ReMix: Mega Man 3 'Blue Balls'

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Newcomer Scott Hannay, alias Sukotto42, writes:

"...it's a medley from Mega Man 3 for the NES. It goes first from the title screen into Shadow Man, into Snake man, then the boss battle. After that, it goes to the 2nd half of the credits music to close it out. Oh yeah, and it's all crunchy prog-rock."

It is indeed... although from my experiences with prog rock, I'd say this is crunchier than it is progressive. I was honestly surprised when I looked over at the length of this mix, just shy of seven minutes, given the file size - while it's encoded @ 112Kbps, which can often sound noticeably lossy, audio quality wasn't much of an issue. JJT does some work in a similar vein, so let's see what he thinks:

"yeah, this'll do nicely. good arranging. though it's a tad on the conservative side, there's enough personal touches and flourishes to render it as your own. the drums samples are really cheesy. you could find a much better set for free on the net without too much effort. other than that, my rawk fist is raised in tribute to your guitar kwakery/prowess. good day."

I'd say it's more than a "tad" on the conservative side; Jesse was the primary voice of dissent in noting that most of what's qualifying as melodic arrangement here is the performance and instrumentation, and that's a valid point. I think he was correct to raise strong concerns, as this is definitely a mix that teeters on the threshold of minimal arrangement. In this case, the same reasoning that's held true for similarly liminal mixes in the past applies, however: if the production and performance are there, and there's enough interpretation on the latter to qualify as arrangement, coupled with instrumentation changes, then things can fly. Plus, it's always keen to have a nice euphemistic mix title - doesn't sway the judges, but makes wordsmiths like myself happy. Guitar is clearly the focus and is the strongest element - drums are solidly sequenced, but the samples sound a little cardboard at times, and the bass is loud enough to create a midrange EQ gap at times. Last but not least, part of whether this mix is going to resonate with you depends on your feelings about medleys; I've always preferred a single song being focused on, or two songs being merged, to a series of pieces that are mature enough to stand on their own being concatenated. Transitions can and do mitigate this, but it's ultimately a matter of personal preference - you'll dig this a bit more if you dig the medley thing. Good, accessible stuff from Scott which may not take a lot of risks, but compensates with fun + energy.

― djpretzel