Oh, sure, it’s bad if you listen to the notes the system is playing instead of the ones it’s not
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(marginally) surprised this isn’t more widely spread info at this point, but i note this youtube commenter correctly deduced how this soundtrack was made and why it sounds the way it does
the megadrive soundtrack is actually one of the more interesting FM soundtracks i’ve heard. pretty unique stuff
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I know this because I’m a freak Taz-Mania defender
technically a recording of the OST isn’t accurate to how it sounds in-game for some tracks because it’ll do dynamic stuff (the free jazz music for the minecart stage speeds up or slows down in kind with the minecart) and a chunk of sound effects are just instrument hits or the like (the minecart again: the sound effect for the minecart going extending up and down is a trombone slide)
it’s actually a perfect fit because the show itself was deeply weird and idosyncratic
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the second and third tracks are amazing, the third one in particular is haunting
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i think i detect some mixed meter (7/8 + 4/4 + 3/4 for one of the early motifs) going on in the third track, magical. the significant bit of silence that happens in the track is part of the loop(!) too. just inscrutable, effectively horrifying stuff
the first track has that one little countermelody come in in a consistent syncopation pattern, that is always fabulous. confuses the ear as to where the ‘1’ is. though, track 1 one isn’t quite as harmonically interesting as the third one. still bizarrely minimal and affecting in a way
you can really feel every single squarewave being thrown at you
I don’t think it can get any better
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Super Metroid - Upper Brinstar
This fella seems to put commentary for all their arrangements in the captions. I’ve copied the transcript here because I thought it was somewhat interesting:
This is the first time I try my hand at an SNES song. To be honest I never played much any SNES game, and I never played super Metroid. I did this cover to be included in a Metroid inspired project on the Master System.
I was never really fond of the SNES sound (I don’t like how the samples usually sound), but I know there are great soundtracks on it, and this is one of them. Translating a song made with samples to the Master System’s PSG is always a fun challenge.
Since you don’t have really separate instruments and the PSG can only do square waves, you have to be creative to make different sounds. I made 11 different instrument macros to be used here, trying to make them sound like the different instruments in the song. I used some tricks I’ve done before, like using arpegios to play orchestra hits. One thing that also helps is that this song has lots of textures and dynamics, so it helps to create the illusion that different things are being done in terms of tone.
One thing that is clearly different in this version is the bass line: again we hit the PSG’s bottom and can’t go any lower. But instead of using the periodic noise bass, I kept the square wave bass as I didn’t want to lose a channel. There is just too much going on, it would be really hard to make the song sound good while juggling instruments with just three channels, so I thought it would be better to just change the two notes in the bass line (a G and a G#) that wouldn’t fit. This means this section you’re listening to now should have a bass one octave lower, which surelly would sound heavier but if I were to use the periodic bass here, I would lose part of the drums. Maybe I could make it with both kinds of bass, using really short snare hits with the bass, but I don’t think this sounds bad. The next bar already uses the lowest A and you’ll notice the difference. Well, it’s not as if you’d expect the song to be 100% accurate when porting something from the SNES to the SMS, right? What do you think?
If you’re enjoying it, please, hit the like button and leave a comment telling me if you think this makes justice to the original or not. There is one more Metroid song I’ve made and I plan to release here soon, so be sure to subscribe to listen to it when I do so. I’ll leave you with the rest of the song now, thanks for watching!
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