Liontamer Posted December 15, 2023 Share Posted December 15, 2023 (edited) Artist: Jett Swole This was originally intended to be a Dwelling of Duels entry for December 2023, but due to some misunderstandings I had about the theme of "32-bit era", I ended up jumping the gun in making it over the span of a couple days, and it turned out to be ineligible, so I just kind of released it on my own terms. I'd been replaying some of the Mega Man Zero games on the recent Zero/ZX Collection, and while the series had some iffy design choices in places, Z3 still stuck out to me as the peak of the Zero series. And so after that and hearing about the DoD theme, I thought I'd start working on an idea I'd had brewing for a while for a medley of Cannon Ball from MMZ3 and X vs Zero from MMX5. They seemed like a good fit together given the similar vibe, tempo, and overarching plot relevance to each other. The short bits of Neo Arcadia from MMZ1 and the opening of MMX5 (technically derivative of the "Weapon GET" song from Mega Man 3) are mostly just there in a cameo capacity to be honest, but I thought they were fitting all the same. Given the popularity of Zero as a character and how many songs revolving around him are outright bangers, I'd be surprised if a similar idea hadn't been done before. Hell, this is actually the third arrangement I've done that's centered around Zero and his overall character arc. I dunno, he's just kind of iconic like that, I guess. But I wanted to try taking another crack at it regardless, so that's that. This was also my first time attempting a synth-heavy rock arrangement that involved playing every synth part live alongside the usual guitar and bass, right down to the fine details like the orchestra hits. The only thing that was sequenced by mouse was the drums. Whether it turns out to be up to OCR standards or not, I had a lot of fun with this one and got some good practice in at the keyboard, so I thought I'd try my hand at submitting it anyway. Mega Man Zero 3 - Cannon Ball (Composed by Ippo Yamada) Mega Man Zero - Neo Arcadia (Composed by Ippo Yamada) Mega Man X5 - Opening (Composed by Naoto Tanaka, Naoya Kamisaka, Takuya Miyawaki) Mega Man X5 - X vs Zero (Composed by Naoto Tanaka, Naoya Kamisaka, Takuya Miyawaki) Edited March 4 by Emunator Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
prophetik music Posted December 21, 2023 Share Posted December 21, 2023 big opening. lots of panning in the opening, and the sound is absolutely slammajamma'd - if the rest of the track sounds like this, it's an insta-no. it's so loud i can't even hear what is going on in some of the instruments. there's also a distinct cut at 100hz - look at this analysis centered around 0:32-0:47: so there's a lot of weird going on here. the lack of any bass frequency combined with such a hard compressor makes it hard to tell what's going on. so this needs another mixing pass before anything can be done with it. everything needs to get turned down by half at least, and then you need to figure out why nothing has any low end. half the time you do a drop or a more limited instrument scope it's just as loud as the full band tone - this is so heavily compressed. so i'm proceeding from the perspective of this being a no. but i'll look at the arrangement too. initial melodic material is from cannon ball and is pretty straightforward outside of the genre adaptation. the lead that comes in at 2:06 is not my favorite tone i've ever heard, and the following fill at 2:32 is the same as i heard earlier which was disappointing. there's a big break at 3:05 that isn't even visible in the waveform because it's so blown out (the organ by itself is the same loudness as...the entire band!). there's a repeated section at 4:20 that is very similar to 1:34 but does have a few new things thrown in to keep it new. overall i heard a lot of the same drum licks used multiple times, and i heard the same melodic material played the same way several times, which is disappointing given that you stated that you did a lot of this by hand (so you'd expect changes and more customization). but i think the adaptation and arrangement is sufficient. it's just mastered so loudly i can't really tell to be sure. NO Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MindWanderer Posted January 9 Share Posted January 9 (edited) I have to co-sign on all the above. I didn't look at this in a frequency graph, but the production lacks clarity in a big way. It's all mids and highs, and the mids are muddy. Nearly everything is fighting for a very narrow bandwidth. Proph is right about the loudness, too; the example of the solo organ hitting the limiter just as much as when the whole ensemble is playing is a striking one. The waveform isn't even a normal sausage, it's like... a linguica? Mostly one long tube. It's a fun arrangement, great performances, but needs a lot of work in the levels and and EQ departments. proph told you what to do, so please go do it. NO (resubmit) Edited January 9 by MindWanderer Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Emunator Posted March 4 Share Posted March 4 Yeah, prophetik did a great job breaking down the specifics of why this mix is weird and where you should focus your efforts to fixing it. It was immediately obvious to my ears that something was off without even looking at a frequency analyzer. There's also a huge amount of unintentional distortion going on on the master track due to the loudness. I can't really sign off on this or give more specifics in its current form - there's a ton of energy present here and it certainly seems like you've got a lot of great ideas in the arrangement, but the mixing is actively bringing down the listening experience and needs some serious TLC. NO Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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