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Mattrex´s Stage (MMX5)
Click here to download the .mid.

Length: 2 minutes, 44 seconds

Difficulty: 9/10

General info:
An odd sort of song that plays in the red-hot world that is home to Mattrex.

About the original:
My first impression of this song was that of a very confused piece of music, which was very good in itself but just didn´t seem to fit at all in the place where it played. This is, however, a song that grows on you. After my tenth listen I almost began to like it, and having sequenced it I suddenly found that I enjoyed listening to it. It is, however, rather odd for a Mega Man X game.

Motivation:
Just to prove to myself that portamento effects in 16th-notes can be emulated in MIDI. If you have the patience. And the correct amount of aspirin.

Sequencing the MIDI:
This song presented me with what I like to call an enjoyable challenge - the intro distortion guitar line has a phaser effect that isn´t possible to emulate in a .mid, so I just had to strain my ears a little and find out what notes it was alternating between. To make up for the fact that the guitars weren´t phasered, I played around with their velocities instead.
Then there´s the matter of the overdrive guitar, which is doing the melody. At first, I thought it was using the portato effect all through the song, and it probably is doing just that, but I quickly decided that it would sound ugly if I attempted to emulate it and got rid of the impulse of wanting to pitchbend the entire melody line. Instead I just altered a few notes in a portato-like way, and waited until the section just before it looped; there I went hardcore. I´m still impressed with what I did - listen to that section and you´ll see what I mean. Those are actually whole notes, pitchbended continually up and down in a 16-th note pattern!
The synth chords were a bit hard to get right as well, but I´m satisfied with the result. Overall, I think this song turned out very nicely.

About the ending result:
I still listen to this occasionally, marvelling at my use of pitcbends. It DOES sound very true to the original.