As is almost a rite of passage for anyone who likes chiptunes and who grew up playing old NES games, this was my attempt at recreating my favorite song from Mega Man 2 in the M8. I spent several weeks fiddling with this and it's still not perfect, but I am ready to release it. Some of the instruments' hold/decay envelopes are off, some notes need to be turned off sooner/later than they currently are, and some of the notes are retriggering when they shouldn't. Also, the triangle wave channel doesn't sound quite like the NES, but I have already done A LOT of minute editing, so I'm going to call this one done for now. 

This started out as just a small project in Reaper, where I tried to get each instrument by ear by slowing parts of the song down, using the EQ filters to focus on one instrument at a time and recording notes as best as I could using my little two-octave keyboard/MIDI controller. Once I had all the main parts down, I tried making the track sound close to the original sounds of the NES using M8 synths, mostly focusing on the MACROSYNTH. That's how I came up with the "JGS version" of this track. 

But I still wasn't satisfied with what I had. I knew that the M8 would be able to replicate almost the EXACT sounds from the NES. So I kept trying to get closer and closer to the NES sounds and, after asking for help in the Dirtywave Discord group, a few colleagues came to the rescue - namely Avrilcadabra (avrilcadabra), mikey (mikey303) and drab (d_r_a_b). Two of the most useful things did were: 
  - A) telling me how the original NES only had four main channels: two pulse channels, a triangle channel and a noise channel, and that I could likely recreate most of those sounds using variations of the MACROSYNTH, and that the lead sound from the intro was most likely made using both pulse channels playing simultaneously.
  - B) pointing me to `NSF Importer`, a tool that helps you extract the raw music data from NSF files and create a song file in FamiTracker. 
I promptly used `NSF Importer` to convert Mega Man 2's NSF file and then used another tool to convert some of the FamiTracker data to MIDI, which I then imported back into Reaper.

Paired with a pristine MIDI file and the FamiTracker version of the song, I had everything I needed to make a VERY faithful recreation of the song. The MIDI showed me exactly when each note was triggered and the FamiTracker song file showed me the special instrument characteristics for each note. This was exactly what I needed to make the M8 version of the song. 

I could have taken the easy way out and just created new chains & phrases, recording the MIDI data from my DAW into the M8, but my stubborn self kept saying "No, that's cheating." So instead, I started working off of the version I had already made by playing each track/channel four bars at a time, manually matching the tempo between Reaper and the M8 using the M8's tempo nudge function, and making sure all the notes were perfectly timed. Then, I did something similar with FamiTracker, trying to make sure that all of the instruments sounded just right. This was, by far, the most frustrating part, since the FamiTracker song generated by NSF Importer wasn't nicely set up in four-bar increments, so I couldn't just focus on one four-bar chunk at a time. And not knowing how to use FamiTracker made scrolling around and replaying specific pieces of the song quite cumbersome. 

In the end, I created two versions of this song: 
  - `MEGAMAN2_WIC.m8s`: The version where I took some creative liberties and gave it a little bit of my own spin. This version was actually made first.
  - `MM2_WL1_NES.m8s`: The version that is most faithful to the original NES' sound chip. This version came second.

A few days ago I considered taking on the project of making pitch-perfect M8 versions of the entire soundtracks for Mega Man 2 and Mega Man 3, but given the amount of work this has been, I think I'll leave that as an exercise for the reader.

Mega Man 2 - Dr. Wily Castle - Stage 1 (JGS version)

# Lore
You feel the wind in your hair and the bike chain rattling along as you pedal at top speed, zipping across the neighborhood in the crisp early morning, tossing rolled up news papers to the still waking townsfolk. You can even smell that it rained not too long ago as the first rays of sun are helping dry the pavement and leaving behind that earthy smell you so love.
Everything is just perfect.
And in an instant, it all fades away and hear your dealer asking you, "Good shit, isn't it? I can't get enough Rewind myself. Anyways, that was just the taster. What do you say, want some more?" In a stupor the barely allows you to move, you faintly nod. The dealer's menacing grin opens wide. "I knew you had good taste," he says. As the grime surrounding you fades away, you are taken to a playground and find yourself on a swing, feeling the deepest excitement and joy at the small pleasure of swinging ever higher and higher. Hopefully, this time it lasts a little bit longer...

# Production details
This is my submission to the 11th M8 Community Jam! The theme for this one was "Time", which I took reeeeally loosely, hahahahaha... I started out with this happy go lucky track and, in an attempt to make a B section to it, I accidentally wrote something that sounded A LOT like one of the sections from Clint Mansell's "Lux Aeterna", which is performed by the Kronos Quartet and is a big part of the soundtrack for "Requiem for a Dream" (https://youtu.be/aOHmfq2AUaU). As a side note, I cannot recommend that movie enough, it's just so damn good. Anyways, the shifts from the A to B sections and back are somewhat jarring, but I think it kind of holds up! And then I just took the inspiration from the movie to write the "Lore" section above and rationalize the stark contrast between the two sections!

It's also worth noting I didn't complete the optional challenge ("use tables to create polyrhythms") for this one. Understanding polyrhythms proved to be just too much for my weak brain meats.

paperboy

Former video-game player. Current engineer. Future musical donkey. In the meantime, here are the tunes I've made while learning to hone my musical skills.

New tracks tagged #dirtywavem8tracker