Yo. With the conclusion of NGMC 2025, I secure the 17th place in the contest. Not bad, but not very impressive either.
Recap:
When I first heard of the contest, I wanted to work with my friend Jini for the whole contest, later on I decided to work with Voytek Music for round 3, but the rest of the rounds I would've worked with Jini.
Round 1 was the easiest of them all; I made a demo at my friends house, even recorded him singing, which I turned into a choir pad I used in my part.
I made my arrangement in a few hours in the NG Audio Pub VC. Week later I added more elements and extended the part by several bars or so. I was frustrated at the fact that my mix was worse than when I initially finished my part, but Jini did his magic and the mix sounds great. He glued our parts and finished the song in a few hours. After that I tried teaching him how to do thumbnails like I do, so the final cover (which is a blend of his and mine part) doesn't look too odd. I checked the song's page and magically we had a ton of views, and we uploaded like 3 hours ago. It turns out we got frontpaged!! I was surprised when I noticed.
We got 7th place in the round.
Listen here:
People really loved the song, me included, and that brought a ton of hope to the remaining rounds...
Round 2 - absolute hell
For the tropical theme of this round, we weren't sure with Jini on how to work on our submission - Tropical house? Trance with a tropical twist? Eventually we decided on beach rock. Jini made beach rock, and I was supposed to do a similiar thing. I had an idea to use a slap bass solo, so I asked my friend, which played the bass if she could do one. She didn't have much experience with slapping, so I asked her to record a few basslines, which I used in the song. However, I barely had time to do rock, and combined with my inexperience with the genre, I had to scrap the idea and rush the song on the final day of the contest. Instead I produced a "tropical" trance tune, gluing Jini's elements with whatever I came up with. I'm not very proud of it.
We got 9th place in the round.
Listen here:
For round 3, I was going to work with Voytek, however I didn't have time to work on my submission as I was in the US at the florida tow show there. Voytek gave up on his part too.
Round 4 was very frustrating. I teamed up with ZuwerWS - musician who does VERY UNIQUE jazz: odd time signatures, scales and what not. This was a problem for me as I wasn't really sure on how to glue trance with jazz. I borrowed a few melodies from Zuwer's part and adapted them to mine. Not the best result but it'll do. I didn't want Zuwer's part to go to waste, so I added it at the end. Full song lasts almost 8 minutes!
We got 12th place.
Round 5 is probably the worst of them all. I was supposed to work with Quintivium, which I was very hyped for. However, he was inactive the whole round and I was forced to switch partners. I teamed up with FantasistEldrun. He supplied me with a few melodies which I used in the bridge before the final drop. I pulled an all nighter finishing the song, because I had no idea on what to add in the song, so I did whatever came up to mind.
I was quite surprised that people loved it. Hell, even 3manon gave a higher rating than for GP1, which I think is the best one.
I got 7th place in the round, which is good actually. Higher than Arpie & Andy!!
7th place!!! Just like in GP1!!!
listen here:
NGMC wasn't so bad, though as I mentioned earlier, I'm very disappointed by my submissions after GP1, I swear I could do better. If not my laziness or me being clueless on what to do, I definitely would've scored a higher position than 17th place. But whatevs. It was an challenge I'd love to repeat! See y'all next year!!!!
~Immy
