GMC #3 - Space Manbow - Beyond the Battleship by Jorito

Way back in 2010 Jorito felt like doing a collaboration with Junnu, the Finnish MSX fan and guitarist he worked with on the Aleste Dia 52 song and the Maze of Galious remake soundtrack. After some discussion they decided to create a cover of Space Manbow's first level song "Battleship".

Junnu started off with a drum pattern and some guitar leads, Jorito added some synth basses and pads. And then the project died. Until late 2013, when Jorito found back the guitar recordings and started working on it again. When MRC announced the Game Music Cover Challenge this was a good moment to finally finish the song.

While trying to compose a nice ending for the song, he initially wanted to add a few notes from the game's intro ending. However, things got a bit out of hand and most of the introsong "Beyond the Darkness" ended up being a part of this song. Hence "Beyond the Battleship" was born, tying Space Manbow's first level song and its intro together in reversed order.

A lot of equipment was used to create this song. Apart from the lead guitars everything was entirely created "in the box". Composing was done in the tracker Renoise with a lot of VST plugins like Shreddage 2 (rhythm guitar), Steven Slate Drums (drums), Zebra 2 for synth leads and pads and Da Capo for the orchestral parts, with a dash of Komplete 9 for the odd bits and ends. To mix and master the song Logic Pro X was used with a lot of stock plugins and some help of Ozone 5 for mastering.

Relevant link: Space Manbow - Beyond the Battleship (Jorito)

Comments (17)

By WORP3

Paladin (864)

14-01-2014, 09:08

Very nice !

By Jorito

Mr. Ambassadors (1842)

14-01-2014, 16:52

Glad you like it

By SolidEric

Champion (332)

14-01-2014, 17:56

Wow! This one is really good. Nice combination synth and guitar! Well done!

15-01-2014, 10:04

@Jorito, not only me also friends of my

15-01-2014, 13:30

Very good Hope you'll like my next song as well. It'll be quite different though "_

By edoz

Prophet (2522)

17-01-2014, 13:59

Cool! Sound! (especially the begin)

By SkyeWelse

Champion (471)

17-01-2014, 21:03

Thanks Jorito! I really like this. : )

-Thomas

By Oscar

Guardian (587)

19-01-2014, 18:09

Well, three cool songs and about ten days to go! I am enjoying very much but... I want more

19-01-2014, 18:27

I'm working on another track It'll be completely different from this one and will be a medley of a less covered game. And it's almost 5 minutes long already

By Pac

Scribe (7256)

19-01-2014, 19:01

Yes, nice compositions indeed, hope see more ones in the next days. This kind of challenges would stimulate making a MSX music CD compilations and invest benefits in other MSX issues. Same for games... Yes, for sure it's not as easy as it appear but it's just an idea.

By yzi

Champion (444)

21-01-2014, 08:33

So did you already release this? The deadline is supposed to be in the end of January.

Anyway. Great stuff. But I think there's too much reverb. Particularly the solo guitarist has been pushed at least 50 meters back, somewhere behind the whole stage. It sounds like it's 100% wet and you forgot to turn up the dry signal completely. The keyboard solo is placed OK.

21-01-2014, 13:04

yzi wrote:

Nope, the other track wasn't released yet, but will be before the deadline (still 10 days ).

Thanks for your feedback on the mix, by the way. I suck at mixing (and don't like doing it), but feedback like this helps me focus on the problems and let me learn and improve things

Not sure if the solo guitar is my doing (with a reverb plugin) or if this is actually how I received the recording. Might revisit the mix at a later time and balance it a bit better.

21-01-2014, 16:31

I'm not a mixing expert either, but I think there should be a sensible "soundstage" even in electronic multitracked music. A solo instrument can't be placed behind the accompaniment, it doesn't make any sense.
Placement on the sound stage is generally psychoacoustically (if that's even the correct term) determined by the listener by four factors: stereo panning left/right, brightness (relative amount of high frequencies), volume/loudness, and amount of ambient reverb compared to dry signal. Left/right panning is of course clear and center means center, but with the rest you can build yourself a front/back slider. I once read a story of someone actually setting up such a slider by cleverly combining the three settings with VCAs and something so that you could actually push and pull things in the "z-direction".

21-01-2014, 16:50

I know the theory, it's just that my ears are deaf to the practice Just a matter of learning how to listen and what to listen for, and that takes time.

For a first serious at mixing this song didn't come out too bad, but more ear training is definately required!

There's a very nice picture and some ideas here http://www.gearslutz.com/board/music-computers/406486-we-all...
One person says that brightness means up/down direction... I don't know. But the idea about things in the back having a narrower stereo width, that makes sense.

By shaiwa

Champion (392)

01-02-2014, 20:09

Enjoyed listening to this song, catchy tune, very nice.

By mesiasmsx

Prophet (3464)

15-02-2014, 16:40

Thank you very much to the all musicians .

GMC #3 - Space Manbow - Beyond the Battleship by Jorito

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