OCR04835 - *YES* Super Paper Mario & Final Fantasy 5 "Flipside Part L: The Jester and The Void"

[Liontamer ⚖️]

Source Breakdown:
0:00 - 0:15 - Intro from The Ultimate Show (0:00 - 0:15)
0:15 - 0:29 - A section from The Ultimate Show (0:15 - 0:29)
0:29 - 0:55 - B section from The Ultimate Show (0:29 - 0:55)
0:55 - 1:08 - C section from The Ultimate Show (0:55 - 1:08)
1:08 - 1:26 - A section
1:26 - 1:52  -  Variations on A section from Ultimate Show in the Organ
1:52 - 2:20 - ORIGINAL
2:20 - 2:50  - B section from The Ultimate Show in horns
2:50 - 3:14  C section from The Ultimate Show variation in keys
3:14 - 3:29 - ORIGINAL
3:29 - 3:55 - A mashup of The Dance of Eternity (https://youtu.be/eYCYGpu0OxM?si=1obabAXFM7_UzC0k) at 2:32 and Battle at the Big Bridge from FFV
3:55 - 4:21 - A section from The Ultimate Show
4:21 - 4:47  - B section from The Ultimate Show
4:47 - 5:01 Bass Solo from Metropolis Part 1 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IqqRx77T4Vo) at 5:36
5:01 - 5:31 - ORIGINAL SOLO
5:31 - 6:18 - A section from The Ultimate Show
6:18 - 6:43 - ORIGINAL
6:43 - 7:31 Variation of a motif the A section
7:31 - 7:47 - A section
7:47 - 7:55 - C section variation
7:55 - 8:22 - END

Credits:
Lucas Guimaraes - Arrangement, Bass Clarinet, Alto/Tenor/Bari saxophone, voice (I'm literally all the voices you hear. we ran out of time),  couple of instruments additionally programmed, Aligning brass/vocals
Brandon L. Harnish - Orchestrating + Additional Arrangement, Brass (many, I forget and don't feel like opening the rendering file), Intro Bells
Sly Man - Mix & Master, Bass, Drums, Additional Guitars
TheManPF - Rhythm & Lead Guitar
jnWake - Synths, Organ, Piano
Chromatic Apparatus - Cello

First off, but absolutely small request - If this (OR A RESUB) ever gets approved, I'd like all our six names to show up on the video.

This track is absolutely unhinged and I do not apologize.

Alright I'm finally subbing this to OCR. First, let me get the most shocking thing out of the way: All the recording and production? Yeah. That was all in a week. Time management to the max ba-by. Needless to say, we’re open for redoing parts but we’d prefer to redo as little as possible lol. Not out of laziness but because we already did a lot. This was certainly a crunch. The story I went with this track parallels Dream Theater’s Metropolis Pt. 2 Scenes from a Memory. Why? Scene from a Memory is all about a love story, specifically, a bizarre love triangle, and Super Paper Mario also kind-of represents that. I refuse to spoil it but hey, there’s a Super Paper Mario Wikipedia page.

So initially for the 20th anniversary on DoD, I was going to phone in a Mario RPG cover and my second main was going to be with JohnStacy. John had to drop out, thus I only had my main to focus on for DoD. I decided, instead of phoning it in with one of the first seven Mario RPG's, that I'd do something I've had on my bucket list forever: Cover one of the first 7 Mario RPG's final boss themes (Super Mario RPG, the first three Paper Mario games, and the first three Mario & Luigi games). I knew that there'd be few better excuses than DoD's 20th anniversary month. 

The arrangement is mostly The Ultimate Show. Original sections are mostly original. The Big Rock ending is very Disney-esque inspired + my rock influences. Other than that, it's mostly just The Ultimate Show mixed with a few original parts. Also a looot of variations on The Ultimate Show. The influences in genre range all across the board, but I was keeping it prog metal while throwing in other stuff (a march, waltz, surf rock, Knower, etc)

First there’s me. I had to get over my fear of doing this track and I had a ton of other things going on too. I knew pulling this off would be a beast. I was listening to Metropolis, Dream Theater, and other classics like crazy. I also spent a TON of time messing around with the original source material. There’s also how much I pushed my sax recording (I had VERY little windows open), additional programming (including SWAM for the Bass Clarinet and background parts), doing ALL the vocals, and aligning the brass/vocals. There was… a lot. By the time I had something ready I was overwhelmed. I wasn’t super confident about the arrangement either, partially from burnout, partially from feeling nervous to cover this track.

That's where Brandon L. Harnish came in. He knew I was going through a lot trying to polish up the arrangement, so he went through the work of reorchestrating a bunch of stuff to work better and have a more clear direction. I always love working with him because I swear, I always learn something. I can't state how instrumental everyone was to making this track work, but Brandon and Sly were definitely the trio of chaos with me for it. He recorded so much damn brass to get stuff to work and for like the whole weekend straight was dropping parts. He also helped sell that intro when I honestly had no idea what I wanted for it.

TheManPF came swinging when he reminded us (Brandon and I were still wanting to do more edits) "Hey, we have like, a week to record". And he delivered. I honestly think PF's best guitar solo is there. The drop at 2:20 is mad nuts and if there's one part I suggest people relisten to the most, it's that.

jnWake CAME BACK FROM VACATION and still finished his DoD alt, his main and ALL the keys recording for this. If anyone drew the short end of the stick for difficulty, it's him. He had two solos to do (one not written, the other being the Ragtime which is mostly unedited) AND two hard parts on keys. (one at around 2 minutes in and another around 3).

We needed a string section towards the end and none of us had time to program it. Our initial plan was a much larger string section, but Chromatic Appartus just recorded a bunch of different takes (that all own) of the string section. I gave him the midi and he came back in like... 2 hours with 16 stems lol.

And of course, Sly Man. The MVP of this track who brought all of this insanity home. Give it up for him FRIGGIN' RECOVERING FROM HIS SURGERY and still managed to do more than I asked. As he can attest, I was trying to see if he wanted me to bring anyone else in after he was recovering. But he just went at it, and it shows. Sly's additional guitar at 5:43 owns, his bass owns, so much of it owns. If it hadn't been for him, we'd have a botched execution.

Ultimately, I wrote this arrangement for me. I knew going in it wouldn't be licensable (I usually keep it to licensable tunes, lol), but this one was purely for me. Then, with how invested my collaborators were, it became for them and me. Then, with how much DoD enjoyed it, it's also for them. How much this arrangement was a happy accident into the DoD's spirit just happened to work out well. I'm proud of what we made (33rd place, ah well), I had a blast, and I'm pumped to revisit this track. Thank you to all of my collaborators for making a bucket list arrangement possible. Oh, and I guess if you see another Mario RPG final boss theme submitted to OCR you’ll know who did it, LOL. I adore those games. Absolutely adore em. Who knows, maybe it won’t be that long from now.

I hope you all get something out of experiencing this 8:23 long unhinged insanity.

P.S. if you’re ever wondering what this sounds like with the Super Mario 64 soundfont, we answered that in the alts.

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Games & Sources

The Ultimate Show from Super Paper Mario

Also minor snippets of Battle on the Big Bridge from Final Fantasy V

[prophetik music ⚖️]

as the resident DT stan 4 lyfe, i recognized the title format almost immediately and knew i had to set aside some time to get into this one.

opens with some very SM vibes, then the melodic material in the guitar and subsequently the synth. mix is super loud but fairly clear. sax parts feel a touch dull - saxophones have formants to boost too, fyi, just like a singer! the switch in style at 1:26 is very unexpected, and reminiscent of the idiot ragtime sections that rudess is notorious for in his tracks (but wasn't Images and Words Kevin Moore?). this transitions to a mixed-meter transitional section that eventually moves over to the b theme in a very aggressive style.

there's some noodling through several thematic elements from the original and then a duck-quacking sound in the right ear during the original section? this was a weird transitional section because it didn't transition to anything. then there's a very recognizable mashup of Dance of Eternity and Big Bridge that also doesn't have any place here because it's so different from the rest. 

we get back to sanity again at 3:55. there's some weird notes at 4:19 in the brass. the synth solo at 4:30 is super Octavarium so that's a fun reference. bass solo is well done. saxophone solo needed more time in the cooker - the general idea was fine, but putting it right next to some other very technical elements may not have been the best choice.

5:31 section is again right out of Octavarium, so that's a neat correlation. the voiceovers were hard to understand what was being said, so if that was the goal, you're good, but if it was supposed to be understandable, it needed to be in the foreground more. the buildup in the background reminds me of the fourth section of Octavarium.

there's a hard shift from dirty, heavy rock to a musicbox - i'm assuming this is a reference to the game? there's a flourish and then a huge mess of over the top extra gratuitous rock noise to finish it off.

i get what you're going for throughout. a lot of DT's earlier stuff had an almost spasmodic tendancy to jerk between different styles and overlapping elements. i think that this works in some places on this track (2:20) and doesn't work in others (3:14). that doesn't overshadow the monumental effort to get all these different and sometimes disparate elements to work together and be audible next to one another, and that's definitely an achievement. i think i like the arrangement a lot less than i'd hoped given the inspiration, but what's here definitely is a creative and broad-reaching interpretation of the original tune. there's a lot here that's super impressive and i don't think the negatives outweigh the positives given the breadth of the piece.

 

 

YES

[Chimpazilla ⚖️]

I remember this game so well, as my son and I played through it together many years ago.  It has some great source tunes! 

Interesting arrangement, "unhinged" is a good way to describe it, it's all over the place!  Some of the transitions are extremely clunky, but not enough to sink it.  The performances are stellar, mixing and mastering work well.  Wow, what a strange combination of energies here!  The arrangement is unique and interesting all the way through, full of surprises and instrument/genre variations.  The vocal work near the end is cool, although the backing parts get a bit pitchy here and there.  Music box faux ending!  Then a big bombastic real outro. Nice.

Overall, this arrangement is well executed for what it is, and I like it.

YES

[Hemophiliac ⚖️]

Thank you for including the breakdown for a long track such as this.

Nice to also stay close to the source with some of your own genre adaption to start, and then slowly start bringing in more departures and unhinged madness. Even when you do start to depart during 1:52-2:20 it still feels anchored to the original because of the similar figure being played.

3:14 was a sudden transition to a new section that has a completely different, whimsical feeling. 3/4s of the way through the song we get a few background vocal elements, not sure if they were supposed to be understandable because they are buried. If I had to guess, they are probably supposed to be background "ominous" textures rather than understandable.

Mix is pretty good, with many elements working very well together and not overpowering each other. Bass and kick lock in pretty well at times and even though they are unison (sometimes) I can still hear the high beater sound on the kick. Good job adapting the original source and keeping it crazy but still grounded at the end of the day.

YES