Eschatos ~ Survive

for YM2612 + SN76489

by MetallicOrwell

Time for a palate-cleanser after the madness that was the previous Megadeth piece. I like doing these simpler covers after a big project to avoid burnout, so here's my take on "Survive", a lovely theme from Eschatos.

Yosuke Yasui did some fantastic work on that game, and its OST seems to have developed something of a cult following in the chiptune scene. It's not hard to see why, even if the circumstances behind its creation are somewhat mysterious. This was back in 2011: there was no Furnace, no DefleMask (well, barely), although there was VGM Music Maker and Famitracker. The means to produce genuine chiptune were more limited than today, and awareness of the difference between an imitation and the real thing was probably lower among the general public. Not to mention, the language and cultural barrier separating Japan from the West was much sturdier. Google translate was terrible back then, and the Japanese generally hung out in their own websites and circles (Niconico Douga instead of YouTube, for example). So, the chances of a Japanese guy using a tracker-style program (a very western thing) to create Eschatos' OST are pretty low.

All of this is mostly speculation on my part--it's not like anyone has written any books about the history of modern chiptune. I wasn't a part of the scene back then, but I did do a lot of midislaps in the 2010s, and I sure had no idea that there was a pretty big difference between playing a MIDI on a SoundFont that sounds like the Mega Drive, and making music that will play on a real Mega Drive. I didn't even know that was possible--the idea didn't even occur to me, even though I had already become vaguely aware of Famitracker by 2015-ish. I only knew it was a program to "make NES music", but didn't care to look into it any further, partly because I'm not an NES guy, but also because at the time I didn't think I had any ability to make music at all, so I wasn't interested (midislaps don't count). Suffice to say, things have change since then.

What does all of this have to do with Eschatos? Well, even though the music sounds like it's from a 1993 arcade game, it's probably not genuine chiptune. People have speculated about the methods used to make it, and the consensus seems to be that Yasui used a DAW with the VOPM plugin, which emulates the YM2151, although there's no way to know with total certainty. As far as I'm aware, he has only ever said one thing about the technical details behind Eschatos' music: he used 8 FM voices, and 8 PCM voices. That definitely points in the direction of the YM2151, which has eight channels. That chip was used on literally hundreds of arcade machines, often paired with some random OKI chip for samples. Not to mention: the Japanese are generally big fans of the X68000, which originally used the sound configuration I mentioned before.

It reminds me of the ever-so-popular visual novel Steins;Gate (2009), where fat nerd extraordinaire Daru has a pretty big fetish for said computer, and the game's OST includes FM-sounding music that plays when you get a call on your cellphone. I would say that, to me, those sound more like the OPNA (YM2608) than the YM2151, mainly because of the square waves. Or maybe that was still how ringtones sounded back then in Japan--who knows. Takeshi Abo has a background in MML, but I suspect those FM songs were made similarly to Eschatos'. One example of exactly the opposite that comes to mind is OutRun for the 3DS (2014), which is roughly from the same time period. It includes two new tracks that use the game's original sound engine, and those can be exported to .vgm, so they're 100% genuine.

So, Yosuke Yasui made an excellent OST that sounds genuine, but is it really? The difference between chiptune and fakebit depends on who you ask. To me, it's pretty simple: if it will play on real hardware, it's chiptune. There are some nuances, of course. For example, take SNES support on Furnace: currently there's no way to export to .spc for playback on a real Super Nintendo, but it's being worked on, and it can be done because the program emulates the chip at a low level and writes to its registers correctly. In fact, there's a tool called furSPC that does generate .spc files, although it's finicky to use and doesn't support all of the effects. I myself have been able to play some of my stuff on my real SNES. There is evidence that VOPM does write to emulated registers, but there is no way to generate a .vgm file, so it can't be played on a real YM2151. Assuming Yasui did use a DAW and VOPM, I'm not so sure that can be called chiptune, especially since I have no idea how he handled PCM samples--maybe he just loaded them on his DAW and used them in a similar way to early 90s arcade games, but without emulating the constraints of an actual OKI chip. So, for me, the Eschatos OST sits in a grey area. Is it chiptune or fakebit? A little bit of both, though it's still excellent either way.

Oh yeah, this write-up is supposed to be about my cover of "Survive", isn't it? Well, once I start yapping about nerdy shit I can't be stopped, so excuse the digression. Let's get back on track.

We've established Yasui used 8 FM voices and 8 PCM voices. This is a cover for the Mega Drive, so what are we working with? In this case: 5 FM channels, 1 PCM channel, 2x square waves, and 1 noise channel--a considerably more limited setup. You'd think this would make it impossible to do justice to the original song, but you'd be wrong. Now, "Survive" is a fast-paced synth-y piece in G minor. It's based on catchy melodies, and it has a predictable structure: intro, verse, bridge, chorus. It sounds like it's very layered with chords and echo/reverb, but there's no way to really tell because all that stuff is pushed into the background to make as much room as possible for the lead synths, which play the lead melody. Still, you can do a lot with a whopping 8 FM channels, huh? Well, I allocated my limited channels thusly: FM 1 for bass, FM 2 for the main melody, and FM 3, FM 4 and FM 5 for chords. FM 6 handles PCM drums, of course (Arachno Soundfont power kit forever!), and the SN76489's square waves are used to play harp-like backing melodies with echo. The noise channel does the hi-hats and crash cymbals (lol), so the percussion obviously suffers a little bit.

Instead of mimicking the way the instruments sound on the original track, I used the ones I liked and thought sounded best. The bass is my favorite: it's one that came with Furnace and that I like to call "Chunky". The chords use two instruments: a brassy patch by Sakimoto (probably from Master of Monsters) that I modified, and one called "Brass3" I pilfered from a SilverRIFF .fur file. Together, they make the brass stabs sound very powerful, especially during the intro: because there's no melody in that section, I was able to use channel FM 2 to add even more depth using Molkirill's modified orchestra hits from Sunsoft's Batman. In general, though, FM 2 handles the lead melody, and it goes through a few instruments: first it's the same Brass 3 patch from before, then my trusty "trumpet synth", and finally a simplified version of the Synth Lead 7 instrument that came with DefleMask. The square waves are mostly self-explanatory, I think.

I'd say the overall sound is quite massive despite there being essentially no echo channels (except for the second square wave). I think this is primarily because of the thick sound of the brass stabs and the chunky bass, not to mention the lead synths. Basically everything, really--I've said before I don't do minimalist and I mean it. And of course, the Arachno Soundfont power kit is just brilliant--again, it has the best old-school power snare I've ever heard. But there's another reason: the way I mixed my version is different from Yasui. I made the lead melody just slightly quieter so the whole mix is more balanced and feels denser.

And that's it. I'm gonna go play some Eschatos. See you around.

 

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