Emunator ⚖️ Posted May 8 Posted May 8 Artist Name: minusworld Another DoD entry. Surprised? :) So, I had seen some chatter on various VGM discords around Stéphane Picq's passing... I wasn't familiar with the composer by name, but in that same chatter read that he was the composer for MegaRace. MegaRace! As soon as read the game name, I unlocked a flood of good memories. I played that game a ton when I was a kid. I could see the visuals and hear the music for the game. It's strange, sobering, and inspiring that music can be embedded in someone like that, waiting to reemerge. As I refreshed myself on the soundtrack I found it to be a really interesting blend of electronica with rock and funk elements. Though musically I travel in many directions, my main goal has always been to find a good blend of heavy and funky. Fractalian Space from the MegaRace OST fit this to a "T", so I decided to remix it as an homage to Stéphane Picq's contribution to my childhood. I resurrected my not-quite-DOOM guitar patch from my SMB3 Airship remix, bust out my wah pedal, and stacked a bunch of gnarly synths and I was ready to go. The source is in the format: Intro AB ABC ABD Loop, with some transitions. This arrangement is: Intro AB ABCD AB Outro. I thought revisiting AB before D felt too repetitive, and I think swapping them so the "main ideas" A and B appearing at the end adds for extra impact, especially since I moved the solos to these end sections. Speaking of the solo, my friend Roland N. Laracuente Martínez had me play this bonkers multifinger tapping lick on an arrangement of his recently, and the practice for it came in handy for the guitar solo on this track! It is entirely tapped. The synths, however... they are programmed. 😅 The first 8 bars of the guitar solo are verbatim from the source, and the last 8 bars of the synth solo are verbatim from the source. For some variation, in the second A section I drew a bunch of automation on the guitars to make a "djentstep" section. Cheesy? Maybe. Was it fun? Yeah. :) I snuck in a cameo for Maeva (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X2Yx4WQc6x0&list=OLAK5uy_lgmEaNKXAuZxlNUszuD2YxsUI0vg4GLUo&index=2) between C and D for fun, because that track is also sick. The Outro is sort of the B section except it's "falling apart". I was also naughty and ended with a fade out. >:) Fade outs are kind of a no-no at DoD. (Maybe here too?) But this one felt right, so I went ahead and did it.
prophetik music ⚖️ Posted May 12 Posted May 12 nasty bass pad to start, and all sorts of heavy guitar screams that crawl right under my skin. loads of bass in there. the first riff really hits at 0:19. there's a ton going on right off the bat, so the mix keeping everything audible is pretty impressive. track rips through the A and B themes pretty quickly before we get some Algorithm-esque glitched metal complete with 90s era sfx before the B theme comes back in. this jumps into the C theme at 1:30 almost immediately. this is a fast transition and i wouldn't have minded more of a fill or something to get into it. it steps further back at 1:43 for a chippy interlude before smashing the "guitar riff" button on the transition back into the A section, this time featuring loads of synth elements. the backing guitar is hard to hear here (it's gated, right? the gate might be a touch too tight). beat drops for a few seconds before we get to the requisite crazy solo at 2:31 that pays no respect whatsoever to western musical theory. there's some dueling here for a bit, and we get one more break at 2:57 before the final big blow is in. i liked the recontextualizing of the B theme at 3:09 to mix it up one last time before the end. ending elements are again very Algorithm-esque, although the fadeout was a cop-out - i really expected it to just glitch out with all the fun stuff you were doing there. this is a really fun track! the original's pretty wild, so there's a lot of what could normally be called exploratory stuff here but instead just kinda goes with the flow. it's a pretty dark mix, but the different elements are all audible easily and the arrangement is great. excellent work. YES
Liontamer ⚖️ Posted June 21 Posted June 21 You're a real one for this tribute; thank you sincerely for it! I only knew of Stéphane Picq's work through the 90s Dune game soundtrack (boy, you'd do a great job with any of those themes too -- check out Dune: Spice Opera!), so I appreciate being introduced to more of his work. Great energy with this original. Pretty crunchy intro; I liked the feel better when that cleared up at :51. Nice stuttering/gating/fuckery from 1:04-1:17, that was fun! As soon as I was typing out "Great rock treatment", we hit a purely electronic section at 1:30 that was also cool before a rocked out transition at 1:50. Ah man, the acoustic cameo at 2:57 was so cool. Love the back and forth integration of the guitars; this is a wonderful example of a fusion piece where seemingly disparate instrumentation goes together so well; love the chimeric style and flow here, not unlike "Speedy Guitar" or "Behold the Winged Cathedral" in its own unique way. :-) YES
jnWake ⚖️ Posted June 29 Posted June 29 Quote "The synths, however... they are programmed" Ah, programmed synths, I can under- Quote Artist Name: minusworld I'm gonna pretend I'm not hurt about this on my vote. Begins with a deep synth and then at 0:06 we move to an extremely low tuned guitar playing some evil tones with some SFX as a mini intro build-up. At 0:19 we continued the low tuned madness with a heavy riff, I dig the more electronic oriented drums and both guitars and (programmed) synths join the mix quickly. Outside of the synth part, things have been kept very conservative to the source in the arrangement. 0:51 introduces a new section with wah leads, fun! There's a cool SFX transition around 1:03 and we return to the 0:19 riff but you do some funky stuff with the production that sounds pretty cool. We then return to the 0:51 melody and at 1:30 transition to a electronic oriented section. Arrangement definitely stopped being conservative by now! "Maeva" cameo at 1:43 is sick and fits perfectly. There's a neat transition at 1:49 and we move to a synth focused section which feels like it came out straight out of Kirby. 2:18 is a small bass highlight. Guitar solo at 2:31 is nutty, I shouldn't be surprised by your skills by now but I still am! There's a (sigh) programmed synth solo after and at 2:56 we repeat the wah melody on acoustic before it returns to its standard wah version. 3:09 introduces a synth focused evil variation that sounds awesome. Track ends with some extremely low tuned madness and a fade out. On arrangement this is awesome, it begins following the structure and melodies of the source pretty close but after the 1 minute mark it starts to branch out a ton, featuring a different structure and several variations of the source's melodies and riffs in cool ways. I was a little lazy above to note exactly what part of the source plays on each part of your arrangement but as far as I could tell every single section of the cover is taken from "Fractalian Space" except for the "Maeva" cameo at 1:43. Production is also dope, guitar tones are (as one'd expect) great, playing is top notch and the mix is punchy and clear. Some of the synths are a little vanilla (if only you knew a synth player that would like to collab...) but nowhere close to being a dealbreaker. Overall, great job! I loved this track on its DoD debut and still love it now. YES
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