane Jacobs Email: Websites: https://www.instagram.com/danemjacobs/ https://danejacobs.newgrounds.com/ https://soundcloud.com/dane-m-jacobs https://www.youtube.com/RhubarbZoo Kind regards, Dane Jacobs Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
prophetik music Posted September 25, 2023 Share Posted September 25, 2023 (edited) headdy's soundtrack is so bonkers. this is an excellent genre to use for it. high-speed intro complete with sfx, and a very fast BPM on the main track when it gets cooking. breakcore influence is super obvious right off the bat. drums regularly are way louder than the melodic material, which is somewhat a genre element but also is objectively bad for a video game soundtrack arrange community. specifically the bitcrushing and timestop elements wind up totally annihilating everything else. there's a break at 1:52, and this features some very batty timing elements in the drums. the second half of the original is clearly at play here. 2:30 gives us a downbeat again occasionally, and this progresses through another drop and pump at 3:06. it goofs around a bit until we hit the actual last blow at 3:48, which is at truly mind-melting speed. despite the waveform being fatter than a wisconsin bratwurst, this is actually way more balanced than the first part. there's a final hit and then like fifteen seconds of fadeout sfx, and it's time to breathe again. i was not sold in the first section and really got into it by the end. i think that if this goes back the balance in the first minute and a half needs to be redone, but other than that there's a really fun arrangement with absolutely bonkers drum work going on here. nice job creating a convert. YES Edited September 25, 2023 by prophetik music spelling Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Liontamer Posted October 10, 2023 Author Share Posted October 10, 2023 Insane sound upgrade of an already insane source. The instrumentation definitely opens sounding unsophisticated, but once the breakbeats arrive around :35, OK, I see the vision. Frankly, I didn't like moments like 1:33-1:52 where the sampled breakbeats come off sounding so much more lo-fi and lacking sharpness compared to the rest of the soundscape. Not a huge deal, just something that broke the immersion, even though this is still strong. After a few listens, I was no longer thrown off by the awkward drum timing during the 1:52-2:39 section; in order to stay centered, just don't focus on the drums, because they're not the anchor. If you focus on the lead and/or backing pad, you won't get disoriented or lose tracks of the measures. Strange stuff that initially didn't click for me, but did later on; I can respect the chaos. The dynamic contrast of a mellower (albeit busy) section here wasn't lost on me. (I also appreciated the voice sampling from "Maruyama Appears" from 2:48-3:07, both from a VGM fan perspective and from having heard that theme used in Botchamania. :-D) 3:46-4:41 was also too crowded. I'm not a fan of how the drums end up crowding out everything else, but it's at least a contrast point for this verse compared to others before it. The leads still cut through just fine, so I can still follow along with the track; this was an issue that was going on anytime the breakbeats were going wild, just moreso for the big finish. Hell of a way to expand the palette of this theme. I wouldn't call this mixing dodgy or wrong, just not ideal; that said, if the source files were kaput and this couldn't be revisited, there's absolutely no way I'd turn this away. It's mania in musical form, literally amplifying every bit of energy from the source and making it even more unorthodox. No idea what Dane may have up his sleeve in the future, but he's certainly on my radar now. DYNAMITE Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MindWanderer Posted October 20, 2023 Share Posted October 20, 2023 I wasn't familiar with this soundtrack. And after listening to it, I'm still not sure I'm familiar with it. "Frenetic" would be an understatement. The remix goes after that same manic energy, and achieves it. The approach is somewhat conservative in that sense, though it does a lot of other interesting things with the arrangement and instrumentation. It's awfully hard to compare the two because they're both so busy. I didn't hear any balance issues that didn't sound intentional. Yeah, the drums are in front, but it's breakcore, I expect that. I'm pretty sure it sounds the way it's supposed to sound. I think it could maybe have synths with richer timbre for what you're trying to achieve here, and the thin tones are hurting how much "space" the non-percussion instruments take up, but that's nitpicking. This is solid work all around. YES Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chimpazilla Posted October 30, 2023 Share Posted October 30, 2023 Wait just a second, let me grab my brain from off the floor, it fell out just for a sec..... Alrighty. WOW. Insane sources, yes. Stupid amounts of detail in this remix. Awesome arrangement. I agree with the dudes that the drums are louder than the rest of the soundscape so they obliterate it now and again, and sometimes the mix is so crowded that, well, my brain falls on the floor. Still, YES Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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