Liontamer Posted June 9 Share Posted June 9 Artist Name: TheManPF This is more of a recent one, Dwelling of Duels was doing their Sega Genesis/Mega Drive month and I was in the mood for doing something very high energy, poppy and happy, mainly because I was listening to Babymetal. After looking through several soundtracks (I never played a Genesis game, surprise surprise) I found the soundtrack of the original Puyo Puyo for the Mega Drive, and boy does it fit exactly what I wanted to make. This ended up being quite EDM-ish, Trance-ish, Eurobeat-ish-ish? I don't know, I'm not familiar with electronic music subgenres, but I was mostly chasing the sound of Babymetal's "Iine!" (which literally translates to So Good! in japanese), so naturally I also add a lot of electric guitars, and tried to have a pulsing sidechained beat with the rhythm guitars for a great groovy effect. I can't sing kawaii vocals though, so instead I settled on something more akin to Eiffel 65, live but heavily processed, to add more to the electric feeling. For this I constantly change between different sections of both Brave and Final, purposefully ordered in a way that makes sense as a pop structure. I wrote original lyrics for it that would hopefully present the same cheesy feelgood-y vibe that Iine! has, and I also played the original guitar solo from Final note for note (and yes it took a lot of work to learn). This is also a solo project, and while it placed 11th in DoD, I was pretty happy with it. Lyrics: Let's go! Puyo, let's have a good time Faster that you can say [Puyo Puyo SFX] Neon lights flash, earth-shattering sounds Amplify how we feel, so Let's go! Puyo, let's have a good time Faster that you can say [Puyo Puyo SFX] Quick reflexes, colors jump all 'round Electrify and we feel so right The sight, the taste, the touch, the smell Overflowing Pleasure, adrenaline, delight Overloading My mind warping reality Psychedelic Let go your cares away (So good, so good) So good I party till the morning So good I feel over the moon So good I have my woes behind me Scream my heart out I feel so good Let's go! Puyo, let's have a good time Faster that you can say [Puyo Puyo SFX] Rapid movements, rainbow reflections Magnify how we feel, so Let's go! Puyo, let's have a good time Faster that you can say [Puyo Puyo SFX] Pulsing heartbeat, fire in our eyes Purify and we feel so great The sight, the taste, the touch, the smell Overlapping Pleasure, adrenaline, delight Overtaking My mind warping reality Psychedelic Let go your cares away (So good, so good) So good I party till the morning So good I feel over the moon So good I have my woes behind me Scream my heart out I feel so nice So good I party till the morning So good I feel over the moon So good I have my woes behind me Scream my heart out I feel so good I feel so good Edited yesterday at 01:12 PM by TheManPF Games & Sources Game: Puyo Puyo (Sega Mega Drive) Songs arranged: Brave (https://youtu.be/06tH5Qosjrc); Final (https://youtu.be/8oaDWL-1W20) Original composer: Masanobu Tsukamoto; Akiyoshi Nagao System: Sega Mega Drive mostly but also a shit ton more Year: 1992 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
prophetik music Posted June 11 Share Posted June 11 haha, this is a really fun vibe right away. it's fast enough that the words are really hard to make out despite the processing and multiple takes, so that's not great, but the backing elements are super high energy. i can hear some of the vocal lines overlapping themselves. some of the slower sections (pleasure, adrenaline for example) has very bad prosody (that is, where the words land in the melodic line). i get that the melody's all over the place, but it's still important to have a song make sense when you sing it. i am also gonna say that i really don't care for the tone of your voice in this track. i've heard you sing in other tracks, i think, and i didn't find it to be nearly this grating. maybe it's the processing and style? or the octaves in most of the sections? but i found the tone of the vox in this track to be very pointed and tough to listen to. backing kick doesn't have nearly the amount of beef i'd expect for the feel, and the snare also feels pretty lackluster. the lead guitar sounds dope as expected, and the solo and synth work sounds great. from an arrangement perspective, this is a super fun take on the original two tracks. they're both very high-energy and this keeps that, and there's some neat dovetailing in how they fit together - i'd never have known that they weren't the same song without the original youtubes to listen to. i think the execution though is a little on autopilot - there's not a lot of changes to the backing elements throughout, the drums are super basic (every fill is just the same descending sixteenth toms), and like i mentioned before the prosody of the words in the slower sections is very unnatural. i think this might be the first time i've ever NO'd your work =( i think this is just really uneven right now. there's certainly some high points here but overall i don't think this one is ready for prime time. for a YES vote, i'd want to hear less repetition and mailed-in arrangement in the backing elements and drums, i'd probably want a rework of the lyrics and where they fall so that they're more fitting to the melody line, and i'd want to see/hear some attention to the vocal processing so that it's not so pointed. NO Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chimpazilla Posted September 1 Share Posted September 1 The vocal sounds very heavily Autotuned, which is fine/dandy but I agree with proph that the tone is unpleasant, it is overly midrangey and grating and the lyrics are way too fast to be understood so it sounds more like a texture than a true vocal line. I also agree with prohp about the drums being on autopilot, and the sounds themselves are weak or are mixed way too softly to be heard properly and so they lack impact. This is a very heavy and high-energy soundscape, but the instrumental elements never change throughout the piece with the exception of the short bits of (excellent) guitar work (which could be mixed better, why is it totally mono?). The track sounds repetitive due to these factors (same instruments, same energy level, and autopilot drums), and it also feels somewhat fatiguing to listen to because there are elements playing in the same frequency range for the bulk of the time, to include the high end of the synths together with the vocals which have a lot of grating highs due to their processing. I really like the gating at 2:37, even though initially I thought something was wrong with the render or with my computer playing it back. Using the gating again at 3:04 felt just a bit cheesy since you had just done it right before, and nowhere else in the track; using a different effect right at the end would have been better, maybe a tapestop or something, but that's just a personal nitpick. I love the concept of this remix, but I feel like the arrangement is just a bit too repetitive, and it needs re-balancing (most especially in the drums so they can be heard), and the vocals somehow need to be less grating and not constantly compete with the other similar frequencies in the mix. NO (resubmit) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Emunator Posted September 3 Share Posted September 3 Yeah, super strong vibe from the rip. There's a ton of energy present here, I feel the Babymetal influence even though this is definitely more synth heavy. I don't think this necessarily needs to be reinventing the wheel with the backing track but I don't disagree that it feels autopiloty all the same. The lead guitar ramps up the energy significantly when it's present, and those moments are definitely a highlight for me. It does, however, feel jarring because it highlights how much is missing from the other parts of the arrangement. I wish there was more variety and ear candy during the bulk of the arrangement to make the disparity between the guitar solo and the rest of the song less staggering. Vocally, I don't have any gripes with the concept, but the mixing isn't really bringing them front and center, but also has them too prominent to pass as a backing element. They're existing in limbo that feels more distracting, so I would recommend either carving out some space in the backing elements so that the vocal can be more present, via EQ cuts or sidechain ducking, or embrace the vocals as more of a rhythmic textural element and mix accordingly. Right now it's in a weird middle ground that's not entirely working. Echoing the drum critique too - it's not terrible but a touch more presence and punch would help this feel more balanced. I appreciate the concept of the gating at 2:37/3:04, but I do hear a bit of a pop as it disengages on the last beat... it doesn't feel like it's quite timed right and maybe needs the slightest fade out on the volume envelope, or a timing adjustment. I don't disagree with Chimpazilla about using something different for the ending transition. There's a lot to like here, and it's definitely put together competently but there's a bit of a "death by a thousand cuts" feeling where a number of elements that only feel 75-80% locked in are adding up to a result that's not reaching its full potential yet. It can definitely get there, though! NO (resub) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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