for YM2612 + SN76489
by MetallicOrwell
I have been bestowed the kind of power no mere mortal man was ever meant to wield.
The last time I spoke those words I was feeling frightened by my rising ambition and ability, because I'd just made djent-adjacent music work on the Mega Drive, which I think is fair to say is, shall we say, completely fucking nuts. But my cover / arrangement of Nuclear Fusion by Demetori was just that--it was someone else's music (ZUN, the Demetori guys). "The Metallic Maiden" here is all mine: a fully original, five-minute-long power metal epic complete with an orchestral intro, speed changes, a shitload of keyboard and guitar solos, a section that sounds like a lost Iron Maiden passage, and an ending straight out of X Japan's "Silent Jealousy"--all of it at a blistering 190bpm, ready to make you kiss your neck's structural integrity goodbye. See, Demetori made me frightened, but this just makes me incredulous. As I was making the sketch and kept adding more and more to the piece, I was constantly feeling just bemused. I could not believe I was making this music--it was surreal. If I were a more impressionistic person, this might as well have been an out-of-body experience.
As you can probably tell, this write-up is going to be just as much about "The Metallic Maiden" as it is going to be about me. If that sounds good to you, then strap the fuck in.
Let's start by describing how this project started in the first place. Believe it or not, this resulted from me failing to figure out how to make horrorsynth music--I specifically tried to replicate Midnight Danger's Terror by Night, which is why one of the melodies is similar, although not quite the same and used very differently. From taking L's to epic W's: that's the MetallicOrwell way, baby. I did analyze some of the chord progressions, which came in handy later. I slowly came up with the orchestral intro, with flute, synth strings, choirs, timpani and square waves. This pivot wasn't too jarring, since orchestral music is my second specialty anyway, but my metal heart cannot be contained. Once the intro was over, I added a thrash metal riff, and I just knew right then and there where this thing was headed. From that point onwards, it was mostly about instinct, about what felt natural and right. I'm a life-long metalhead, so my brain has this kind of music burnt into it. But also, since last summer I have taken apart and rebuilt many pieces of metal music, so I know how they work internally like the back of my hand. Saitama Saisyu Heiki has been especially useful, and the way I designed the riffs was definitely inspired by what I've seen in the guts of his files.
My plan at this point was to keep it somewhat simple, similar to S.S.H.'s epic arrangement of Bloody Tears, which also begins with orchestral stuff. There'd be a main riff with accented drum hits, then fast drumming. After that, there are verses at half speed with the same melody from the intro, just made more complex for the guitar. In order to transition to the chorus (which is just the main riff with backing strings), a bridge was needed, and so I made it. It's pretty intense in the first few bars, and it's got a rising chord progression. After the chorus, it was time for the solos to begin: same as the earlier verses, just with faster drumming.
But then I had an idea: let's spice this up by changing the root note. "The Metallic Maiden" is mostly in the scale of F# minor, but in this part I shift the tonal center to C#, the fifth. Since I'm still using the F# minor note pool, this puts me in C# Phrygian (wow, that sounds biblical or something) which works incredibly well to enhance the tension and energy. That motivated me to come up with crazier solos, as well as using harmony in some parts to make it sound even more heroic. This is where the structure started to deviate from my earlier plan, as the second half of the song became increasingly complex. So let's say the new verses with the solos are over--what now? We do the intro's melody again, this time harmonized, first with accented drum hits, then with half-speed drumming. This adds variety and also keeps the song feeling cohesive, since you recognize the melody from earlier, but this time there is something new.
And then Dave Murray and Adrian Smith crash the party! Seriously, where did these guys come from? I don't know, but they got inside my head and wrote a couple of guitar harmonies in the classic Iron Maiden style, although crazier because of course I did that. Thanks, guys (blokes?). There was a bit of a problem here, though: the extended instrumental section had gone on for quite a while now, and it was time to do the chorus again and maybe finish the piece. But oh-oh: I'm still in C# Phrygian, how do I go back to F# Aeolian? Well, I did the modal shift sneakily mid-section, and it kind of works. The bridge this time is slightly different, and it also includes a new solo. After that, we finally have the chorus once more, without any differences. And then YOSHIKI knocks me over the head and writes the next section! Why does this keep happening? Yeah, it sounds like it belongs in X Japan's Silent Jealousy, with the harmonized melody again combined with the fast drumming and riffs. I considered ending the piece with a typical "big rock ending", but there's a little more variety than that. Fast riff, main riff again with accents, a few drum fills, and then a section of the earlier thrash riff to finish it off.
It's kind of funny how few chord progressions there are in this piece. Not counting the intro, just focusing on the metal part, there are basically three: a rising one for the bridge, a descending one for the chorus, and then the one that's used in every single verse: root note for 8 bars, drop down two steps for 4 bars, go up one step for 4 bars, then repeat. It is used over and over for a minute and a half with minimal variation, and it fucking works. This chord progression is sick nasty.
So now I'm listening to the sketch with General MIDI instruments on FL Studio and I can't believe it. This insane, complex, varied, amazing piece of instrumental power metal isn't someone else's music--it's all mine. I showed it to someone who told me it sounded like DragonForce or early Galneryus, and if it can be compared to bands like those, then you know it's top-tier. It took, let's say, three or four days to get it done, and still, the journey was only half-over, because it was time to copy the notes over to Furnace and arrange it for the Mega Drive. Jesus Christ, here we fucking go.
I thought the orchestral intro would be the hardest part to get right, but it was actually pretty simple. I reused the flute and strings from To Far Away Times, although I modified the latter to be a bit duller, and then backed them up with square waves for an enhanced texture. There is also an FM timpani made by Molkirill for Mecha Drago back in the DefleMask days (that was a while back), and a modified Sakimoto choir from Master of Monsters. Once that was done, though, it was metal time. This meant my usual metal formula, and I use it here in its standard form. FM 1 is for the chunky bass, FM 2 and 3 for panned rhythm guitars (custom ones, still version 5), FM 4 and FM 5 for the leads, FM 6 for PCM drums, square waves for support and noise for hi-hats and crash cymbal backup.
There are nine (!) different lead guitar sounds. Some of them are based on my custom Orwell Lead which debuted on Fire Field, and others are based on the one from Time Trax by Tim Follin (and even Savaged Regime's modification of it). It's all about figuring out what works best for each section. I wanted to avoid excessive shrillness, and the easiest way to do that is to stay the fuck away from the higher octaves, but that obviously limits your range--that's why there are so many variations depending on the situation. When there is a sustained note the shrillness is more noticeable, especially if there's not much else going on and it can't be covered up by the rest of the instruments. FM macros were very useful here: I used them to do things like lower the level of feedback or increase the level of LFO vibrato after the initial pluck of the guitar, which helps a lot to make the sustained note less piercing without sacrificing the initial aggression.
Other than that, there is a brassy synth lead, an earlier version of my custom Orwell Synth Strings and not much more. The square waves were pretty useful in doing quick harmonies in specific sections, like at the end of a fast solo for variety. Many of them are like that: fast as balls, then melodic and harmonic. They can also back up the strings nicely with a volume and pitch macro, both in the orchestral intro and in the bridge and chorus. And of course, if there are no free FM channels, they can do the echo instead.
The drum samples are mostly from the Arachno Soundfont, sure, because I initially based this on the project file for Battery. Since they both run at the same tempo (190bpm), I thought I could reuse the composite samples. But the power snare was too overpowering, and it was making things muddy and ugly in the faster sections. So I pivoted to the Timbres of Heaven power snare, which worked much better. However, it was still too treble-heavy, too bright to be a perfect fit for the song. What I did then was--get this--use a splitter to extract the snare sound from X Japan's Art of Life song. Boom, absolutely perfect. It's almost like I really have Yoshiki behind the kit or something. By the way, in some parts I actually allow the next kick sample to cut off the tail of the snare to prevent muddiness--never thought I'd do that. Of course, I still use composite samples a lot, mainly kick + crash, snare + crash, etcetera. I also changed a lot of little details on Furnace, like adding more fills to the drums, some more flourish to the bass, changing some instruments in the intro, you name it.
So now it's done, and I'm seeing the piece, my "Metallic Maiden" running on Blastem, and the question still hangs in the air: how is it that I've been able to do this? Ten months ago I knew nothing about music-making. I knew what an octave was, and that was it. How have I gone from that to making this? For fuck's sake, my first original piece that I published was a short little orchestral thing on the Master System, and as good as The Aeolian Battle was, this exists on a different dimension. If you told me this was a lost S.S.H. MIDI file or an X Japan song from circa 1990 I'd believe you--"The Metallic Maiden" is just that good. So once more that begs the question: how did I get here? Let's entertain a few explanations:
1. I am a musical ubermensch, a once-in-a-generation prodigy with talent to rival Dave Mustaine himself.
2. Obsession, free time, and modern tools made it possible.
For the sake of my own sanity, I'm going with the second option.
It makes sense if you think about it: I started timidly trying to compose stuff on Furnace last year, and it didn't really work because if you're a beginner, the tracker grid is obtuse. It's not nearly as horrible a torture as sheet music (which I like to call shit music), but it's still not intuitive. FL Studio's piano roll was a revelation. *That* is the main thing that has allowed me to make this: it does away with all that abstract bullshit and makes composing fun and easy. You see the notes, they make sense, and you develop the skill to visualize the music. Of course I also had to learn some music theory on my own, as that's very useful too.
Incidentally, I would've gone with the title "The Genesis Maiden", but Molkirill was faster than me by about five years (bastard...heh). Then I considered "The Melancholy Maiden", and while this song does have a tragic feel to it sometimes, it's way too energizing for that to be fitting. This really dispels the myth that minor scales are always sad--they can sound serious too, and they can also make you want to get up, pace around the room, and bang your head against some object until you bleed. That's the polar opposite of depression. So, "The Metallic Maiden" it was. It's catchier, more fitting, and it also ties back to my username: it's MetallicOrwell's maiden--my baby. I got bitches.
This has been an incredible experience of pure Nietzschean power and joy. I just kept adding things, making the song more than it was before, until it became this raging beast, made even crazier with the Mega Drive's raw edge. Just a month ago I dared to publish an original piece for the first time, and now I have "The Metallic Maiden". The trajectory is insane. I don't know what's happening, but I'm having the time of my fucking life.
I am Sega Genesis Overlord, metal up your ass, all that good stuff. See you around.
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