Board 8 > [VGMC] Day 3! PurpTown/1stCampaign, HODO/YeehawDB, MoonConcert/Origin

(+) Yeah! (+)

Border Down - Purple Town
Ragnarok Online II: The Gate of the World - HODO
The Liar Princess and the Blind Prince - Moonlight Concert

Purple
HODO
Origin

Purple Town
HODO
Moonlight Concert

Wow that harmonica is pretty cool! I must not have felt this one strongly when I first heard it but relistening to it today has bumped it up to like a 7 at least.

EO is a series in which I think I dislike the music more than I do, but then I remember that I am just pickier about the more higher energy songs (wow just like Falcom who'd have thunk) ... I very readily and happily supported Frozen Grounds and I am actually okay with the original version of this track, but eh, this is
... well it is fine I suppose.

Hodo is so fucking cool!!! Vocals that have rhythm to them!!!! I'm a big fan. Kanno isn't always my favourite but I don't think I've ever been disappointed even when I don't vote for her.

Yeehaw ... is much less good but still solid. actually my favourite song that I did not vote for and it goes up against the one I feel the STRONGEST about.

Moonlight Concert is a song I hoped would make it. I was sitting on whether to support it or not and I'm glad it came through without me. The intro feels kind of scary??? such a cool soundscape. Luckily the vocaks are very beautiful or else I'd probably be disappointed

I don't have much to say about Origin because it is pretty decent. It doesn't stand out super well, but I do not dislike it either ...

Purple Town
HODO
Moonlight Concert

Battlefield - The First Campaign (Etrian Odyssey Nexus Ver.)
Yeehaw DeliveryBoy
Origin

First Campaign and Origin were two of my favorite discoveries in this bracket.

Battlefield - The First Campaign (Etrian Odyssey Nexus Ver.)
HODO
Origin

Battlefield - The First Campaign (Etrian Odyssey Nexus Ver.)
Yeehaw DeliveryBoy
Origin

3 good songs vs 3 lame songs

Purple Town
abstain
Origin

dont feel like doing proper write ups on the songs today so instead I will talk about some of what I've looked into with the weird audio thing going on with Purple Town, like particularly with the harmonica. This is funny timing for me because I was already looking into the sort of thing in other unrelated songs when vgmc started. It's like, audio recorded at a lower frequency range like 22050 Hz then gets a bunch of weird "reflected" artifacts in the higher frequency ranges in 44100 Hz or more or so. Looking in the audio spectrograms it's like all the audio of the lower frequencies gets reflected upwards right at the point it would've originally been cut off by the original recording range (this is easy for me to notice because I listen to stuff in foobar where I have it set to show the audio spectrogram with everything I listen to). To be honest I originally thought this must be some kind of filter people use to try to make things artificially sound higher quality by generating noise to hit the higher ranges loosely based on the original sounds, but apparently it turns out that this is more just what kind of happens to the audio data when directly processed with higher frequency outputs? Actually I sort of still don't fully understand all of the technical details but it's like the audio files need more optimization / interpolation in order to get rid of these artifacts and hear things as it would probably have originally been intended. Maybe it's kinda like, the original audio files would have sine waves specifically intended to get cutoff & flattened by the end of the original frequency range, but now since the range is extended it doesn't get flattened and now there are extra high curves & peaks of the sine waves that weren't supposed to be there? I dunno, it's funny that that would turn into an upside down version of the audio in the higher frequencies. For the record, in Purple Town's case, this seems to be directly within the audio in the game, it's not due to a poor quality rip. It seems like the harmonica layer was recorded at a slightly lower frequency range than the rest of the song, so when putting it with the other layers, it generated some new unintentional noise. Actually I'm not really a big fan of how the weird noise feedback sounds here but I could imagine some do or would prefer this noise in other things

anyway in other news purple town is a pretty dang cool song

Etrian Odyssey Nexus - Battlefield - The First Campaign (Etrian Odyssey Nexus Ver.)
Ragnarok Online II: The Gate of the World - HODO
The Liar Princess and the Blind Prince - Moonlight Concert

Border Down - Purple Town
Ragnarok Online II: The Gate of the World - HODO
The Liar Princess and the Blind Prince - Moonlight Concert

Purple Town [ ]
Battlefield - The First Campaign (Etrian Odyssey Nexus Ver.) [X]
HODO [ ]
Yeehaw DeliveryBoy []
Moonlight Concert [ ]
Origin []

pizza. I do adore Pizza Tower's 90s outsider artstyle, which is generally complemented by the soundtrack. I like this one alright, but it's no standout (and that JSR sample is misplaced imo).

Battlefield - The First Campaign (Etrian Odyssey Nexus Ver.)
Yeehaw DeliveryBoy
Moonlight Concert

6 good songs today, and my main complaint with the ones Im voting against is I wish this had more of what I liked about it. Purple Towns harmonica, HODOs vocals, and Origin at its full buildup are all great. I predicted Origin to retire, it might even do it, I might even root for it!

Voted option 2 (single whole words), also in favor of option 3 (smush the whole title in). I like seeing what songs are in each day at a glance and would not want that to be gone.

Purple Town
HODO
Moonlight Concert

The beginning of Purple Town just lures me in with its spirited harmonica and moody guitar/synths, and then I find myself just coasting on a chill plane of existence before it switches back to the energetic jam it started out as. Very fun song, schmup music never ceases to amaze me.

This version of The First Campaign isn't my favorite (and sadly I don't think Super Arranges would ever be legal here), but I still prefer this over the FM version I feel, and the electric guitar adds a nice touch to the overall experience.

HODO is in the running for my favorite RO2 song (and just overall song done by Kanno), and for very good reason! It's incredibly festive, sounding like it was made for a special celebration or for a travelling caravan that holds a nightly show with this song as the main music. The vocals and violins sound really playful here, and the guitar and percussion lend themselves well to the happy vibes this has in spades. Excellent song, Kanno coming through again on another banger.

Don't think I've listened to much Pizza Tower music aside from Pizza Time, but this seems fun enough to get my head kinda bopping. I do wish there were more fun elements like the whistling and the voice sample from Jet Set Radio, but I could say I like this enough as is.

I get Ar Tonelico/Umineko no Naku Koro ni (the song) vibes from Moonlight Concert, which is a good thing! Celtic vibes like this are always appreciated, and the flute and vocals help capture that innocent-like vibe this is trying to exert. The sharp piano stings give a slight unsettling contrast to the main happy melody, which piques my interest as to what's really happening behind the scenes for this game as I've been interested in playing it for a while.

I keep thinking I'm getting PMD vibes from Origin, where it almost feels like a final area and battle mixed together into one. The MIDI sounds real good as is, I can only imagine I'd enjoy it more if it were played with live instruments instead, but this is pretty good all things considered.

Close pick in Match 3, I'm interested to see what'll win.

Purple Town
HODO
Moonlight Concert

Purple Town is a song I wish I liked more than I actually do, but I still find it stronger than its opponent
Yeehaw DeliveryBoy has the funny sample that Sneakman also uses but I actually really hate how it's used here. Feels extremely out of place and doesn't really work with the track at all

-
Ragnarok Online II: The Gate of the World - HODO
Genetos - Origin

Purple Town
Abstain
Moonlight Concert

Battlefield - The First Campaign (Etrian Odyssey Nexus Ver.)
Yeehaw DeliveryBoy
Origin

Purple Town
Yeehaw DeliveryBoy
Origin

Don't understand what's going on here~

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/4/3/7/AASP7CAAEeul.png

Border Down - Purple Town
Ragnarok Online II: The Gate of the World - HODO
The Liar Princess and the Blind Prince - Moonlight Concert

MATCH 1

Purple Town is a very cool song! Starts off with a really strong opening that packs a punch with that harmonica. I especially like those aggressive sounding notes at places like 0:14/0:15. It's really more than just that, though. The rhythmic acoustic guitar and drumming, the gradual addition of more instruments at 0:19, it all combines into a powerful start to the song. The rest of the song is a good listen as well. And the way the song gets more and more dense in the end as it hits its climax right before it ends is so cool. Really great song that I only first heard somewhat recently. It's a bit outside of my wheelhouse, but I really enjoy it!

Battlefield is really cool rock music with a driving synth and guitar melody. This is a super strong match, definitely among the strongest round 1 matches for me. I hate to vote against Battlefield, but Purple Town is too good for me to vote against.

MATCH 2

HODO is some folky goodness. It's light and playful but still makes you want to bang your head as you listen to it. Really strong melodic and harmonic stuff that drives the song forward. HODO's a big favorite of mine from this game's soundtrack out of the stuff I've heard. I might even like it more than Din Don Dan Dan, which is my other main favorite from this game. I pushed HODO to round 4 in my favorites bracket and dropped it to SINGI, but with SINGI now gone (sayonara atarashii sekai e :( ), that makes HODO my preferred retiree for A1. So go HODO!

Yeehaw DeliveryBoy's pretty solid. Somewhat catchy melody in the flute. I'm not super big on the sampling here, but I do think it's amusing in a good way the particular sample chosen because it feels like it's directly sampling Sneakman from Jet Set Radio in an homage to Hideki Naganuma instead of just choosing to use the same sample as him.

MATCH 3

I haven't heard this full version of Moonlight Concert before, and it's very much welcome! I always love the complexity of Akiko Shikata's music, and as is usually the case, it's very strongly up my alley. There's definitely other songs of hers that are much stronger favorites of mine, but in all fairness, that's a very high bar to clear, and Moonlight Concert has no trouble standing above many of the songs in the field in my eyes.

Origin is pretty nice. Has a good amount of different stuff going on at different times in the song, but none of it ever feels like it falls below par.

HODO > Purple Town > Moonlight Concert > Battlefield - The First Campaign (Etrian Odyssey Nexus Ver.) > Origin > Yeehaw DeliveryBoy

Strong day today! I considered supporting the top 3 songs up today during nominations, and I probably wouldn't have been opposed to supporting Battlefield either if I had the space and it needed help.

Purple Town
HODO
Origin

Border Down - Purple Town
8
Ugh sometimes I wish i knew how music theory worked so i could properly describe how the notes specifically made me feel. Something about these major/minor chords give the song such a bittersweet feeling. The synthwave soundfont is a neat texture but it doesnt overpower the core of the song. Usually synthy stuff ends up techno or space age, but this sounds like something Id hear flying through the sky.

Etrian Odyssey Nexus - Battlefield - The First Campaign (Etrian Odyssey Nexus Ver.)
4
The melody of this for the first 30 sounds like it could amp me up. The remastered sound of this just seems so overbearing, like it has to scream for my attention. Wish it had more subtlety, which somehow isnt something i ask for very often

Ragnarok Online II: The Gate of the World - HODO
7.5
The violin solo at the halfway point really does it for me. I feel its rare to hear vibrant funky world music like this. The harmonizing with the reverby bits in the second half are cool.

Pizza Tower - Yeehaw DeliveryBoy
7
Whisting is fun! The second half definitely reminds me of a jet set radio sound or maybe something that siivagunner would make. I wish the first half of the track was good.

The Liar Princess and the Blind Prince - Moonlight Concert
5.5
I mean I guess the song sounds pretty, and maybe theres a deeper nuance that im missing but it mostly sounds like the thousand other cutely sung magical rpg themes. Again, thats not a terrible thing, it sounds nice, its just not what Id expect to rise to VGMC. Though I never really know what to expect from this contest..

Genetos - Origin
6.5
This song is all over the place. It reminds me of a child learning to walk. At first its slow and sporadic, fragmented and messy. Then at the 2:50 part, it finally gets the hang of it and goes off at full speed, before tumbling over and skidding to a stop again.

Switch to

Origin

Purple Town
HODO
Moonlight Concert