Laughter, Phantasy Star IV Zio/Lassic battle cover.

I've been meaning to cover this one forever, so I finally got around to it. By far my favorite song in PS IV, so monstrous and eerie and well composed, and I've always imagined it with searing tones and that cosmic darkness, so I tried to go for that. That said, you might want to be careful with the volume, it will make your ears bleed, and I extend my apologies to headphone users, requiescant in pace.

Magnificient.

I never remixed this one because it always intimidated me by its complexity. You went where I did not dare going and you came back a conqueror. The instrument choice is absolutely perfect. The spacy/dark feeling kept me hooked all the way to the end. When you kicked in the strings at 1:56, I went "oh wow!" Literally. Outloud. In my office. The dark imposing feeling was just perfect.

What I would have done differently: I would have tried to impose more control over the distortion effect you put on your main guitar, unless the audio clipping feel was something you were looking for. Basically, I love everything you've done here but volume control could have taken the mix to the next level. A little more kick to the drum, a little less sound clipping etc.


Edit: uuuhhhh... how come your videos have so few views on Youtube? Everything you do is awesome! You don't mind if I advertise you on my Youtube channel then?

Thank you very much, man, it always means a lot coming from you. I felt the same way about this song, I've always wanted to cover it but I was worried about getting it right, but I finally just got impatient and said screw it, ha ha.

But yeah, I totally agree, I wish I could have gotten the volume more under control. The original recording almost literally made my ears bleed, ha ha, so I actually cut the overall volume by three decibels, and that seemed to help a bit, Audacity was showing no clipping. I always have issues with sound, my computer speakers are terrible and my ears are so damaged I don't like to listen for long with headphones, so I have trouble gauging the mix accurately. I was actually going to ask you about how to control the distortion before I uploaded this one, didn't want to bug you about it but I figured you would be the best person I know to ask about that. Is there any way to eliminate that kind of distortion/clipping in the final recording, or do you have to more or less control it at the point of the initial recording? One of my problems was I kept trying to go back and rerecord that low distorted tone to get it under control, but it didn't have that kick when I changed the effect and the volume.

But yes, I would be very stoked to be on your channel, and I appreciate it! I need to get my own list of Youtube musicians on my channel and put you on it, as well.

Neat! I'll admit that a lot of PSIV's music blurs together for me, but you did a lot of really awesome things here. I appreciate how each time you repeated the main theme, you added something different. In the second iteration, I enjoyed how you brought out the countermelody (I'm a sucker for a good countermelody!), and then the third time around (after the interlude/vamp/whatever you want to call it), I liked the harps in the background.

I'm usually indifferent to drum tracks, but yours stood out to me as being very effective - interesting without overpowering the melodies, and driving driving driving everything forward. Fantastic!

Thank you very much, augmentedfourth! I'm really glad you pointed out the countermelody thing, I really like to bring out the softer parts in a song like that, it's always one of the neat things about really sitting down and listening to a VG piece, I usually find little understated or even "hidden" stuff in there. Of course, I found just about everything in this piece hard to notate, it's so freaking distorted, ha ha, even though that's why I like it.

I was very proud of the drums, too, I'm really glad you liked them, I think they were another happy accident of not being able to really clearly hear the actual drum part in the song, ha ha.

Awesome!! Very well done!!

Thank you very much, Silver Surfer!

I still haven't answered your question but trust me, I intend to. I'm just checking my notes and old sources to make sure I don't give you incorrect info.

Ah sorry I've just seen this post and listened to the track and it's a great one : congratulations ! Keep up the (very) good work, dear Bragatyr !

No sweat, Aeroprism, I appreciate it, hopefully I'll be able to fine tune my sound quality a little when all is said and done, ha ha.

And thank you very much, myau!