ReMix:Seiken Densetsu 3 "March to High" 3:19

We hope you're enjoying a third helping of Candy Corn, but take a break and enjoy this symphonic metal march of doom from Mak Eightman (Max V. Kravchenko), off of Seiken Densetsu 3: Songs of Light and Darkness. Album director Rozovian writes:

"There's a couple of jingles on the soundtrack. Not all got remixed, but this one did. Mak makes leveling up not just a sweet stat boost, but something monumental and epic. And why shouldn't it be? Just imagine this metal- and electronica-infused march playing while selecting which stat to upgrade. Arrangement-wise, it's variations on a fairly simple repeating model, and it's fun to examine each repetition to hear what's different. And every so often, there's something, like at 1:30, that breaks from the pattern and you wonder how the track will make its way back to the source. A fun listen."

So one thing should definitely be clear: this is a thrilling ride, a very enjoyable build from symphonic march into synth/guitar wall-of-sound assault, and just plain old fun. That being said, it was very divisive on the judges panel due to being a liberal extrapolation of a minimalist source. We've posted mixes based on extremely short source tunes in the past, and it often involves similar debate - because of the nature of a minimalist "jingle," augmentation is essentially required to make the transformation into a longer song form, but this also creates a friction with regard to source utilization and interpretation vs. outright synthesis of new, tenuously-related material. The judges definitely grappled with this and it remained polarized but was eventually approved, 7-4. The four dissenting votes felt strongly that this was too liberal an arrangement for so short a source, which is a combination of dependent thresholds that I can relate to giving due consideration. Shariq laid down his reasoning:

"My issue is not with the source tune but with the extremely liberal take on that source tune. For shorter "jingles" like these, there's less material to work with, so straying from that material is way easier to do."

Sometimes the material is so minimal that almost any combination of notes could be mentally backflipped into being an arrangement, too. As the final vote, Vig explained his counterargument:

"We generally agree that this particular source should be eligible for OC ReMix, but if that is so, how else would we expect someone to remix it within our guidelines? If you think about it, in spite of excessive instrumentation, he really doesn't even introduce very much new melodic or harmonic content. It's all just extrapolation. There's no new B section or anything that he tacked on, there's maybe a counter-melody and a solo. It's all just the source."

So once again, I'm spending a lot of time on the judging process, but the track itself is a blast, and you're gonna love it. The guitar in particular has this giant, menacing presence that cuts through everything, and I ended up liking the acid-style synth bass more after I got used to it. The flute and its solo are lovely and impart a bit of prog on the affair, and I dig that Mak used both the brief fanfare from the source as well as the ensuing, repeated motif - there wasn't much there, but it's all been captured.

And of course, much has been added. Mak was asked to take a short jingle and turn it into something new, and something a bit... more. He's done that, and while the end result might pose certain challenges to our evaluation criteria, few subjective processes are perfect. Max takes a small seed, plants it in an orchestra pit, throws synths & guitars in there, and injects enough original writing to build a superstructure around it. This approach can certainly butt up against our standards, but in this case the presiding sentiment was that source connectivity was sufficient. And, once again, it's a dope track you're gonna have fun with :)