Lizardbrain from Conform!! by MRDRCAT

I had this thrown together in 2 hours and spent another hour fiddling with some phrases and the mix. I wanted to do a bright, simple track where things kept changing. I did that by varying the note phrases in each chain, adding new instruments, and iterating as quickly as possible without thinking too deeply about any of it. The drums/percussion are all very simple and don't change much because I wanted something consistent to balance out the instruments.

My unwritten rules for this track were that the instruments could only repeat if there was change or an additional instrument somewhere else. Any melodic structure is an accident, since I was keeping whatever notes worked first and moving on. If one instrument was moving quickly, its counter had to slow down. Two similar patterns couldn't sound at the same time, and there's one part of the track where two of them do a loose quarter note call & response specifically so they can't play at the same time.

It was made to see how fast I could make something coherent based on restrictions in place to keep the whole thing moving forward.

And then things got messy. I liked the track (it actually turned out better than I hoped) and re-worked it for a chiptune compilation using only the M8's Wavsynth engine. The leads were already Wavsynth, but I had to replace the percussion (including the 808 clap) with original Wavsynth patches, and the whole thing sounded kinda blah. So to jazz it up I broke one of my rules: I added a harmony to the lead in the second half of the track. This meant moving some parts around to make room, but I kinda liked the harmonies.

Then I wanted to add the harmonies back into the original project - and I just plain didn't have room. After a lot of digging through phrases to see where I could combine chains/notes/etc. I ended up with this beast and I'm not really sure how. I remember sacrificing a few handclaps that were mostly overshadowed by the rest of the parts anyway.

Updated for The Formula by adding harmonies, punching up the percussion, generally fiddling with the mix/EQ and probably rearranging a couple notes here and there. This may be the most drastic change from its original Weekly Beats version.

This was Bit Farm.
This is now MRDRCAT.

It's fine.
Everything's fine.
Don't look over there.